Implementation of Education for Sustainable Development in Secondary Schools

Author(s):

Magdalena Buddeberg(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 08 C, Assessing Religious Education and the Implementation of Sustainable Development Education

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-20

09:00-10:30

Room:

FCT - Seminario 2

Chair:

Mary-Anne Holfve-Sabel

Contribution

Since the passage of the Agenda 21 within the context of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, there exists an educational mandate for sustainable development (UNCED, 1992). The goal of this mandate is to enable adolescent to shape their lives and social processes in an active way by considering current needs of present generations without living at the expense of future generations (WCED, 1987). On that account it is deemed necessary to bring together social, economic and environmental factors (e.g. Summers, Corney & Childs, 2003). The concept of education for sustainable development (ESD) within the educational domain is taken as a holistic conception and should be taught at schools in an interdisciplinary way because of its complexity (Rost, 2002).

Even in Germany this educational mandate was taken up from the educational administration and directed as an innovation to schools. Among others they realized two model projects throughout Germany which focused the implementation and the transfer of ESD in the framework of schooling (cf. Rode & Michelsen, 2008). In addition a competence orientated educational concept was developed epistemologically (Bormann & de Haan, 2008). As the educational system in Germany is organized in a federalist way, the particular states have to support ESD as well to accomplish the mandate. To do so in North Rhine-Westphalia for example – the federal state with the highest school enrolment (almost 25 percent of all students in Germany live here) – teachers are required to implement ESD by including ESD in modern curricula of some subjects. Furthermore the educational administration foster the implementation of this innovation by integrating ESD-themes as one oft the top educational goals and marking out engaged schools as ‘schools of the future’.

After all this efforts the questions arise, how far is the educational mandate of sustainable development implemented in schools until now and in which way it is possible for teacher to implement ESD without special support. Previous research aim at implementation in the context of model projects and programmes mainly (cf. Seybold & Rieß, 2006). To answer these research questions, I focus exemplarily on secondary schools out of model projects in North Rhine-Westphalia. But as this educational mandate addresses all nations of the UN and there are many comparable measures in other federal states and countries the results will provide hints not only for this specific federal state.

Method

For the study about implementation of ESD in secondary schools a mixed method design was chosen. To receive information of the current situation of implementation of ESD, quantitative data from the Panel Study at the Research School ‘Education and Capabilities’ in North Rhine-Westphalia (PARS) (Bos et al., 2012) were used. In an online-questionnaire teachers (n = 489) from 50 secondary schools were asked to answer questions about their knowledge and implementation of ESD at their school (this questionnaire is from Rieß and Mischo, 2008). Latent-Class-Analysis (Larzasfeld & Henry, 1968) were employed to detect types of teachers with different skills and awareness of and willingness to implement ESD. Additional, expert-interviews with four principals and four teachers of four grammar schools were conducted. These expert-interviews were analysed by a method of Meuser and Nagel (2009) to get a deeper understanding of the opportunities to implement ESD in schools.

Expected Outcomes

The outcomes show a high potential among teachers which is not used until now: About 75 percent of the surveyed teachers do not know much about the educational mandate for sustainable development and are not aware of the importance of ESD. But two-thirds of these teachers signal the willingness to implement ESD in schools. So the hindrance can rather be seen in a deficit of information than in the absent willingness of teachers. The qualitative data confirm this result as well. They show that there is a need of supporting teachers more aimed by educational administrations.

References

Bos, W., Stubbe, T. C., Buddeberg, M., Dohe, C., Kasper, D., Müller, S. & Walzebug, A. (2012). Framework fort he Panel Study at the Research School ‚Education and Capabilities’ in North Rhine-Westphalia (PARS). Manuscript in Preparation. Bormann, I. & de Haan, G. (Ed.) (2008). Kompetenzen der Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Larzasfeld, P. & Henry, N. (1968). Latent structure analysis. Ney York: Houghton-Mifflin. Meuser, M. & Nagel, U. (2009). Experteninterview und der Wandel der Wissensproduktion. In A. Bogner, B. Littig & W. Menz (Ed.), Das Experteninterview. Theorien, Methoden, Anwendungsfelder (S. 35–61). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Rieß, W. & Mischo, C. (2008). Evaluationsbericht „Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung (BNE) an weiterführenden Schulen in Baden-Württemberg“. Maßnahme Lfd. 15 im Aktionsplan Baden-Württemberg. Retrieved from http://www2.um.baden-wuerttemberg.de/servlet/is/43211/ Rode, H. & Michelsen, M. (2008). Levels of indicator for education for sustainable development. Environmental Education Research, 14 (1), 19–33. Rost, J. (2002). Umweltbildung – Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung: Was macht den Unterschied? Zeitschrift für internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik, 25 (1), 7–12. Summers, M., Corney, G. & Childs, A. (2003). Teaching sustainable development in primary schools: An empirical study of issues for teachers. Environmental Education Research, 9 (3), 327–346. UNCED (1992). Agenda 21: Programme of action for sustainable development. Rio Declaration on Environment an Development. New York: UNCED. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987). Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author Information

Magdalena Buddeberg (presenting / submitting)

TU Dortmund University

Dortmund

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