The role of teacher education in promoting sustainable development

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The role of teacher education in promoting
sustainable development
Heila Lotz-Sisitka Rhodes University South Africa
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Overview

• Wider context of SD and educational change
• Why teacher education?
• UNESCO International Teacher Education Network
  for ESD (similar in some ways to EduLink)
• Guidelines and cases of best practice
• Are we being too polite?
• Changing teacher education practices (practice
  orientation)

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Education in changing times

• Education and the industrial revolution and the
  modernisation process (17th-21st century)
  Education for economic development
• Education and the expansion of democracy and
  human rights (19th- 21st century) Education
  for All
• Education in an era where lifestyles outstrip the
  earths carrying capacity and its ability to
  provide for equitable needs/wants and to store
  waste (late 20th / 21st century) Education for
  Sustainable Development
• All 3 are critical for ACP countries today, but
  in what relationship and what does it mean for
  teachers?

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New concepts for development Equity Sustainabil
ity Resilience Adaptation
What new teaching?
Loss of Ecosystem Services
Climate Change impacts
The challenges are increasingly more complex,
and difficult to reconcile
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Education and development

• the purpose of development is to improve human
  lives through expanding the range of things a
  person could do and be, i.e., a persons
  functionings and capabilities to function
  including being healthy and well nourished, being
  knowledgeable and being able to participate in
  the life of the community
• (Amartya Sen, Human Development Reporting)

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But what does this mean in a new context of risk
and uncertainty?
What to do be? What knowledge? What
capabilities? How to participate?
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The educational (ethical) question of the 21st
century

• Can we (the educated elite) afford to continue
  educating the worlds children for an
  unsustainable future?
• How do we turn this around? What implications for
  teacher education and its contribution to
  sustainable development?
• How do we shift this question from the margins to
  the mainstream?
• A new challenge for education to be creative,
  responsive, relevant, critical needs teachers
  with flexible skills, wide knowledge and deep
  insight into global/local conditions and issues,
  as well as the capacity to offer good basic
  education

• 22 too much already ...
• World average 2.2 gha
• Available resource 1,8 gha
• A global overshot of 22

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The sustainable development challenge is
different for different places and contexts
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Where are we
today? Global ecological footprint and Human
Development Index
Ecological Footprint (gha per person)
HDI
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Why teachers and why teacher education? What can
they do .
60 million teachers x 30 children (each) 1.8
billion (children p.a) X 25 years (of teaching)
at least 45 billion teaching interactions
a powerful force for change?

• The world has more than 60 million teachers who
  influence all of the worlds young people
  (including your children) and shape their
  knowledge, capabilities and aspirations
  investing in teachers is investing in the youth,
  and in societys future.
• Global Monitoring of EFA - Educational Quality
  Report (UNESCO, 2005) highlighted the central
  role of the teacher in achieving educational
  quality
• The value of a good teacher ...
• The world needs 18 million teachers to reach the
  Universal Primary Education Goals in the next
  decade (up to 30 million more teachers are needed
  in the next decade overall)

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Links to the MDGs

• it is doubtful that any developing country
  could make significant progress toward achieving
  the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for
  education universal enrolment in primary
  education an elimination of gender disparities in
  primary and secondary education without a
  strong tertiary education system including a
  strong teacher education system Improved
  tertiary education is necessary for sustainable
  progress in basic education and thus for
  sustainable development? (World Bank, 2002, pp.
  xx xxii).
• Education and the reduction of poverty
• Education and improved health and well being
• Education and ecological sustainability

Knowledge, values and action competence
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The UN Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development (2005-2014)

• The re-orientation of education towards
  sustainability quality education for all
• Many initiatives such as Global Higher
  Education for Sustainable Development
  Partnerships Mainstreaming Environment
  Sustainability into African Universities
  Partnership (MESA) UNU Regional Centres of
  Expertise in ESD, Earth Charter Education,
  EduLink etc. etc. etc.
• UNESCO International Teacher Education Network
  focussing specifically on Education for
  Sustainable Development in Teacher Education
  participation of a few ACP countries, BUT no
  consolidated programme in ACP countries is this
  a seriously neglected area?

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The UNESCO ESD International Teacher Education
Network

• Started with a Champion (UNESCO Chair), 18
  networked TE institutions grown to 70 in a 10
  year period with self-started sub-regional
  networks
• No significant funding (1 meeting bi-annual)
• Mix of local innovation and global networking
• Assumption success stemming from personal
  initiative and allocation of resources internal
  to an institution would be believable and
  replicable
• Ongoing activities at home institutions
• Published outcomes

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UNESCO Guidelines for re-orienting teacher
education to address sustainability

• Curriculum change
• Faculty professional development
• Partnership building
• Network development
• Institution building
• Recommendations

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UNESCO Good Practice exemplars

• Content and orientation of new teaching practices
  (how to )
• Socio-cultural contexts of practice
• Constraints and enablements (success factors)
• Key features of all case studies
• Contextualisation
• Participation
• Multi-disciplinarity
• Integration
• Reflexivity
• Is this what re-orientation of teacher education
  is about?

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Good progress, but are we being too polite?

• Need to engage more explicitly with axes of
  tension in the change process (relationship
  between constraints and enablements to get a
  better understanding)
• Need to ask why questions e.g. why do examination
  systems exist the way that they do, and are they
  furthering the agenda for educational
  transformation in the 21st century or are they
  maintaining the status quo? Can they be changed
  and if so, how?
• How are we thinking about our best practice?
  Can it be better / really transformative at an
  institutional level?
• What concepts of educational quality are we
  working with?

Axes of tension in re-orienting teacher
education
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Re-orienting teaching practices for ESD in
teacher education institutions PEDAGOGY

• CASE 1 Bringing in through concepts
• e.g. consumer
• studies
• e.g. science
• What do you
• need to know
• about the issue?

CASE 2 Bringing out through practice
investigations What practices have led to the
problem and what can be done?
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Re-orienting teaching practices for ESD in
teacher education institutions CONTENT

• Equity
• Sustainability
• Resilience
• Adaptation
• Local/global

What changes and why?
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Re-orienting teaching practices for ESD in
teacher education institutions TEACHER
EDUCATION CURRICULA

• Case 1 Researching and presenting new models
  for replication .

• Case 2 Participatory reviews of doxic practice
  (why are things practiced this way?) How has it
  come to be like this? what practices can change
  and how?

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Re-orientation re-framing quality to guide
teacher education

• 3 intersecting traditions of quality?

Economic World Bank
Liberal Humanist / Human Rights UNESCO
International donors
Socio-cultural / practice centred?
Learning as successful performance / mastery
Learning as democratic process
Learning as connection in/with communities and
society (situated learning / social learning)
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There is only one earth, and we still have to
learn how to share sustain its bounty for the
benefit of all. Social justice, sustainability,
resilience and adaptation in an era of rapid
globalisation are the questions of our time. Our
60 million teachers need to be involved.
Thank you!