Subject Teachers as Educators for Sustainability: A Survey Study

Anna Uitto,Seppo Saloranta

doi:10.3390/educsci7010008

Abstract

Sustainability education (SE) is included in school curricula to integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development (SD) into all education. This study investigates lower secondary school subject teachers as educators for sustainability. A survey was used to study the perceptions of 442 subject teachers from 49 schools in Finland. There were significant differences between the subject teachers’ perceptions of their SE competence, and the frequency with which they used different dimensions of SE (ecological, economic, social, well-being, cultural) in their teaching varied. Teachers’ age had a small effect, but gender, school, and its residential location were nonsignificant factors. Teachers could be roughly classified into three different subgroups according to their perceptions of the role of SE in their teaching; those who considered three SE dimensions rather often and used holistic sustainability approaches in their teaching (biology, geography, history); those who considered two or three dimensions often but were not active in holistic teaching (mother tongue, religion, visual arts, crafts, music, physical and health education, and home economics) and those who used one SE dimension or consider only one holistic approach in their teaching (mathematics, physics, chemistry and language). Subject teachers’ awareness of their SE competence is important to encourage them to plan and implement discipline-based and interdisciplinary SE in their teaching. The specific SE expertise of subject teachers should be taken into account in teacher training and education.

Highlights

The aim of this study is to determine to what extent subject teachers take different aspects and holistic approaches of sustainability education (SE) into account in their teaching, as well as how competent they feel in teaching different SE dimensions
The results indicated that there were no differences between the schools in terms of how often the teachers used different dimensions of sustainability in their teaching
Differences between rural, densely populated, and urban areas could be studied with ANOVA, and the results showed that there were no significant differences between the different residential areas in any of the studied factors

Summary

Introduction

The aim of education for sustainable development (ESD), or sustainability education (SE), is to integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development (SD) into all aspects of education. This challenge was underlined by the United Nations (UN) as the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (DESD 2005–2014). SE emphasizes the consideration of multiple aspects of sustainability including ecological, economic, social, and cultural aspects of SD. Natural diversity and the preservation of environmental viability is included in the underlying values of basic education. 39), schools should teach “future-oriented thinking and the building of the future upon ecologically, economically, socially and culturally sustainable The curriculum included “Responsibility for the environment, well-being and a sustainable future” as a cross-curricular theme and, according to the curriculum [5] (p. 39), schools should teach “future-oriented thinking and the building of the future upon ecologically, economically, socially and culturally sustainable

Objectives

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Discussion

Conclusion