Student Teacher Ecological Self in the Context of Education for Sustainable Development: A Longitudinal Case Study

Abstract

In the context of teacher education (TE) for sustainable development (SD), questions related to a teacher's values, worldview and identity present a particular interest and are of critical importance. In the present article, student-teachers' understanding of Teacher self and nature is focused on through discussions of personal and professional settings. The perceived curriculum, that is, reflection on a formal curriculum of a particular TE programme, is discussed to investigate how existing TE curriculum supports the development of the ecological, holistic self of a future teacher. The longitudinal study of 9 student teachers attempts to illuminate the process of the development of their ecological self during the first 4 years of studies in a particular initial TE programme. Although literature stresses the need to begin TE with investigating teacher identity, the results show that according to student teachers' opinions, the particular TE curriculum does not address the notion of teacher identity in a focused manner, and more prominently, it does not address teacher identity development in the context of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Prepared to Teach for Sustainable Development? Student Teachers’ Beliefs in Their Ability to Teach for Sustainable Development

“…Many of these accounts are concerned about how teacher education generates a teacher identity among students. Setting this identity development in the context of education for sustainable development also seems to be lacking [34].…”

“…The call for teachers is mainly seen as being devoted to the development of children, not to how these children can work for more sustainable human activities in the future. It appears the literature on teacher profession is still devoted to the classical understanding of the profession, where the aspect of sustainability is lacking [34,40].…”

Human, Technologies and Quality of Education, 2020

“…Theoretical background is based on the analysis of UNECE, UNESCO documents and research related to the education of sustainable development (Barth, Godemann, Rieckmann, & Stoltenberg, 2007;Raus, 2018;Sterling, 2010;UNECE, 2009UNECE, , 2011UNESCO, 2017). The analysis of the cultural aspects of SD is proceeded by the context of documents from the United Nations and research in cultural theory anthropology (Gertz, 1973;Levi-Strauss, 2001).…”

“…Education for sustainable development is mainly associated with learning the issues related to natural sciences (i.e., climate change, protection of biodiversity) and social sciences (i.e., development of society for all), and with respect to cultural diversity (UNECE, 2009). More recently, another educational aspect appears in formulations of the results of education for SD as competences for sustainable development -critical thinking, personal and collaborative competences (UNESCO, 2017) systems thinking, values thinking, futures thinking, strategic thinking, and complex problem solving (Raus, 2018;Sterling, 2011). The concept of competence in itself means a deep involvement of the personality.…”

“…Researchers acknowledge that the cultural dimension of SD encompasses all other categories of SD (Grossberg, 2010;Raus, 2018). This means that culture could be one way to relate all of the complexities of SD to each person's life and a means to enrich teacher education.…”