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Readiness of future Primary Education teachers about Education for the Environment and Sustainability (Master thesis)

Νέδου, Πηνελόπη/ Nedou, Pinelopi

Future teachers’ preparation in the area of Education for the Environment and Sustainability (E.E.S.) is very important in order to include it effectively in their teaching. It is considered necessary for the future teachers to have environmental knowledge, attitudes and values, competences and skills and the competence to act for the environment (goals of the E.E.S.). On the other hand, they need to have pedagogical knowledge relevant to E.E.S.. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of future Primary Education teachers for their readiness about E.E.S.. A semi-structured interview was chosen as a data collection instrument, whereas the sample consists of fifty pre-service teachers of the School of Educational Sciences of the Democritus University of Thrace (future primary teachers and future early childhood teachers). The results show that most of the future teachers despite the fact that they have not successfully completed all the goals of the E.E.S. think that they are able to help their students to achieve these goals. Furthermore, the majority of pre-service teachers appreciate that in the future they will face problems in the application of the innovations of the E.E.S. at school. However, all future teachers have motives for becoming involved in it. Most of them consider that they have been prepared for E.E.S. by university’s lessons, but not completely. Finally, all the future teachers with the exception of two people desire to participate in training programs about issues of environment and sustainability in order to improve their knowledge, their competences and their skills.