Sustainable development is formed with environmental, economic and societal sustainability which means changing lifestyles, consumption patterns and produce manufacturing process. These three components of sustainable development are integrated into each other. Haubrich, Reinfried and Schleicher (2007) clarify sustainability of each component. Accordingly, sustainable development of environment means controlling both the consumption rates of natural sources and activities harmful for the environment. Sustainable development of economy refers to equal job opportunity for citizens and the goal of increasing life standards. Lastly, sustainable development of society is described as an equal life chance for people.

Beyond having social, economic and environmental aspects, sustainable development is a political concept. Some commentators (e.g., O’Riordan 1985; Jacobs 1995) of sustainable development are of the opinion that sustainable development is a reflection coalescence of some political concepts such as democracy, liberty and social justice. In addition to this idea, sustainable development assures balance between different approaches such as anthropocentric and eco-centric positions. While politics stemming from the anthropocentric approaches focuses on economic growth and ignores environment, the eco-centric approaches focus on small-scale community and limited usage of natural sources. However, the central point of sustainable development is neither economic growth nor the environment. The main motivation for sustainable development is human welfare, therefore both the protection of nature and economic growth are important. Accordingly, the economy and social policies handle environmental policies in all steps of sustainable development.

Hopwood, Mellor and O’Brien (2005) argue that although the common term sustainable development is used by many people, there are variety of meanings, methods and goals related to this concept. These differentiations result from the complexity of issues concerning environment and development (Meadowcroft, 1999). For that reason instead of defining sustainable development, Sauvé (1996) emphasizes the necessity of possible outcomes. For instance, Scott and Gough (2003) mention lifelong learning, which is seen as a one of the basic outcome of sustainable development.

Since young people are educated via the guidance of teachers, teachers should be equipped with the basic skills and understanding in order to overcome the  obstacles toward a sustainable world (Alkis and Ozturk, 2007). However, previous studies indicated that teachers were lack of an adequate understanding of sustainable development since it is complex, and were lack of necessary holistic perspective, which combine environment, economic and social aspects of sustainable development. For instance; Pepper and Wildy (2008) found that the concept of sustainable development is not widely embraced by teachers. With respect to the findings of Borg, Gericke, Hoglund, & Bergman (2012), the environmental aspect of sustainable development was paid attention while social and economic aspects were ignored by in-service teachers. Therefore, this study aims to reveal elementary teachers’ understandings of  and familiarities with sustainable development in Turkey. In order to achieve this aim, this study focuses on the following research questions:

1. How familiar are Turkish elementary teachers with the term ‘sustainable development’?
2. What are Turkish elementary teachers’ understandings of sustainable development?

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