Teacher Education Special Interest Group: New research

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Four short presentations on the theme: "Education for sustainable development with pre-service and in-service teachers"

Introduction

Education for sustainable development (ESD) has emerged as a key discourse in education in the past two decades. UNESCO’s (2019) framework “ESD for 2030” states that ESD is an integral element of the Sustainable Development Goal on quality education (SDG4) and a key enabler of all the other SDGs. Recently ESD has been included as a cross-cutting theme in the Subjects’ Benchmark Statements in the UK (QAA, 2022). ESD has also received attention at level of education policy in many other countries. An emphasis on ESD in schools has generated debates about the role of teacher preparation programmes in promoting ESD, teachers’ agency for ESD and the challenges regarding implementation of ESD.

Since teachers are the key players in implementation of ESD, it is important to highlight and share knowledge about their beliefs, capabilities, and practices in relation to ESD. By sharing practices and research related to teachers and ESD, this ANGEL webinar on the theme “ESD with pre-service and in-service teachers” aims at stimulating conversations on:

• Teacher education for sustainable development (TESD)
• Teacher professional development programmes and ESD
• Teachers’ challenges regarding ESD implementation
• Teaching for ESD
• Assessment for ESD
• Teachers’ agency for ESD
• Teachers' beliefs/representations about ESD
• Teacher profile/competences and ESD

Format

This free event is to be hosted via Zoom. Registered participants will be emailed a link in the days before the event, and also 30 minutes before as a reminder. Time after the presentations will be given over to questions and discussion.

Background

The ANGEL Teacher Education Special Interest Group is a member-driven initiative that examines the evidence and research on approaches to global education and global citizenship education within teacher education provision. The event is part of the activities of the Academic Network of Global Education and Learning (ANGEL), a partnership project of of Global Education Network Europe (GENE) and IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education & Society. This event, along with the other activities of the ANGEL network, are co-funded by the European Union.*

Presentations

1) Teacher education for sustainability and global citizenship: a focus on in-service teachers
Ana Isabel Andrade, Mónica Lourenço, Francisco Parrança da Silva: University of Aveiro, Portugal

Educating global citizens for a more sustainable world is one of the bedrocks of quality education inscribed in the 2030 Agenda. However, for many of the world’s teachers concepts such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘global citizenship’ are still puzzling or practically unknown. Therefore, it is fundamental to promote on-going teacher education to ensure teachers develop the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence to create and inspire others to build a more sustainable, inclusive and fair future.

Addressing this context, in a first part of this talk, we will present the Erasmus+ project TEDS – Teacher education for sustainability (https://teds.web.ua.pt/), a three-year collaborative project coordinated by the University of Aveiro, which started in 2019. Then, in a second part, we will discuss the results of a case study conducted with a group of in-service teachers in Portugal who participated in TEDS online professional development course titled ‘Education for sustainability: diversity, dialogue and inclusion’. We will focus on understanding the impact of the course on teachers’ professional learning, namely concerning their conceptualisations of education for sustainability and global citizenship, their pedagogical repertoires, their understandings of the purposes of education and of their teaching role, and their motivations and commitment to teach according to sustainability principles. Finally, we will discuss the implications of our research and present a reference framework for (in-service) teacher education, the final output of the TEDS project.

2) Student Teachers’ Understanding and Engagement with Education for Sustainable Development in England, Turkey and Pakistan
Douglas Bourn: University College London, Qudsia Kalsoom: University of Dundee, Nese Soysal: Independent Researcher, Burtay Ince: Gazi University.

The presentation aims at sharing the findings from a large study that explored student teachers’ conceptions of ESD and the emphasis on ESD in teacher education programmes as perceived by student teachers. Overall, 347 student teachers from four universities in three countries (Pakistan, England and Turkey) participated in this mixed-methods study.

3) GCD and ESD in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teacher Education: Voices from Hungarian University Language Development Classes
Rita Divéki: Eötvös Loránd University Budapest

Global Competence Development (GCD) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) seek to equip young people with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to become responsible global citizens and to act for a more sustainable world. Despite the relevance of ESD and GCD, there is a dearth of research in this field in Hungary and the international literature does not abound in classroom research of good practices either. The presentation is intended to shed light on some good practices for ESD and GCD in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education and to present teacher trainees’ opinion on these activity sequences, and is based on research conducted with first- year EFL teacher trainees’ classes at two Hungarian EFL teacher education institutions.

4) What spaces do Scottish maths teachers find or make for ESD and GCE?
Corinne Angier: University of Stirling

The presentation draws on conversations with secondary maths teachers in Scotland who have been engaged in professional learning with Scotdec. These teachers navigate conflicting policy which appears to promote learning for sustainability but in fact calls them to account against attainment data.

Teachers with a different philosophical understanding of maths from the hegemonic view, teachers who have an equity stance that sees the importance of a broader conception of maths and teachers who are wanting to extend the range of opportunities they offer to learners all have to face down the normative organisation of mathematics in the school curriculum.

The ANGEL Webinar Series

This event is part of a series of online events run by the Academic Network for Global Education & Learning. The series is aimed at Global Education professionals, as well as anyone with an interest in research in the fields of Development Education, Global Citizenship Education, Human Rights Education, Education for Sustainable Development, Education for Peace, and Intercultural Education.

* The establishment of this network has been made possible with funding support from the European Commission. The activities and publications of the network are the responsibilities of the organisers, the Development Education Research Centre, and can in no way be seen as reflecting the views of the European Commission.