Education for Sustainable Development a Methodological Framework and Illustrative Analysis of Teacher Educators' Conceptual Understanding of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has emerged as a central pillar of teacher education reform, yet the term continues to be interpreted in widely divergent ways by the very educators responsible for embedding it in classroom practice. This paper has two aims. First, it proposes and documents a structured methodology — a questionnaire-based elicitation procedure, a five-category coding framework and an inter-rater reliability protocol — for empirically mapping teacher educators' conceptual understanding of ESD. Second, it demonstrates this methodology using an illustrative dataset (N = 100, simulated for demonstration purposes) so that the analytic pipeline, from coding through statistical interpretation, can be reviewed and refined before it is applied to the full field data collected for a broader doctoral study. In the illustrative dataset, responses cluster into five categories — environmental-only, economic-only, social-only, holistic/multidimensional and vague/unclear — with a plurality (34%) reflecting an environmental-only interpretation and just under one-third (31%) reflecting a holistic, multidimensional understanding. The paper discusses the implications such a distribution would carry for curriculum design, teacher training and policy, outlines the limitations of the current illustrative demonstration and specifies the steps required to convert this into a fully empirical study.

The paper discusses the implications such a distribution would carry for curriculum design, teacher training and policy

1. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. UNESCO, Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives. Paris, France: UNESCO, 2017. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. S. Sterling, Sustainable Education: Re-visioning Learning and Change. Totnes, U.K.: Green Books for the Schumacher Society, 2001. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. D. Tilbury, Education for Sustainable Development: An Expert Review of Processes and Learning. Paris, France: UNESCO, 2011. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. UNESCO, United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014): International Implementation Scheme. Paris, France: UNESCO, 2005. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. M. Summers, G. Corney and A. Childs, “Student teachers' conceptions of sustainable development: The starting-points of geographers and scientists,” Educ. Res., vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 163-182, 2004. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. F. Kagawa, “Dissonance in students' perceptions of sustainable development and sustainability: Implications for curriculum change,” Int. J. Sustainability High. Educ., vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 317-338, 2007. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. D. Fischer, J. King, M. Rieckmann, M. Barth, A. Büssing, I. Hemmer and D. Lindau-Bank, “Teacher education for sustainable development: A review of an emerging research field,” J. Teach. Educ., vol. 73, no. 5, pp. 509-524, 2022. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

9. J. Lohmann and A. Goller, “Physical education teacher educators' subjective theories about sustainability and education for sustainable development,” Int. J. Sustainability High. Educ., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 877-894, 2023. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

10. A.-K. Dittrich, “An international reconstruction of teachers' and teacher educators' perspectives on the challenges of education for sustainable development in teacher education,” 2024. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

• Assessment of the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Repositioning TVET for Economic Development in Nigeria
• Teachers’ Use of Assure Model Instructional Design on Learners’ Problem Solving Efficacy in Secondary Schools in Bungoma County, Kenya
• “E-Booksan Ang Kaalaman”: Development, Validation, and Utilization of Electronic Book in Academic Performance of Grade 9 Students in Social Studies
• Analyzing EFL University Students’ Academic Speaking Skills Through Self-Recorded Video Presentation
• Major Findings of The Study on Total Quality Management in Teachers’ Education Institutions (TEIs) In Assam – An Evaluative Study