To address a paucity of knowledge on a way to enhance pedagogical content knowledge of sustainability (PCKS), the authors of the study developed an ecocriticism course and investigated its impact on English pre-service teachers' PCKS. A mixed-method convergent research design was employed. Forty-seven pre-service English teachers at one of the English education departments in Indonesia joined the course and received a pre- and post-questionnaire survey of PCKS. They were also required to generate English instructional ideas related to environmental sustainability at the end of the course in the open-ended questionnaire. The survey and open-ended questionnaire data were analyzed using a paired-sample t-test and content analysis. The results informed that the English pre-service teachers' PCKS, knowledge to create and provide learning opportunities for English learners to enhance the learners' sustainability capacity, was developed in the course. Accordingly, to orient English teacher education institutions towards sustainability, an ecocriticism course is suggested to integrate into the curriculum.
Palabras clave
ecocriticism
education for sustainable development
pedagogical content knowledge of sustainability (PCKS)
Humanity has existed in special living conditions since March 11, 2020 when WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. This coronavirus disease has already taken more than 6.55 million of people's lives from almost 625 million of officially confirmed cases of people infected around the world at the beginning of October 2022. Lot of university lecturers, teachers and researchers are concerned by new challenges in the education and science process. Therefore, many new recommendations and methodologies have been published for effective teaching in the pandemic time focusing on different forms of distance digital education. Certainly, the process has been actual for biological disciplines too where the biggest problems appeared with the organisation of field courses. Every country and even every university have been looking for optimal ways within their epidemic situation according to country restriction rules. Therefore, we have generalized this experience, as well as developed protocols on example of iNaturalist platform (https://www.inaturalist.org/) for effective use of citizen science tools not just for distance learning of botanical cycle disciplines in the pandemic time and beyond, but also for collecting valuable data about plant distribution during this process. We present a future-oriented vision of the solution of biodiversity and sustainability education.
We explore the relationships that future teachers establish between food consumption and sustainability, as well as their intentions to act and their competences in ESD, after a training program. Three instruments were designed and analyzed within the methodological framework of qualitative content analysis. The results showed that, although the future teachers set adequate relationships, they still had significant difficulties in accepting the need for ambitious changes in their diets. Their educational proposals are focused on the diagnosis of the problems instead of the assessment of the sustainability of eating habits and the empowering of learners to take responsible decisions and actions.
Recycling is a highly relevant issue in environmental behavior. To make it work, it is necessary to involve people. Many efforts have been made to increase people's participation in recycling. This study proposes an informal education to raise awareness among homemakers about recycling, especially aluminum packaging recycling, using workshops and compensating the factors that act as barriers to recycling in Spain. The results are the “Spaces for Dialogue” strategy to increase knowledge, awareness, and recycling intention. The findings present the main barriers to closing the gap between intention to action, and the study highlights the role that mentors play as teachers in facilitating communication and education for sustainable development.
Reflecting on the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, which emphasises that progress in sustainable development depends on ensuring prosperity, and in line with the Sustainable Development Goal 3, which aims to promote the well-being of all age groups, including children, this study aims to examine the child's legitimate right to communicate with both parents in the context of divorce and support arrangements. Filling the gaps in previous research, our research problem is focused on analysing the impact on sustainability, the child's emotional well-being and the protection of the child's rights in the situation of parental divorce. Following the emergent approach, an instrumental case study design and a qualitative research strategy were employed using methods such as content analysis of legal documents and semi-structured interviews. The research questions addressed two dimensions of the analysis: the factors contributing to the exercise of the child's right to communicate with the separated parent; and violations of the child's rights where the child's right to communicate with both parents is not properly ensured or not at all ensured. The results of this study reveal that the parent living with the child after the divorce acts contrary to the best interests of the child, denying the child's inherent right to be raised and educated by both parents.
This project used a story book for young readers (aged 6–8) to explore environmental identity features and their potential impact upon its young readers. A variety of different units of analysis from the narrative practice approach were employed to explore: a) how the story's narrative constructs the environmental identity of the main character; b) what kind of environmental identity it promotes and c) whether reading a story can be considered a ‘proxy’ of a ‘formative’ childhood experience in relation to the environment.
The analysis showed a gradual construction of the main character's environmental identity; moving from passivity and ignorance to agency and knowledge. However, the notion of agency was rather limited to an individualistic agency that can potentially empower young readers to act on a local level without helping them to see environmental issues in a wider societal context.
Finally, the idea of reading an environmental story as a ‘formative’ experience is discussed in relation to the aforementioned findings and to literature relevant within sustainability education pedagogies.
The COVID-19 global pandemic presented an unprecedented challenge to the sustainability strategies and initiatives of many nations. In many countries, education strategies and funding were negatively impacted and, consequently, especially vulnerable groups were highly affected, amongst them Indigenous communities around the world. As Indigenous communities were already amongst the most vulnerable before 2020, a strategically and well-planned recovery from this pandemic would be vital to secure their well-being.
This article offers reflections on the potential of infusing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the classroom, the school and the community as a whole, to deal with known and yet unprecedented sustainability challenges in presenting commonalities of 32 good practice reports from 21 countries collected in advance and during the global pandemic. Authors make the point of considering the pandemic and its widespread impact as yet another sustainability challenge and position ESD as a potential tool to achieve quality education and unleash the full potential of education for society when planning recovery efforts in hope for a better future of Indigenous communities in the long term.
As the good practices were also included in a report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the 48th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, focusing on the post-pandemic recovery efforts for Indigenous Peoples, further thoughts on both official reports and their alignment with the overall 2030 Agenda from an ESD perspective are included.
Publicado en línea: 11 Jan 2023 Páginas: 113 - 128
Resumen
Abstract
The multiple crises of the 21st century once again highlight the significant role of sustainable education in all educational institutions. Particularly in higher education, the inclusion of nature and animals in the curricula is underrepresented. Using the method of Multispecies Ethnography, which recognizes the interconnectedness and inseparability of humans and other life forms of the more-than-human world, such as plants or animals, this paper discusses the presence of nature in online-based nature and outdoor learning in higher education. This study examines nature-based learning in higher education. It analyses the role of nature in the learning process in general and in sustainable education in particular. The results of the study show that a relationship with nature leads to a change in one's worldview, which is evidence of the methodological importance of introducing nature in the learning process. The results also illustrate that – despite digitalization – direct interaction with nature is essential for a paradigm shift in education.
Publicado en línea: 11 Jan 2023 Páginas: 129 - 146
Resumen
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to critically examine the practices of teaching and learning for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs) in South Korea (Korea). With the use of a case study, this paper offers a close examination of the practices carried out at Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University in Korea, focusing on how the SDGs are embedded in teaching and learning for sustainable development and identifying barriers and challenges in the process. A few specific initiatives and curriculum developments to meet the SDGs have been identified, but their rhetorical visions and practices of teaching and learning contradict, resulting in little actual transformation. This study reveals the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of teaching and learning for the SDGs from the perspective of transformative learning and offers policy suggestions to provide a well-rooted practice of educating the SDGs in Korean HEIs.
Publicado en línea: 11 Jan 2023 Páginas: 147 - 165
Resumen
Abstract
Qualitative education is one of the key contributors in achieving the goal of sustainability. Several studies mention that the sustainability curriculum and educators can play an immense role in developing awareness in practicing the concept of sustainability. Relatively there is no comprehensive study to typify the recent contributions of teacher education for sustainability. In this light, the aim of the study is to understand the progress of the research on teacher education for sustainability (TES) in terms of growth, evolution, influence and significant research themes. To achieve the aim of the study, 1782 documents indexed in the Scopus database over three decades starting from 1991 to 2020 were analyzed by using bibliometric analysis. The data are visualized in the paper by using VOSviewer and Tableau. Results show that there has been a significant increase in yearly publications and citations over the years, trending research papers, productive authors, institutions and countries and thematic areas of research. Most frequently published journal has a considerable cite score and quartile. Universities from Australia published the most. The most commonly published themes are education for sustainability, Agenda 21, sustainable development education, environmental education, and later the focus is shifted to teacher training, teachers, education, values, teaching and education policy, sustainability competencies. Future research should focus on blended learning, digital learning, other modern tools and techniques to achieve the goal of sustainable development as well as to address the issue of teaching sustainability during uncertainty conditions.
Publicado en línea: 11 Jan 2023 Páginas: 166 - 179
Resumen
Abstract
The aim of the article is to explain holistically the main provisions of sustainable development in the nature-society-human system based on the methodology for analyzing changes in energy flows and the power of socio-economic systems. The authors consider the development of society as a creative process aimed at changing the direction and speed of free energy flows (useful power) in Space and Time. They also consider sustainable development in the nature-society-human system to be consistent with the laws of the global evolution of living nature and the laws of the historical development of humankind. The paper focuses on key questions concerning the new concepts of sustainable development; the methodology for designing the sustainable development using the concept of energy flows in open, non-equilibrium stable systems and power change analysis approach. The results of the main positions of the models and their interpretation are presented based on the statistical data of United States of America (USA) in the period of 1960–2021.
One of the most important primary things in order to bring about changes in people's thinking, understanding and attitude towards sustainability issues is their education in different forms – formal education and non-formal education opportunities. Creating an interdisciplinary approach and explaining sustainability as a set of economic, social and ecological factors also play a crucial role in raising public awareness of sustainability issues.
Publicado en línea: 11 Jan 2023 Páginas: 180 - 194
Resumen
Abstract
Beginning teachers should be adequately prepared for their roles as propagators of sustainable development core messages. Using a mixed method approach, this study assessed current knowledge, perceptions and readiness of beginning teachers for sustainability education. Two hundred (200) randomly selected final-year undergraduates from the Faculty of Education of the Nigerian University participated in the study. Results revealed gaps in the awareness and understanding of sustainability concepts and issues among the respondents. However, a high level of interest in handling the core issues was expressed. The respondents differed according to gender and age, but there were no significant differences according to mode of entry. The study recommended infusion of sustainability concepts in teacher education curricula and promotion of sustainable development issues through students' activities within and outside university campuses to address knowledge gap and sustain interests in sustainability education among beginning teachers.
To address a paucity of knowledge on a way to enhance pedagogical content knowledge of sustainability (PCKS), the authors of the study developed an ecocriticism course and investigated its impact on English pre-service teachers' PCKS. A mixed-method convergent research design was employed. Forty-seven pre-service English teachers at one of the English education departments in Indonesia joined the course and received a pre- and post-questionnaire survey of PCKS. They were also required to generate English instructional ideas related to environmental sustainability at the end of the course in the open-ended questionnaire. The survey and open-ended questionnaire data were analyzed using a paired-sample t-test and content analysis. The results informed that the English pre-service teachers' PCKS, knowledge to create and provide learning opportunities for English learners to enhance the learners' sustainability capacity, was developed in the course. Accordingly, to orient English teacher education institutions towards sustainability, an ecocriticism course is suggested to integrate into the curriculum.
Palabras clave
ecocriticism
education for sustainable development
pedagogical content knowledge of sustainability (PCKS)
Humanity has existed in special living conditions since March 11, 2020 when WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. This coronavirus disease has already taken more than 6.55 million of people's lives from almost 625 million of officially confirmed cases of people infected around the world at the beginning of October 2022. Lot of university lecturers, teachers and researchers are concerned by new challenges in the education and science process. Therefore, many new recommendations and methodologies have been published for effective teaching in the pandemic time focusing on different forms of distance digital education. Certainly, the process has been actual for biological disciplines too where the biggest problems appeared with the organisation of field courses. Every country and even every university have been looking for optimal ways within their epidemic situation according to country restriction rules. Therefore, we have generalized this experience, as well as developed protocols on example of iNaturalist platform (https://www.inaturalist.org/) for effective use of citizen science tools not just for distance learning of botanical cycle disciplines in the pandemic time and beyond, but also for collecting valuable data about plant distribution during this process. We present a future-oriented vision of the solution of biodiversity and sustainability education.
We explore the relationships that future teachers establish between food consumption and sustainability, as well as their intentions to act and their competences in ESD, after a training program. Three instruments were designed and analyzed within the methodological framework of qualitative content analysis. The results showed that, although the future teachers set adequate relationships, they still had significant difficulties in accepting the need for ambitious changes in their diets. Their educational proposals are focused on the diagnosis of the problems instead of the assessment of the sustainability of eating habits and the empowering of learners to take responsible decisions and actions.
Recycling is a highly relevant issue in environmental behavior. To make it work, it is necessary to involve people. Many efforts have been made to increase people's participation in recycling. This study proposes an informal education to raise awareness among homemakers about recycling, especially aluminum packaging recycling, using workshops and compensating the factors that act as barriers to recycling in Spain. The results are the “Spaces for Dialogue” strategy to increase knowledge, awareness, and recycling intention. The findings present the main barriers to closing the gap between intention to action, and the study highlights the role that mentors play as teachers in facilitating communication and education for sustainable development.
Reflecting on the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, which emphasises that progress in sustainable development depends on ensuring prosperity, and in line with the Sustainable Development Goal 3, which aims to promote the well-being of all age groups, including children, this study aims to examine the child's legitimate right to communicate with both parents in the context of divorce and support arrangements. Filling the gaps in previous research, our research problem is focused on analysing the impact on sustainability, the child's emotional well-being and the protection of the child's rights in the situation of parental divorce. Following the emergent approach, an instrumental case study design and a qualitative research strategy were employed using methods such as content analysis of legal documents and semi-structured interviews. The research questions addressed two dimensions of the analysis: the factors contributing to the exercise of the child's right to communicate with the separated parent; and violations of the child's rights where the child's right to communicate with both parents is not properly ensured or not at all ensured. The results of this study reveal that the parent living with the child after the divorce acts contrary to the best interests of the child, denying the child's inherent right to be raised and educated by both parents.
This project used a story book for young readers (aged 6–8) to explore environmental identity features and their potential impact upon its young readers. A variety of different units of analysis from the narrative practice approach were employed to explore: a) how the story's narrative constructs the environmental identity of the main character; b) what kind of environmental identity it promotes and c) whether reading a story can be considered a ‘proxy’ of a ‘formative’ childhood experience in relation to the environment.
The analysis showed a gradual construction of the main character's environmental identity; moving from passivity and ignorance to agency and knowledge. However, the notion of agency was rather limited to an individualistic agency that can potentially empower young readers to act on a local level without helping them to see environmental issues in a wider societal context.
Finally, the idea of reading an environmental story as a ‘formative’ experience is discussed in relation to the aforementioned findings and to literature relevant within sustainability education pedagogies.
The COVID-19 global pandemic presented an unprecedented challenge to the sustainability strategies and initiatives of many nations. In many countries, education strategies and funding were negatively impacted and, consequently, especially vulnerable groups were highly affected, amongst them Indigenous communities around the world. As Indigenous communities were already amongst the most vulnerable before 2020, a strategically and well-planned recovery from this pandemic would be vital to secure their well-being.
This article offers reflections on the potential of infusing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the classroom, the school and the community as a whole, to deal with known and yet unprecedented sustainability challenges in presenting commonalities of 32 good practice reports from 21 countries collected in advance and during the global pandemic. Authors make the point of considering the pandemic and its widespread impact as yet another sustainability challenge and position ESD as a potential tool to achieve quality education and unleash the full potential of education for society when planning recovery efforts in hope for a better future of Indigenous communities in the long term.
As the good practices were also included in a report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the 48th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, focusing on the post-pandemic recovery efforts for Indigenous Peoples, further thoughts on both official reports and their alignment with the overall 2030 Agenda from an ESD perspective are included.
The multiple crises of the 21st century once again highlight the significant role of sustainable education in all educational institutions. Particularly in higher education, the inclusion of nature and animals in the curricula is underrepresented. Using the method of Multispecies Ethnography, which recognizes the interconnectedness and inseparability of humans and other life forms of the more-than-human world, such as plants or animals, this paper discusses the presence of nature in online-based nature and outdoor learning in higher education. This study examines nature-based learning in higher education. It analyses the role of nature in the learning process in general and in sustainable education in particular. The results of the study show that a relationship with nature leads to a change in one's worldview, which is evidence of the methodological importance of introducing nature in the learning process. The results also illustrate that – despite digitalization – direct interaction with nature is essential for a paradigm shift in education.
The aim of the paper is to critically examine the practices of teaching and learning for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs) in South Korea (Korea). With the use of a case study, this paper offers a close examination of the practices carried out at Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University in Korea, focusing on how the SDGs are embedded in teaching and learning for sustainable development and identifying barriers and challenges in the process. A few specific initiatives and curriculum developments to meet the SDGs have been identified, but their rhetorical visions and practices of teaching and learning contradict, resulting in little actual transformation. This study reveals the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of teaching and learning for the SDGs from the perspective of transformative learning and offers policy suggestions to provide a well-rooted practice of educating the SDGs in Korean HEIs.
Qualitative education is one of the key contributors in achieving the goal of sustainability. Several studies mention that the sustainability curriculum and educators can play an immense role in developing awareness in practicing the concept of sustainability. Relatively there is no comprehensive study to typify the recent contributions of teacher education for sustainability. In this light, the aim of the study is to understand the progress of the research on teacher education for sustainability (TES) in terms of growth, evolution, influence and significant research themes. To achieve the aim of the study, 1782 documents indexed in the Scopus database over three decades starting from 1991 to 2020 were analyzed by using bibliometric analysis. The data are visualized in the paper by using VOSviewer and Tableau. Results show that there has been a significant increase in yearly publications and citations over the years, trending research papers, productive authors, institutions and countries and thematic areas of research. Most frequently published journal has a considerable cite score and quartile. Universities from Australia published the most. The most commonly published themes are education for sustainability, Agenda 21, sustainable development education, environmental education, and later the focus is shifted to teacher training, teachers, education, values, teaching and education policy, sustainability competencies. Future research should focus on blended learning, digital learning, other modern tools and techniques to achieve the goal of sustainable development as well as to address the issue of teaching sustainability during uncertainty conditions.
The aim of the article is to explain holistically the main provisions of sustainable development in the nature-society-human system based on the methodology for analyzing changes in energy flows and the power of socio-economic systems. The authors consider the development of society as a creative process aimed at changing the direction and speed of free energy flows (useful power) in Space and Time. They also consider sustainable development in the nature-society-human system to be consistent with the laws of the global evolution of living nature and the laws of the historical development of humankind. The paper focuses on key questions concerning the new concepts of sustainable development; the methodology for designing the sustainable development using the concept of energy flows in open, non-equilibrium stable systems and power change analysis approach. The results of the main positions of the models and their interpretation are presented based on the statistical data of United States of America (USA) in the period of 1960–2021.
One of the most important primary things in order to bring about changes in people's thinking, understanding and attitude towards sustainability issues is their education in different forms – formal education and non-formal education opportunities. Creating an interdisciplinary approach and explaining sustainability as a set of economic, social and ecological factors also play a crucial role in raising public awareness of sustainability issues.
Beginning teachers should be adequately prepared for their roles as propagators of sustainable development core messages. Using a mixed method approach, this study assessed current knowledge, perceptions and readiness of beginning teachers for sustainability education. Two hundred (200) randomly selected final-year undergraduates from the Faculty of Education of the Nigerian University participated in the study. Results revealed gaps in the awareness and understanding of sustainability concepts and issues among the respondents. However, a high level of interest in handling the core issues was expressed. The respondents differed according to gender and age, but there were no significant differences according to mode of entry. The study recommended infusion of sustainability concepts in teacher education curricula and promotion of sustainable development issues through students' activities within and outside university campuses to address knowledge gap and sustain interests in sustainability education among beginning teachers.