Embedding Sustainable Development Goals in Education. Teachers’ Perspective about Education for Sustainability in the Basque Autonomous Community
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Research Background and Context
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- The coordinator is responsible for setting the process underway and leading it.
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- The support team is formed of people from the teaching staff and school authorities who help in the day-to-day work of organizing the project.
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- The Environmental Committee is a participatory space for the whole educational community. The people interested are represented and decide on the main lines of the program (planning, plan of action, evaluation, etc.).
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- The county-level coordination meetings are a space for cooperation amongst the educational centers. The coordinators of these centers meet periodically with environmental specialist from the municipality and the adviser from Ingurugela.
2.2. Sample and Research Strategy
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- School A: This is a public school located in an urban area. At this school they have been working with School Agenda 21 since 2004, and it has been certified as a sustainable school since 2009, a certification that has been renewed every 4 years.
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- School B: This is a public school located in a municipality considered to be semi-rural. The link between School Agenda 21 and the municipality is an especially close one as it is the only school in the town. They have been involved in School Agenda 21 together with Ingurugela since 2001 and were certified as a sustainable school in 2010, which was subsequently renewed in 2018.
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- School C: This is a private school located in a semi-rural area. The School Agenda 21 project has been in effect in the school since 2007 and they obtained recognition as a sustainable school for the first time in 2016.
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- School D: This is a private school located in a semi-urban municipality. The School Agenda 21 project has been put into effect in this school since 2007. They obtained recognition as a sustainable school in 2014. The majority of the students in this school are from that same municipality, with the result that they have a direct link with the town in relation to the local A21.
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- School E: This is a private school located in the city center of Vitoria, the capital of Alava. The School Agenda 21 project has been in effect in the school since 2007. They obtained recognition as a sustainable school for the first time in 2009–2010, and this was renewed for the next four years in the 2017–2018 school year.
3. Results
3.1. Context and Career of Teaching Staff
3.2. Perception and Understanding of Environmental Education
Sometimes, the problem we have in education is that actions which are not evaluated and measured academically—i.e., examined—are left aside and have less weight. My concern is with how to give more time, more weight to the topic…in general it is taught in the last hour of class…perhaps it should be mid-morning…during a central timeslot, to give more importance and presence to the topic. I think that this topic should occupy a central place in today’s education.[32]
3.3. Challenges and Opportunities for Continuing to Advance: Keys to Successful Implementation
On the one hand, you feel disinclined when you find you’ve received an email: ‘You must insert topics like M8, SA21 into your annual plan for teaching Basque’… with respect to SA21, yes, I’m very aware of it, I would demand it and obviously I would always do it. And this…it makes you feel disinclined, but there’s no alternative, because if it depended on our own initiative it wouldn’t get done. If they didn’t make us, we’d leave it aside…at least we’ve got something programmed. Perhaps due to worry, due to necessities or due to disinclination, but on the other side there’s one’s own awareness, however small that might be.[35]
To be able to write about rain, they have to feel it on their own skin … Yes to theory, but where is the practice? I believe that that is a problem with education. The theory gets taught, but then they don’t go outside to look at the flowers. Perhaps it’s because of the pressure of the amount of content to be worked on. But I believe that is a mistake. People have to touch, to smell, they have to feel it.[40]
The students are interested in things. But often things are ‘sold’ to them from a perspective of culpability of the type: ‘we do everything badly and that’s why the world is in a bad state’ and so they don’t want to know anything else about the topic. I think we have to part ways with that perspective. For example, in the 3rd year social sciences class many things are given a bad evaluation and I think we have to invert that.[41]
Does this level and form of consumption make us happy? … In this way we start to analyze the repercussions of our addiction to consumption, whether or not all these objects fill that vacuum we might feel… in the psychology class they can be transversal questions. And of course they are linked to the topics of ecology and caring for the planet. But also to the many traps in our way of living, since we are all under the power of advertising. This can be addressed, not only at the existential level, but also at the level of everyday life, by discussing the lies that are found behind consumerism. In that sense we find a link for dealing with these topics.[32]
3.4. What is Understood by Sustainability?
3.5. Motivation and Intentions: Why Work on Environmental Education?
3.6. Knowledge about the Proposal of the SDGs
4. Discussion
4.1. The Attitude of the Teaching Staff
4.2. Connecting with Nature
4.3. Sustainable Development Goals as a Framework for Education for Sustainability
5. Conclusions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. Interviewed teachers’ profile
- Social Science teacher; 35 years of experience as teacher, 22 years in this school.
- Social Science; 26 years of experience as teacher, 2 years in this school.
- Physical Education; 31 years of experience as teacher, 18 years in this school.
- English teacher; 12 years of experience as teacher, 6 months in this school.
- Natural Science teacher; 12 years of experience as teacher, 6 months in this school.
- 6.
- Natural Science teacher; 32 years of experience as teacher, 4 years in this school, 4 years as School Agenda 21 coordinator.
- 7.
- Social Science teacher; 20 years of experience as teacher, 4 years in this school, 3 years as School Agenda 21 coordinator.
- 8.
- Pedagogue; 13 years of experience as teacher, 1 years in this school.
- 9.
- Mathematics teacher; 3 years in private sector, 24 years of experience as teacher, 5 years in this school.
- 10.
- Physical Education teacher; 18 years of experience as teacher, 2 years in this school.
- 11.
- Chemistry teacher; 4 years of experience as teacher, 1 years in this school.
- 12.
- Technology teacher; 6 years private sector, 2 years of experience as teacher.
- 13.
- English teacher; 35 years of experience as teacher, 11 years in this school.
- 14.
- Basque Language teacher; 11 years of experience as teacher, 6 moths in this school.
- 15.
- Natural Science teacher; 12 years of experience as teacher, always in this school; 2 years as School Agenda 21 coordinator.
- 16.
- Basque language teacher; 18 years of experience as teacher, 16 years in this school.
- 17.
- Philosophy teacher; 18 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 18.
- Mathematics teacher; 18 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 19.
- Natural Science teacher; 8 years as university research experience; 16 years of experience as teacher always in this school.
- 20.
- History teacher; 10 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 21.
- Natural Science teacher; 8 years of experience as teacher, 7 years in this school; 2 years as assistance of the School Agenda 21.
- 22.
- Technology teacher; 10 years in private sector; 1 year as teacher in this school.
- 23.
- English teacher; 1 year of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 24.
- Literature teacher; 38 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 25.
- English teacher; 24 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 26.
- Physical Education teacher; 20 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 27.
- Social Science teacher; 11 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 28.
- English teacher; 1 year of experience, always in this school.
- 29.
- Social Science teacher; 40 years of experience as teacher, 10 of those years as school director, always in this school.
- 30.
- Technology teacher; 10 years in private sector, 7 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 31.
- Literature teacher; 16 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 32.
- Philosophy teacher; 9 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 33.
- Art Teacher; 20 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 34.
- Physical Education and Religion teacher; 6 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 35.
- English teacher; 15 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 36.
- Social Science teacher; 22 years of experience as teacher, always in this school.
- 37.
- Natural Science teacher; 24 years of experience as teacher, always in this school and 14 years as School Agenda 21 coordinator.
- 38.
- School director; 32 years of experience as teacher; 13 years as teacher and 19 years as school director.
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Thematic Research Questions (TRP) | Dynamic Research Questions (DRQ) |
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TRQ 1: Context: Do their previous working career and background influence the teaching staff’s motivation and involvement in the School Agenda 21 programs? | DRQ 1: What was your working experience before you started working here? |
DRQ 2: How long have you been working at this school? Tell me something about your job, the subject you teach, the methodologies you use (games, workshops, individual reflective tasks…) and other tasks. | |
TRQ 2: What is the teaching staff’s level of knowledge and how do they perceive environmental education? (To adapt to the context, we opted to use the concept ‘environmental education’ when designing and conducting the interviews, since it was a more familiar concept that has been more frequently used and taught in classrooms to date.) | When we talk about Environmental Education: What comes to mind/what do you identify it with? What types of projects/methodologies? |
What contact/involvement have you had with Environmental Education at this school? | |
(In cases where the topic is dealt with in the classroom): Do you deal with any environmental problems in the classroom (Local or global perspective?) | |
How do you think that these programs (Environmental Education) are viewed by the teaching staff? And by the students/their families. Why? | |
Specifically with respect to students’ families: How do you inform and involve them? How do you see this? | |
TRQ 3: From the teaching staff’s point of view: What are the challenges and opportunities of the SA21? | What things do you think work when dealing with the topic of Education for Sustainability? That is, what type of activities, projects, methodologies. |
What do you think are the main challenges? | |
TRQ 4: What do you know about the concept of sustainability? What attitudes, motivation and behavior do you show/teach? | Are you familiar with the concept of sustainability? What do you understand by, or know about this concept? How would you define it in just three words (what do you associate with the concept)? |
In the specific context of this school, how is this subject dealt with? What do you show? | |
How do you deal with this in your personal life? Do you illustrate what you teach in the school with examples of activities taken from your personal life? | |
What would you say motivates you to hold that attitude? Do you try to transmit that attitude in class? | |
TRQ 5: Do you relate sustainability with the holistic and integral idea posited by the SDGs? What knowledge is there about the SDGs and what does move from the SA21 to the SDGs involve? | Continuing with the topic of sustainability, have you heard anything about the SDGs? |
How do you think this can be included in this new agenda? | |
Would it be positive to move from School Agenda 21 to Agenda 2030 involving the SDGs? Why? |
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Agirreazkuenaga, L. Embedding Sustainable Development Goals in Education. Teachers’ Perspective about Education for Sustainability in the Basque Autonomous Community. Sustainability 2019, 11, 1496. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051496
Agirreazkuenaga L. Embedding Sustainable Development Goals in Education. Teachers’ Perspective about Education for Sustainability in the Basque Autonomous Community. Sustainability. 2019; 11(5):1496. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051496
Chicago/Turabian StyleAgirreazkuenaga, Leire. 2019. "Embedding Sustainable Development Goals in Education. Teachers’ Perspective about Education for Sustainability in the Basque Autonomous Community" Sustainability 11, no. 5: 1496. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11051496