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Sustainability Education and Teacher Education: Finding a Natural Habitat?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

John Buchanan
John Buchanan*
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: John Buchanan, PO Box 222, Lindfield NSW 2070, Australia. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Sustainability education competes for curricular space, both in schools and in teacher education. Opportunities and barriers for the inclusion of sustainability education in an Australian university primary teacher education program are examined in this article. The study focused on the roles, practices and perceptions of teacher educators in promoting sustainability education. Three focus groups were conducted with members of faculty staff from each of the K–6 Key Learning Areas to gather data, which were analysed according to three frameworks: espoused/aspirational and actual practices of staff members; barriers to and affordances for teaching sustainability education; and the nature of initiatives, in terms of teaching/learning activities, assessment tasks, and resources. Beyond the Social Sciences, and Science and Technology, we found that inclusion of sustainability education is somewhat sporadic. The article proposes some ways forward to promote and abet sustainability education in a tertiary context.

Keywords

sustainability educationenvironmental educationreflective practiceteacher education
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , December 2012 , pp. 108 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2013

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