Teachers’ beliefs, interests and instructional practices in education for sustainable development

Abstract

Modern societies have been strongly confronted with a range of environmental and social issues. Policy- makers, youth, as well as research urge for escalating our efforts towards a more sustainable society. Sustainable Development (SD) focuses on improving the quality of environment and quality of life via an equitable economic growth. To achieve Sustainable Development, we need to undertake actions in order to cope with Sustainable Development challenges. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has the potential to help students, as the future adults, to develop their action- competence towards Sustainable Development issues. Especially, the instructional practices in ESD teaching, which the teachers apply in class, play herein an important role. Teachers’ beliefs and interest in ESD instructional practices have an influence on teachers’ ESD instructional practices. By investigating teachers’ ESD instructional practices as well as related beliefs and interests, this thesis sheds light on their interrelatedness. Potential inconsistencies among teachers’ ESD instructional practices, beliefs and interests will indicate the need for future research on potential barriers. Study 1 (Chapter 2) provides a conceptual framework about the instructional practices that teachers should apply in their ESD teaching so as their students develop action-competence towards SD issues. Our literature review resulted in the Holism- Pluralism- Action- orientation in ESD framework (HPAESD). Based on the HPAESD framework, we develop and validate two instruments to measure Flemish elementary and secondary school teachers’ holistic, pluralistic and action-oriented instructional practices in ESD and their related beliefs and interests. In study (Chapter 2), we describe the process followed for the development of the Holism-Pluralism in ESD- Questionnaire (HPESD- Q), which consists of the Instructional Beliefs Scales and Instructional Practices Scales. The HPESD-Q measures in a valid and reliable way Flemish teachers’ holistic and pluralistic ESD instructional beliefs and instructional practices. Study 3 (Chapter 4) describes our vignette survey methodology to measure Flemish teachers’ action-oriented instructional practices in ESD and their related interests. We find that teachers are little interested in action-orientation and that only a small group of them apply action-oriented instructional practices in their ESD teaching. In the fourth and last study (Chapter 5), we link all the three components of the HPAESD framework. Using cluster techniques, we distinguish two teachers’ ESD teaching profiles: the lower ESD practice-oriented teachers and the higher ESD practice-oriented teachers. Although both groups may have a wide range of holistic and pluralistic instructional beliefs, the first one is interested in action-orientation while the second one not. The main difference among these groups of teachers is that the higher ESD action- oriented instructional practices apply holistic, pluralistic and action-oriented practices more often. This thesis gives new insights as to how teachers think and act regarding their teaching in relation to SD issues. It reveals that there is a gap between teachers’ (a) instructional beliefs and practices, (b) instructional practices and related interest as well as (c) instructional beliefs and interests. This finding should be interpreted as a call for further investigation on factors that influence the enactment of teachers ESD instructional beliefs and interests into practice or factors. Exploring teachers’ ESD teaching profiles offers opportunities to ESD researchers to examine factors at teacher, school or context level.

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