Context & Objective 

Internationally, education systems are implementing sustainability education (SE) into second-level schools and as is often the case, initial teacher education (ITE) is seen as one mechanism to help these efforts. In this presentation, I will reflect on my ongoing journey as a developing academic, defined as a teacher educator and researcher, navigating challenges in increasing SE content in ITE with a particular focus on the social dimension of sustainability. I will also reflect on further challenges I encountered that went beyond SE content implementation, but had implications on the decisions and actions I took. Developing academics enter programmes and institutions with many different motivations and assumptions. It is important to understand more about what is experienced by developing academics and how they manage challenges in institutions and fields like sustainability education that reach across disciplines.  

Previous attempts at SE inclusion in ITE have highlighted that the social dimension of sustainability requires further investigation (Borg et al., 2014). Research has highlighted reasons behind the social dimension of sustainability being overlooked, namely the challenge of quantifying (Borg et al., 2014; Goosen & Cilliers, 2020), lack of agreed upon definition (Elander & Gustavsson, 2019; Wolff & Ehrström, 2020) and hyperfocus on the environmental dimension (Borg et al., 2014). This adds to the challenges teacher educators already encounter with SE like policy mandates (Evans et al., 2017), personal interests, overloaded ITE curricula (Christie et al., 2015) and lack of support for teaching SE (Wolff et al., 2017). In becoming a developing academic these are all obstacles I faced as well. 

While I was working to bring more SE content, in particular the social dimension into ITE, I encountered further challenges that impacted actions I took. I will reflect on the different power dynamics that I had to manage ranging from the institution, to my own more informal power. There were also feelings of responsibility that were present in the actions I took. I will attempt to weave through these challenges and how they influenced the actions I took by examining the following research questions: 

Research Questions:  

1. What personal and structural resistance were encountered when incorporating sustainability education in ITE? 

2. What role do personal and professional responsibilities play in the actions taken by a developing academic in SE?  

Theoretical Background 

My approach and thinking were influenced by depth education. Depth education is a mode of engagement that invites digging deeper and sitting with difficult knowledge. It offers space to unpack challenges and focus on how your personal motivations might be influencing decisions and actions (de Oliveira Andreotti, 2021; Machado de Oliveira, 2021). With the many levels of complexity I encountered including SE and the social dimension itself, power dynamics and personal responsibility, depth education provided a way to guide my reflections so I was able to examine what happened, but also go deeper into how I felt and how that may have implicated my chosen responses or actions. At every stage and when every decision needed to be made, depth education offered a way to slow down. It also helped when there was no perfect answer and I had to keep reflecting on alternative ways to incorporate SE content while trying to manage power dynamics and my own feelings of responsibility and motivations. 

Self-study methodology was chosen to guide this research by looking in-depth at the journey of the first three years of my PhD, in particular, the moments where I was working to implement SE content and the other challenges that were occurring at the same time. I explore these as ways to derive what happened and what prompted me to make the decisions that I did. Self-study was chosen because it focuses on specific professional settings (Haberlin, 2018; LaBoskey, 2004; Loughran, 2007) and is a useful way to reflect and explore one’s own practice (Dinkelman, 2003). As a developing academic, this is especially useful because I am able to focus and reflect on both the institution and structures that I was working within and my own practice, both in what I did regarding SE content, but as well as responsibility and motivations that I brought to these new spaces. In this presentation I will be touching on the reflexive and depth education components of this study. However, this is part of a larger study that will involve interviews with colleagues and students as well as the input of a critical friend that were part of my journey. Self-study is about more than just one’s own personal journey and practice, and should always include interaction with others that were part of your journey (LaBoskey, 2004; Loughran, 2005). In my case, I did not experience this journey myself and will include others who were part of it. This is to ensure that everything I am recounting and reflecting on is more trustworthy and on message. It also allows any biases, prejudices or misunderstandings that may be present to be challenged.

As a developing academic, there is a lot to consider when beginning a journey of entering a field like sustainability education. This study highlighted that there were many levels of challenges I encountered that I did not expect and that reflexivity and depth education assisted in navigating those. The moments I will reflect on in this presentation will explore some of those challenges and show the decisions I made on what actions to take for incorporating SE content. I experienced resistance to my ideas and content in modules, and had to make decisions to adapt. There were many moments of no resistance, but this also required a lot of adaptation and flexibility especially when it came to my own motivations and assumptions. Self-study methodology allowed me to navigate these complexities along with those that came with SE itself, the structure of ITE and further feelings of personal responsibility. Depth education proved to be important in this study because it brought shape to this and invites deeper reflection and unpacking that goes beyond just being my own critical reflections. I was able to get uncomfortable with the challenges and decisions I made when attempting to incorporate SE content, encountering structural barriers and my own personal motivations and responsibilities.

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