Abstract
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires the empowerment of learners through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), already at primary level. Teacher education for the SDGs is a focus of ESD. However, many teachers in Madagascar are underqualified and show knowledge gaps regarding ESD. This paper aims at identifying starting points for an ESD-oriented further development of teacher training, considering regionally relevant issues. Teaching Sustainable Development issues requires procedural knowledge. This paper reports on (i) Malagasy primary school teachers’ (n = 286) teaching and learning prerequisites regarding land-use and health issues compared to expert knowledge, (ii) modeling teachers’ respective procedural knowledge with the Rasch Partial Credit Model and validation studies, and on (iii) comparison of groups of teachers differentiated by diversity dimensions, e.g., teaching at rural or urban schools. The teachers underestimated land-use and health courses of action regarding effectiveness and possibility of implementation, compared to experts. IRT modeling resulted in two distinct knowledge dimensions, i.e., land use and health (latent correlation: 0.31). Rural teachers showed higher procedural land-use knowledge than urban teachers. No differences occurred regarding health knowledge. The paper argues for ESD-focused reorientation of teacher training, considering regional specificities of land-use topics, e.g., regarding vanilla and rice cultivation in North-East Madagascar, and health topics.
Highlights
Within the Agenda 2030, the UN member states—among them, Madagascar—adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing the most pressing issues of Sustainable Development (SD) [1]
Teachers and pre-service teachers worldwide show knowledge gaps regarding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the SDGs [4,5,6,7,8,9]; among them are teachers in Madagascar [10]. These knowledge gaps ask for a reorientation of ESD-oriented teacher education in Madagascar that allows teachers to act as change agents to achieve the SDGs
The present study aims at filling this research gap with knowledge on teacher prerequisites for teaching land-use and health issues in NE Malagasy primary education
Summary
Within the Agenda 2030, the UN member states—among them, Madagascar—adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressing the most pressing issues of Sustainable Development (SD) [1]. Such learning objectives can be explicitly linked to the 17 SDGs [12], under consideration of context- or lifeworldorientation [13] The latter is of particular relevance for countries such as Madagascar, as Sustainability 2021, 13, 9036. The identified issues for ESD teaching address SDGs 2: Zero hunger, 3: Good health and well-being, 6: Clean water and sanitation, 12: Sustainable production and consumption, and 15: Life on land. Teaching such SD issues requires corresponding knowledge. Measuring procedural knowledge of (pre-service) teachers as teaching and learning prerequisites for ESD turned out to be a promising avenue for an evidence-based development of adequate teacher training [16,17,18]
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