Trainee Teachers’ Perceptions of Socio-Environmental Problems for Curriculum Development

Abstract

Socio-environmental problems are some of the major concerns of today’s society, and education is an essential area to raise awareness and mould future citizens who will be committed to sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how future primary and secondary education teachers in the area of social sciences perceive the socio-environmental problems that affect today’s society, for their subsequent inclusion in the curriculum. To this end, a study was carried out by means of a questionnaire, which showed that trainee primary and secondary teachers have a high consideration of these environmental problems, with hardly any differences noted according to sex or type of degree studied. This perception is positive in terms of the subsequent inclusion of socio-environmental problems in the development of the curriculum by the participating trainee teachers, who largely prefer an autonomous model for curricular implementation.

Subject Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Key Environmental Problems and Their Own Role as Environmental Problem Solvers

“…However, they did not consider social disadvantage to be a SD issue. This finding differs from another study [14], where Spanish student teachers rated social problems as more important than other environmental problems.…”

“…Many studies have been published on teachers' and university students' perceptions of environmental problems e.g., [14][15][16][17][18][19], but specifically, SSTs' perceptions of environmental problems and especially their own role as environmental problem solvers have been examined less often. Some researchers, e.g., [20], have considered the interests of secondary school students in relation to environmental issues in school education.…”

“…Today, the idea of SDG 4 is that students gain knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development [7,14,23] and that teaching supports this. Educating SSTs as future teachers on issues concerning sustainability and the environment is particularly critical because teachers are largely responsible for the development of future generations' environmental knowledge and skills [24,25].…”

State asset management paradigm in the quasi-public sector and environmental sustainability: Insights from the Republic of Kazakhstan

“…Populations living in environmentally sensitive areas should have greater opportunities to participate in the decision-making process that will affect society. Environmental sustainability issues should be reflected in educational programs and in all strategic decisions, the consequences of which are subject to regular evaluation (Shutaleva et al, 2020a;García-Morís and Martínez-MedinaTrainee, 2022;Ma and Jin, 2022). The proposed measures will make it possible to form an "ecological culture of the population" in society, and the promotion of environmental knowledge-the development of environmental education and enlightenment to ensure sustainable development.…”