Education for Sustainability: Initial teacher education and the primary curriculum

Abstract

Pre-service teacher education has often been advocated as a solution to what is described as the insufficient representation of Education for Sustainability (EfS) in schools. This study reports on the experiences of six early career primary teachers following their graduation from a teacher education course that made substantial effort to explore the EfS requirements of the main employing authority. The reports of the six suggest that despite their enthusiasm to include EfS in their work they felt constrained in various ways in their efforts to do so. The report of their experiences suggests that pre-service teacher education should include careful and detailed attention to the programming skills that would assist teachers to address EfS as an integrated component of those areas of education already prioritised in the schools.