„Rethinking the purpose of education and the organization of learning has never been more urgent” (UNESCO 2015, p.10).

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is fundamental to achieving all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015 and UNESCO 2021) and the goals of the European Green Deal (CoE, 2022). In Germany, demands to include ESD in initial teacher education come ‘top-down’, through international, national and federal resolutions and ‘bottom-up’ from student teachers and serving teachers (Grund et al., 2019). As a result, ESD is being increasingly included in German universities at policy level (Holst et. al., 2022). However, beyond embedding ESD in university policies and curricula, much more work is needed to realize ESD in teaching and research, and in management, campus and transfer activities (ibid.). Indeed, systemic changes are needed to embed ESD as an integral part of institutional and pedagogical practices (Evans et al., 2017).

This paper describes the scientific process monitoring of the institutional sustainability process of the Centre of Teacher Education and Education Research (ZLSB) at TU Dresden University of Technology. A whole institution approach is a systemic approach to sustainability that engages diverse actors and their situated priorities, needs and resources and embed sustainable practices across an institution's operations, policies, and cultures (SMK, 2019). Whole institution processes are a vital part of implementing ESD in initial teacher education and across education systems because understandings and practices cannot solely be dictated from outside, but must also be re-contextualised by people and communities within and between particular contexts of practice (Kohl et al., 2022). Further, in order to foster socio-ecological transformation education must itself be transformed (UNESCO, 2021), including recognising and addressing the close correlation between formal education and socio-ecological injustices (Pirbahi-Illich et al., 2023; Orr, 2004). Sterling (2001) critiques sustainability education within a ‘mechanistic’ paradigm of education and society, where the focus is technical solutions to complicated problems. He argues for an ‘ecological’ approach, which includes ‘transformative learning’, or learning as sustainability, to enable emergent ways of seeing, thinking and acting in the world.  This necessitates moving beyond established roles and discipline boundaries to engage questions of social and ecological justice and the imagination of alternative futures in relation to particular positionalities and contexts of practice (CRWR, 2023).

The study investigated sustainability and ESD from the perspectives of different individuals and teams at the ZLSB. In particular, we focused on identifying the priorities, resources and challenges towards implementing sustainability and ESD for individuals,  teams and the a whole institution. The study aims to foster understanding and action within and between teams at the ZLSB, and further research-based understandings of whole institution approaches to sustainability and ESD. 

This process is important, because the ZLSB is a potential ‘lever’ in the university, and within federal, national and European teacher education systems. With around 4,300 student teachers, TU Dresden is the largest provider of initial teacher education in Saxony, Germany. The ZLSB coordinates teacher education across the University, including managing timetables, practicum placements, examinations and side-entry into teaching programs; offering in-service training for teachers and teacher educators; conducting research; and coordinating projects around cross-cutting themes, such as internationalization, inclusion, digitality and ESD. As a result, the ZLSB has strong links with students and staff across the University, with the education Ministry, and with schools and other teacher education providers in Saxony, and internationally. The broad and diverse remit of the ZLSB, enables comparisons to be drawn between this particular case and that of other teacher education institutions in Germany and Europe.

As the main survey instrument, focus groups (Morgan, 1997) were used with different departmental groups of the ZLSB, such as the Student Office, the digitisation department, and seconded teachers. Focus groups are used for the evaluation and further development of products and services, for the evaluation of certain measures and their improvement, for the analysis of diversity of opinion and for acceptance analyses. The focus group method originated in market research in the 1920s. Later, the focus group interview (Merton, 1987) and group discussions were developed in cultural studies, which marked a development from market research to empirical social research. Today, there are various types of focus groups, which can be located somewhere between a conversation, workshop and group interview and can be defined as a form of survey in which communication processes are initiated by others in a group, which at least in some phases approximate a normal conversation in terms of their process and structure (cf. Loos et. al., 2012). What all forms have in common is that researchers see themselves "as agents of change in the field they are researching" (Schäffer, 2012: 349) and, in their role, provide moderating support, observe with restraint and steer focused and targeted interventions. „Any group discussion may be called a focus group as long as the researcher is actively encouraging of, and attentive to, the group interaction” (Barbour, 2007: 2). Focus groups can therefore be categorized as responsive approaches to evaluation research, in which the "impact" (Barbour, 2007: 93) of participation in a focus group and the "debriefing" (ibid.: 95f) are part of the research process. These characteristics of focus groups distinguish the highly structured survey method, in which a developed guideline with questions is dealt with, from the equally established method of group discussion. Focus groups remain at the first level of meaning (cf. Freeman, 2013) and are well suited for educational research, resp. Teacher education research (Flores et. al., 1995) and to the analysis of organizational processes or structural analyses. In our case study, we also used vignettes as case descriptions that thematize dilemmatically exaggerated situations, such as current headlines from education policy as discussion starters.

In this paper, we present the whole institution sustainability process of the ZLSB in general and the results of the focus groups in detail with a critical reflection of our roles and the normative requirements of such an organizational development process. We highlight the importance of engaging with diverse actors, and their situated perspectives and priorities in relation to sustainability, as part of meaningful processes of implementation and change. This qualitative study of situated perspectives and practices of sustainability and ESD at the ZLSB, illuminates convergences and particularities between different actors and contexts of practice, and the need to accompany 'top-down' sustainability strategies with opportunities for local level reflection, dialogue and action planning. Further, the focus groups reported on in this presentation provided a framework for reflection and dialogue around sustainability and ESD within departments of the ZLSB at Dresden University. Analysis of focus group data allowed for the identification of particular and cross-cutting priorities, needs and resources and supports individual, departmental and institutional action-planning towards the institutional implementation of sustainability and ESD. In addition, focus group data and data gathered through other research activities allow for the documentation and analysis of the process as a whole. Ultimately, the research will generate a case study of the whole institution process at the ZLSB. This will be shared within TU Dresden, and across teacher education institutions in Germany and Europe through a series of publications, including a practitioner brochure on integrating ESD in initial teacher education to be published in 2024, conference papers and academic publications.

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