Abstract
Competency for ESD (education for sustainable development) of university teachers is the key to the sustainable development of higher education. Developing teachers’ competency for ESD poses a new challenge for Chinese universities. Ideally, a new faculty development system should be established. However, this strategy is not feasible because of cost concerns, and improving competency for ESD by using the existing teacher competency training system is preferred. Therefore, this paper employed a specific data mining method to create a relationship model between the existing teacher competency system and the ESD competency according to teacher evaluation data. The developed model was used to analyze the teachers’ core competencies that are critical to ESD competency and derive decision rules for formulating improvement strategies. The teacher competency model was applied to the International Scholarly Exchange Curriculum (ISEC) program implemented at regional universities in China to conduct an empirical case study. The results of this study are anticipated to enable the formulation of an effective and appropriate strategy for improving teachers’ competency for ESD in the existing teacher development system.
Highlights
To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization established an organization named International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 in September 2019
This study focused on the items of the International Scholarly Exchange Curriculum (ISEC) program for case analysis because of the following reasons: (1) the ISEC program is primarily implemented at Chinses regional universities, which comprise the highest number of teachers in China’s higher education, high research representativeness can be achieved; (2) the teachers who were investigated in the ISEC program are from many universities in different provinces, which further strengthens the data representativeness of this study with regard to the competency for education for sustainable development (ESD) in regional university teachers in China; (3) ISEC is an early systematic program in China to explore the ESD competency of university teachers
For regional universities that are already struggling with limited resources, constructing a new teacher training system means that the original teacher training programs will have to face the consequences, like reduced resource input, disruption, or even abolishment, so that the limited resources can be diverted into the construction of the new training system
Summary
To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization established an organization named International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 in September 2019. To fulfil its commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, the Chinese government [2] issued China’s Education Modernization 2035, which aims to introduce Chinese wisdom, experience, and programs to global education development through practical actions. The policy incorporates eight fundamentals of China’s education modernization plan, namely ethics prioritization, well-balanced development, lifelong learning, personalized teaching, integration of knowledge and practice, people orientation, integrated development, and coconstruction and sharing. To realize these principles, the Chinese government implemented one of its ten major education modernization strategies: formulating a team of high-quality, professional, and innovative teachers and continually building teacher teams as a part of basic missions [2]. University teachers with high knowledge and competency levels are crucial to China’s continual education development [3,4]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
