Teacher Competencies for ESD – as Hungarian Teachers See

Author(s):

Attila Varga(presenting / submitting)Réka Könczey

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 03 B, Teachers' Thinking and Reasoning (on SD and ESD)

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

17:15-18:45

Room:

K6.18

Chair:

Per Sund

Contribution

Education for sustainable development (ESD) needs complex teacher competences. There are more and more international policy documents like Learning for future (UNECE, 2011) and scientific models like the CSCT model (Sleurs, 2008) describing the complexity of teacher competencies needed for effective ESD. United Nations has adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-s) in September 2015 (UN, 2015), among them Quality education. But education is considered as a significant tool to reach the other 16 goals too. This way ESD has become one of the most significant tasks for education globally.

Hungarian teachers’ view on ESD-related issues were studied in 2016 in a series of research. The paper summarizes results considering Hungarian teachers’ view on teacher competences for ESD. After analysing the above mentioned scientific and political documents the following aspects of teacher competencies were chosen as the focus of the study:

interdisciplinarity,
support students’ critical thinking
global understanding
dealing with locally relevant issues, problems
participative learning, social decision-making
support learning by doing
teaching about adaptation possibilities for environmental challenges

To fulfil this list of aspects is an enormous or even impossible challenge for many if not most teachers working in practice. There are several factors explaining this situation but the fact that initial teacher training has not prepared teachers for these complex challenges, and that they have not received enough support to change their simple teaching routines are among the main explaining factors. As a consequence, there is an urgent need to develop complex supporting systems including teaching materials, on-line and off-line training courses, supporting web platforms and possibilities for exchanging experiences personally and on-line. These efforts could only succeed if they are targeted on those aspects of teacher competencies, which are really lacking from teachers’ everyday pedagogical practices.

That’s why the first aim of the paper is to identify those aspects of teacher competencies, which are defined as important or even essential for effective ESD by policy and research papers but are seen by Hungarian teachers as non-important or very difficult to realize or even non-existing in practice. Based on this knowledge more targeted development programs could be launched to improve these lacking competencies of Hungarian teachers in order to improve the quality of ESD in Hungary.

The second aim of the study is to give evidence using the results of data of a quality insurance study on in-service ESD training that at least some of these lacking teacher competencies could be improved even by a short in-service training.

Method

Hungarian teachers’ view on teacher competencies needed for effective ESD was investigated in a series of research, which consisted of three related researches using three different methods of data collection in order to produce as reliable results as possible. The three researches were as follows: A. An on-line questionnaire filled by 1419 Hungarian K-12 educational institutes (schools and kindergartens). This sample is the 15,7% of total number of Hungarian pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutes. The questionnaire were open to fill in for every Hungarian K-12 educational institutes. The collected sample is 15,7% of the total population and its regional distribution represents the regional distribution of the Hungarian K-12 educational institutions. The questionnaire was developed for this study and has consisted of three main parts: overall goals of ESD, teaching practice and teacher competencies, and realization of whole school approach of ESD. B. Questionnaires filled by 91 participants of in-service training for teachers about ESD before and after the training. The questionnaires were administrated before and after a 30-hour in-service training, which prepared teachers to realize whole-school approach in their institutions and to introduce the topic of the EU nature conservation network (Natura 2000) into their pedagogical practice. C. Focus group interviews on teacher competences in 41 eco-schools and 42 green-kindergartens with teachers. The main topics of the interviews were: the successes and obstacles of the realization of whole school-approach in the institutions, the strength and weaknesses of teachers regarding the teacher competencies needed for successful ESD and state of art of the introduction of themes of Natura 2000 network into teaching practice. Although it is visible from the data presented above it has to be highlighted that in the samples of the researches Eco-schools and Green Kindergartens – so institutions with governmentally approved excellent ESD practice were overrepresented. This fact should be taken into consideration during the interpretation of the result. It is logical to assume that competencies reported as mainly realized in the sample could be less realized in the whole population and the effectiveness of the studied in-service training could be less in the whole population than in the sample.

Expected Outcomes

The results of the researches show that participative learning, support of social decision making processes, teaching about adaptation possibilities for environmental challenges are considered as the most important and at the same time the mostly realized dimensions of studied aspects of teacher competencies for ESD by Hungarian teachers. On the other hand, supporting students’ critical thinking, dealing with locally relevant issues, problems and support learning by doing are considered as less important and so mainly lacking from the Hungarian ESD practice. According to the results, Hungarian teachers are good at teaching about environmental issues and possibilities to deal with them on general level, but need special support to prepare their students to local challenges, to think critically about these challenges and to participate in concrete action for solving local environmental problems. Initial teacher trainings in Hungary were traditionally knowledge-focused, providing general teaching competencies and neglecting local differences and needs of schools to great extent. Therefore, it is not surprising that teachers are uncertain related to those competency aspects, which requires different approaches, more flexible and locally-featured ways of teaching. That's why continous professional development and the ongoing renewal of initial trainings are needed for effective ESD in Hungary. The studied in-service training improved the competencies of teachers on local issues by introducing the basic features of the European nature conservation network - Nature 2000, providing learning materials about it, and prepare them to use these materials in their own local settings, indicating that teacher competencies could be improved even by a short in-service training.

References

Sleurs, W. (2008). Competencies for ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) teachers. Brussels: (Curriculum, Sustainable development, Competences, Teacher training (CSCT) Comenius 2.1 project. UN. (2015). Sutainable Development Goals. http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ UNECE. (2011). Learning for the future. Utrecht, Netherlands. doi:https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/esd/ESD_Publications/Competences_Publication.pdf

Author Information

Attila Varga (presenting / submitting)

Eszterházy Károly University

Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development

Göd

Réka Könczey

Eszterházy Károly University, Hungary

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