Abstract
Education plays a key role in ensuring that all learners are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set out the key challenges of our time with targets to protect the planet, end poverty, and improve the prospects of all people by 2030. As global challenges including access to healthcare and climate change escalate, the need for action is even more pressing. Education is an enabler of change and presents opportunities to support learners to explore how they can participate in transformative education experiences that focus on building a more sustainable world. Science education provides unique opportunities to explore sustainability given the nature of the discipline, the knowledge it reflects, and its focus on inquiry based pedagogical approaches. This study explores the nature of science as an academic discipline, as it is lived and perceived within the teaching of an undergraduate Science Education (biological sciences) program in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) and its capacity for the integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). An ethnographic informed research design was adopted to document the social culture, perspectives, and practices inherent in the educational setting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with academics and tutors from the HEI’s Science Department who contribute to the program (n = 11). Focus groups were held with pre-service teachers enrolled on the program (n = 21) and observations from lectures, laboratory sessions, and field trips were carried out. Findings arising from analysis of data point to a strong link between science and society in science education, and the need for learners to develop critical scientific literacy that enables them to meaningfully navigate the multiple perspectives presented in media and public debates relating to sustainability issues. Findings suggest that while sustainability themes permeated some modules in the program, the emphasis was on imparting hard, technical knowledge rather than allowing for the critical exploration of issues. Results also highlight some discipline specific challenges to adopting discursive pedagogical approaches in the science education program. Some ways of understanding these findings are explored.
Highlights
The drive to address sustainability and inequality issues arising from development has been ongoing for some time [1,2,3,4]
This study set out to explore the nature of science as an academic discipline as it is lived and perceived within the teaching of an undergraduate science teacher education program and its capacity for the integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)
Teacher educators spoke of the inextricable relationship between science and society, including discussion of scientific advances, scientific practices, scientific knowledge informing public debate, ethical considerations and dissemination of scientific information
Summary
Sustainability 2021, 13, 12028 including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, . Given the complexity and interconnectivity of sustainability issues, all academic disciplines and educators can play a role in building the critical consciousness [8] of students and teaching for sustainability. Embracing this vision ensures a wider, interdisciplinary approach to teaching for sustainability, and requires that educators have the capacity to pull together the disciplinary and pedagogical approaches that form a comprehensive ESD offering [9]
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