Implementing Education for Sustainable Development in Namibia: School Teachers’ Perceptions and Teaching Practices

Abstract

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been viewed as education that helps people develop the attitude, skills, and knowledge to make well-informed decisions for the benefit of the present and future generations. It aims at providing quality education through shared understanding and multi-disciplinary approaches in meeting the developmental and environmental apprehension for a sustainable future. Many theorists envisaged ESD as enhancing active involvement of learners both in school and out of school learning initiatives to acquire knowledge about sustainable development issues. The present paper discusses Namibian school teachers’ (n=9) perceptions of ESD and the teachers’ teaching practices using a qualitative-explorative study design. The data were gathered through two semi-structured interviews and lesson observations. The findings have revealed that senior secondary school teachers perceive ESD in terms of knowledge acquisition about the environment in order to use its resources sustainably for the benefit of future generations. The study has also revealed that teachers have positive sentiment toward the inclusion of ESD into the senior secondary school curriculum. Following this, they suggested that ESD should be either implemented as an independent subject or integrated with other existing subjects as a multi-disciplinary subject.

Designing Powerful Learning Environments in Education for Sustainable Development: A Conceptual Framework

“…ESD teaching is implemented in different ways by teachers [59]. Even though there is now an increasing amount of work on ESD implementation, the instructional design in formal education settings developed is still not well understood (e.g., [2,14,[60][61][62][63][64][65]).…”

Social Sustainability and Professional Development: Assessing a Training Course on Intercultural Education for In-Service Teachers

“…The results showed that the training course was an occasion for teachers to discuss different pedagogical approaches, teaching strategies, and practices in intercultural education. Findings provided evidence that the course succeeded in promoting the achievement of new contents and strategies related to migrant children's education, and enhanced critical reflections among participants [25,26].…”

Acquisition of Competences for Sustainable Development through Visual Thinking. A Study in Rural Schools in Mixco, Guatemala

“…Because of this, and in order to actively contribute to this strategy, education should guarantee that students acquire all the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge with the aim of boosting sustainable development [20]. Among other things, it has to promote sustainable life styles, human rights, gender equality, the culture of peace and non-violence, world citizenship, and the value of cultural diversity, as well as the contribution of education to development [3,21].…”

“…The UNESCO Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4 highlights that people's educational process is lifelong and that it is geared at giving them the capacity to think and feel. Likewise, it upholds that all agents in a city contribute to education and culture, and thus favour human development [3][4][5].…”

“…In respect to teacher skills, recent research carried out in Namibia concludes that professors described ESD mainly in terms of creating environmental awareness to ensure the sustainable use of natural resources, and all teachers acknowledged the integration of ESD into their subjects and school curriculum to respond to the challenges of sustainability in order to improve the quality of the environment [3].…”