Why Do School Teachers Engage with Sustainable Consumption? Exploring the Role of Personal, Group and Organizational Influence Factors

Author(s):

Daniel Fischer(presenting / submitting)Anna Sundermann(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Poster

Session Information

30 SES 10 B, ESE in Teacher Education and the Role of Influences

Paper/Poster Session

Time:

2016-08-25

15:30-17:00

Room:

NM-G109

Chair:

Per Sund

Contribution

Consumption features prominently on the post-2015 development agenda (e.g. Bizikova et al. 2015) and represents a high-impact area that is prominently addressed in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as well under such notions as Education for Sustainable Consumption (ESC), Education for Sustainable Lifestyles (ESL) or Education for Responsible Living (ERL). While educating for sustainable consumption is generally considered as an indispensable component of sustainable development strategies (e.g. United Nations 2012), it lacks institutional integration in school curricula, subjects and teacher education programs in many industrialized countries that bear responsibility for current unsustainable consumption patterns across Europe. In light of this lack of institutionalization, the motivation of teachers to deliberatively engage with sustainable consumption issues professionally is of crucial importance. Given that teachers function as gate-keepers and intermediary agents and therewith play a prominent role for a broader and more intensive engagement with sustainable consumption issues in the education sector, research on factors explaining teachers’ engagement with sustainable development is surprisingly limited (for some exceptions see Papadimitriou 1995, Nikel 2007 and Kadji-Beltran, Zachariou & Stevenson 2012). This study adds to this under-researched field by offering an empirical exploration of factors that help to explain teachers’ engagement with sustainable consumption issues in their professional practices.

Method

In the professional development literature, teacher engagement is defined as being motivated to take over professional responsibility, build relations to the students and to the school, and to engage in teaching activities with joy (Schmitz & Voreck 2011: 361f.). Drawing on this understanding, this study conceptualized the dependent variable of teacher engagement with sustainable consumption issues as a threefold construct comprising of classroom activities on sustainable consumption issues (student-related engagement), collaboration with partners in school projects related to sustainable consumption (school-related engagement) and efforts to promote ESC as an educational concern among the teacher body (profession-related engagement). The conceptualization and measurement of influence factors was underpinned by a nested understanding of teachers’ professional realm of action informed by school culture theory (Helsper 2008) and its application to sustainable schools (Fischer 2011). In this understanding, the possibility to adopt innovative pedagogical practices is framed by personal or individual, group and organizational factors. The study presented draws on data that was collected from teachers of two vocational and two secondary schools in Germany. At the time of data collection, the schools were participating in a research and development project that supported them to actively implement measures to facilitate the promotion of sustainable consumption in different fields of the organization (Barth et al. 2012). A questionnaire was administered to the entire teaching body of all four schools. The data collected (N=112) was analyzed using regression analysis in order to identify influential predictors of teachers’ engagement with sustainable consumption issues in formal education settings.

Expected Outcomes

Results of regression analysis (using listwise deletion, N=89) show that the overall model of personal, group and organizational factors explains 38 per cent of the variance in teacher engagement with sustainable consumption issues. Three factors can be considered as particularly influential: personal interest in ESD, perceived interest of students in sustainable consumption issues, and inner-institutional communication on sustainable consumption issues. Possible implications of the study and its findings could be to focus professional development more thoroughly on reexamining individual norms, ethics and values, explore ways to connect sustainable consumption issues to the experiences of students and to utilize communication strategies more systematically in whole-school-approaches to ESC and ESD.

References

Barth, M., Fischer, D., Michelsen, G., Nemnich, C., & Rode, H. (2012). Tackling the knowledge-action gap in sustainable consumption: insights from a participatory school programme. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 6(2), 135–146. doi:10.1177/0973408212475266 Bizikova, L., Pintér, L., Huppe, G., & Schandl, H. (2015). Sustainable Consumption and Production: Indicators for the Future SDGs (UNEP Discussion Paper). Paris. Retrieved from UNEP DTIE website: http://www.scpclearinghouse.org/upload/publication_and_tool/file/440.pdf Fischer, D. (2011). Educational Organisations as 'Cultures of Consumption': Cultural Contexts of Consumer Learning in Schools. European Educational Research Journal, 10(4), 595–610. doi:10.2304/eerj.2011.10.4.595 Helsper, W. (2008). Schulkulturen - die Schule als symbolische Sinnordnung: School cultures - the school as a symbolic order of meaning [parallel title]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 53(1), 63–80. Kadji-Beltran, C., Zachariou, A., & Stevenson, R. B. (2012). Leading sustainable schools: exploring the role of primary school principals. Environmental Education Research, 1–21. doi:10.1080/13504622.2012.692770 Nikel, J. (2007). Making sense of education ‘responsibly’: findings from a study of student teachers' understanding(s) of education, sustainable development and Education for Sustainable Development. Environmental Education Research, 13(5), 545–564. doi:10.1080/13504620701430778 Papadimitriou, V. (1995). Professional Development of In‐service Primary Teachers in Environmental Education: an action research approach. Environmental Education Research, 1(1), 85–97. doi:10.1080/1350462950010107 Schmitz, E., & Voreck, P. (2011). Einsatz und Rückzug an Schulen: Engagement und Disengagement bei Lehrern, Schulleitern und Schülern. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. United Nations. (2012). The Future We Want. Final document of the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Retrieved from http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/476/10/PDF/N1147610.pdf

Author Information

Daniel Fischer (presenting / submitting)

Leuphana University of Lüneburg

Institute for Environmental and Sustainability Communication

Lüneburg

Anna Sundermann (presenting)

Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.