Approaches to teaching and learning for sustainability: Characterizing students’ perceptions

Abstract

Sustainability needs to become part of the training of prospective teachers as they will be responsible for educating future generations from this perspective. In this regard, the study objective was to determine the perceptions of a group of Master’s degree students in Education about today’s social and environmental problems and about the concept of sustainability, and to identify their teacher-training needs in Education for Sustainability. The results are intended to help improve the framework of teacher training through the integration of sustainability. The study context was that of Master’s courses in Secondary Education Teacher Training and in Educational Research for Teachers’ Professional Development. The study design was exploratory, descriptive, and interpretive, with mixed qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The sample comprised 116 graduate students. For data collection, an ad hoc questionnaire was used which had previously been validated by experts in sustainability. The results reflected a superficial perception of sustainability that was linked to the environmental dimension. This could have been a reflection of the participants’ lack of knowledge concerning today’s main social and environmental problems. The participants’ principal demands with respect to their training were to deepen their knowledge about these problems and about methods they could use to include sustainability in their future classes.