ESD in Elementary School Education

Author(s):

Kirsten Bruhn(presenting / submitting)Matthias Barth Julia Preisigke

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 04 A, ESE in Early Childhood (Part 1)

Paper Session to be continued in 30 SES 05 A

Time:

2015-09-09

09:00-10:30

Room:

X. Előadó [C]

Chair:

Elsa Lee

Contribution

At the end of the UN Decade Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) and with the start of the Global Action Programme (GAP), we see a renewed commitment to further global activities for mainstreaming education for sustainable development in all educational sectors. Within the debate of relevant educational sectors to contribute to a more just and sustainable development, primary education figures prominently: it is the first time that all children learn together, that they participate in an institutional education setting. Basic education processes take place and students begin to develop a systematic understanding and perception of their world and the phenomena that occur. (Spiropoulou 2007, UNESCO 2005).

During the Decade, numerous “best practice” examples were planned and realized and at the same time a significant body of empirical research has been developed (Wals 2009). Now, at the end of the decade, it is time to summarize the outcomes of research so far and to develop strategies for well-structured approaches to implement ESD into all educational sectors. Consequently, over the last couple of years, a number of systematic reviews occurred, taking stock of what is happening in education for sustainable development (e.g. Wright & Pullen 2007, Heimlich 2007, Vaughter et al 2013). While this helped to gain a more systematic overview of research activities in different educational sectors, still little is known about on research on education for sustainable development in elementary school education settings.

Against this backdrop, this contribution is reporting on a systematic literature review that examines current research trends in education for sustainable development that are going on globally in primary education. It covers empirical or conceptual research that has been conducted in the last ten years (2005-2014), and will provide robust data to examine research paradigms, methodologies, research topics, methods, key journals and authors in this emerging area of research.

The objectives of our review are threefold:

1. To provide researchers, school and university teachers, politicians, and all other actors that are involved in education processes, with an overview of the current trends and outcomes in international research on education for sustainable development in elementary school education settings in general.

2. To systematically scan the relevant literature and to organize the research findings into categories that may be helpful for further research, teacher education (including the organization of university/higher education curricula), elementary education curricula, and education practice, e.g. lesson planning.

3. To define research questions for further research on ESD in elementary school education.

Method

The conceptual and theoretical framework of our review follows Fink`s (2009) approach of conducting systematic research literature reviews. We deliberately chose the period from 2005 until 2015 to focus on the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that took place from 2005 to 2014. The study includes all peer reviewed articles that are written in English and available via the major data bases ERIC, SCOPUS and Web of Science. For each data base an individual search string has been defined, taking into account the specific logical rules of each data base. In each case, the concepts of both “education for sustainable development” and “elementary school education” have been combined, also considering various synonyms. Early education, kindergarten, and preparatory classes have been excluded from our search. Furthermore we did not include or exclude „Environmental Education“, although it was often used as a descriptor in ESD articles that were published before the beginning of the UN Decade Education for Sustainable Development in 2005. The same applies for EE (an abbreviation that is predominantly used for early education in our data set). After completing the search in ERIC (n=374), SCOPUS (n=401) and WEB OF SCIENCE (n=39), results have been checked by two independent researchers and doublets have been sorted out before importing to a reference system for further analysis.

Expected Outcomes

The literate review concentrates on two different levels: First a quantitative overview of research trends distinguishes topics, methods of data collection and analysis as well as background information on authors, journals and references. This will allow for a comparative analysis of general trends over time and help to get a first understanding of the field by offering quantitative, bibliometric data. Second, a more detailed content analysis offers the opportunity to closer examine research trends and to find patterns of specific approaches. This is supported by a qualitative study of research approaches, paradigms and main content areas. Based on these results, current trends and outcomes in international research on education for sustainable development in elementary school education settings during the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005 to 2014) can be described and compared with those of other educational sectors. This provides us with robust data on education for sustainable development research in elementary school education and helps to define desiderata for further research.

References

Barth, M., Rieckmann, M. (2015, in print): State of the Art in Research on Higher Education for Sustainable Development. In: Barth, M., Michelsen, G., Rieckmann, M., Thomas, I. (Eds.): Handbook on Higher Education for Sustainable Development. London: Routledge. Fink, A. (2009): Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Heimlich, J. E. (2007): Research Trends in the United States. EE to ESD. In: The Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 1 (2): 219–227. Spiropoulou, D., Antonakaki, T., Kontaxaki, S., Bouras, S. (2007): Primary teachers’ literacy and attitudes on education for sustainable development. In: Journal of Science Education and Technology 16 (5): 443–450. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2005): International implementation scheme: United Nations decade of education for sustainable development (2005-2014). Paris: UNESCO Publ. Vaughter, P., Wright, T., McKenzie, M., Lidstone, L. (2013): Greening the Ivory Tower: A Review of Educational Research on Sustainability in Post-Secondary Education. In: Sustainability 5 (5): 2252–2271. Wals, A. E. J. (2009): A Mid-DESD Review. Key Findings and Ways forward. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Wright, T., Pullen, S. (2007): Examining the Literature: A Bibliometric Study of ESD Journal Articles in the Education Resources Information Center Database. In: Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 1 (1): 77–90.

Author Information

Kirsten Bruhn (presenting / submitting)

Leuphana University Lüneburg

Institute for integrated studies

Lüneburg

Matthias Barth

Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany

Julia Preisigke