The Pedagogical Realisation of Education for Sustainability

Abstract

The aim of this research was to investigate teachers' understandings of sustainability and ways in which they could be developed. How teachers translate these understandings into their pedagogy and its effects on children's understandings were explored. The impacts of learning about sustainability on teachers' identities were also investigated. This research used a qualitative-interpretivist mode of inquiry with a case study approach that utilised a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to answer the research questions that explored teacher participants' initial and developing understandings of sustainability during professional development. Two case studies describing and analysing practising teachers' translation of their understandings of sustainability into their pedagogy were constructed using interviews and documentary data that included planning and children's work. The final research focus explored the relationship between their understanding of sustainability and their sense of identity as education for sustainability (EfS) teachers. A definition of sustainability comprised of five components was developed. Three tools were constructed to measure the complexity and levels of teachers' understandings and identities. The first tool measured the complexity of their understandings using the five-component definition. Initially these understandings were simplistic and environmentally focused. The second tool measured their metacognitive awareness of sustainability which showed that about half of the participants were unaware of the complexity of this concept. The findings established that this tool could be used metacognitively by teachers to monitor their developing awareness. The third tool provided a mechanism by which teachers' understanding and awareness of sustainability, personal practices and professional beliefs could be analysed to place the teachers in categories of identity that provided information about their outlook on sustainability. All of these tools provided evidence that the pedagogical realisation of education for sustainability is a complex process. The professional development programme was thematically analysed and evaluated using a research-based generic model. Data from children's learning provided a further evaluation and demonstrated that a pedagogy that developed a deep understanding of sustainability is complex and is easily influenced by a teacher's identity and perception of sustainability. Consequently these teachers demonstrated their environmentally-scientific focus and these young children's understandings of sustainability did not reflect such a focus but they did develop a temporal awareness of sustainability. This research has highlighted the significance of identity that influences ontological change in teaching and learning about sustainability and recognises that changes in behaviour and values of teachers are the lynch-pin of any significant change in classroom pedagogy for sustainability.