Teachers’ Ideas and Educational Experiences Regarding Urban Environmental Sustainability in Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract

Teachers’ actions in sustainable development are guided by a way of conceiving the environment. This study sought to account for the ideas and experiences of teachers in education for sustainable development in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Based on a qualitative study with an interpretive approach through an open questionnaire, the aim was to investigate educational proposals developed in institutions on urban environmental sustainability that allow the articulation of SDGs 4 and 11. The results intersect with the proposal of sustainability typologies from the epistemological, axiological, and ontological components. The findings showed that environmental training involves both the understanding of relationships and problems and the proposal of alternatives that allow us to offer new horizons as a possibility to build and promote other ways of being and developing, individually and collectively, in the places we inhabit and that we contribute to the world. This requires rethinking education, strengthening pedagogical proposals, and developing other alternatives to educate ourselves socio-environmentally, to train responsible citizens, and to achieve sustainable societies. Understanding the perceptions and practices of teachers in regard to sustainability can contribute to defining priority lines of research, proposing educational guidelines for teacher training, and guiding the development of public policies for curricular greening from a critical perspective. This makes it possible to promote educational actions to consolidate citizen training.

1. Introduction

In a period of history that requires the cooperation and participation of all to face the threats and risks of modernity in relation to sustainable cities, educational systems have begun to recognize their commitment to the present and the future of the planet, calling on citizens, institutions, and governments to promote profound changes in the way of conceiving the environmental crisis, education, and sustainability. A great opportunity to promote the development and participation of social actors in decision-making that concerns their well-being is addressed through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Within this framework of action, this work contributes to SDGs 4 and 11 to respond to the demands of education for life within the framework of sustainable cities. In this way, this study focused on identifying the concept of sustainability that guides teachers’ practices in a megacity such as Bogotá, Colombia, to respond to the challenges of the 2030 Agenda.

The commitment of SDG 4, which is focused on training strategies articulated to professional development, demands the strengthening of the dialogue mechanism and participation of teachers, in addition to communicating social and educational aspects for defining policies and improvement plans. Sustainable development goal 11 seeks to establish innovative strategies in cities that allow citizens to live in harmony with nature without affecting future generations. In this sense, integrating these two objectives makes it possible for the school to guide training actions to identify urban ecosystems and contribute to their preservation from the communities to influence their social, cultural, and economic dynamics.

Bogotá, within the framework of Latin American cities, has significant challenges concerning sustainability related to air quality, pollutant load from water sources, and the preservation of wetlands and moors, among others. These require substantial changes in educational systems that allow people to face a world under constant transformation in uncertain scenarios and meet the demand for citizens who better understand the present dynamics to project themselves and prepare to face challenges. In the case of Latin American countries, environmental problems have a significant impact because a high percentage of the population is not aware of the great responsibility we have for the life of the planet. Although it can be considered that the affectation is low, recent studies [1] show that it is necessary not only to build more effective public policies but also to train the population from different educational levels so that they make decisions and promote actions that favor economic development without major effects on the environment. In addition, the enormous responsibility of preserving the Amazon rainforest, as the lungs of the world, must be linked to global actions for climate change and the conservation of life on the planet.

The good news is that there are programs carried out in schools and led by teachers that can not only help cushion the blows that these challenges bring but also prepare the city to develop to its full potential. In addition, in some cases, they can be performed with limited human and financial resources. To transform us for the better, the city needs its education and training systems to generate a critical mass of young leaders and to change agents and active individuals at any age, regardless of their socioeconomic background. It is important to achieve, in a short period of time, the transformation of many ordinary people, sometimes from the standards of the last century, into extraordinary people.

This requires reviewing epistemological, evaluative, and reflective perspectives in relation to the ideology of sustainability, promoted from an economic development model focused on consumption to assume alternatives to development that allow for the consolidation of the options for communities to build the future they want based on environmental justice and the recognition of the potential of its members from the perspective of sustainability [2]. Considerations on sustainability from the teachers’ perspective are addressed in this text from two perspectives: The first corresponds to the study of the types of sustainability of teachers in Bogotá. The second perspective includes proposals for environmental sustainability that emerge from teachers’ recognition of local and global environmental realities.

In this sense, the research problem that guided the present study is summarized in the following question: What ideas do science teachers build about environmental sustainability, and what kind of sustainable educational experiences do they develop in their educational contexts?

The importance of knowing the ideas and experiences of teachers regarding environmental sustainability advances from three aspects:

(a)

Define priority lines of research, contributing to the transformation of sustainability representations and promoting a critical approach that contributes to the generation of environmental thought and culture;

(b)

Advance in the recognition of a discussion scenario that favors the formulation of teacher training proposals;

(c)

Guide the development of public policies for curricular greening in accordance with the environmental realities of the different educational contexts, making Colombia a multiethnic and multicultural country.

2. Typologies of Environmental Sustainability

The ideas that science teachers build on environmental sustainability allow them to relate the framework of interpretation of reality that they elaborate on. This allows connecting experiences and practices they carry out to environmental training processes.

Ideas and representations about sustainability constitute a specific corpus with which people develop, organize their lives, make decisions, and create an environmental identity [3]. In fact, when articulated with social practices, representations allow the construction of new representational systems of nature, which constitute one more element to recognize the type of connection with the environment. For this study, it was important to consider some relevant aspects of the typologies of environmental sustainability based on current reflections on the environmental crisis and the ideas of teachers that circulate in specific educational contexts [4,5,6,7,8].

The social construction of environmental sustainability recognizes the environmental field as a scenario where a series of discourses and practices emerge that legitimize a vision of the world in which social groups interact with each other and their environment. From this perspective, the environmental field constitutes a space for discussion characterized by official, unofficial, alternative, and emerging paradigms formed by individuals, agents, and institutions that reveal certain power relations. The discourses that are built on environmental sustainability define and value specific forms of capital (natural, human, social, manufactured, financial), even proposing, in some cases (weak sustainability), the substitution of natural capital [9].

The social construction of environmental sustainability had its turning point in the second half of the 20th century, with the rise of movements that denounced the environmental crisis, particularly the finiteness of resources, the lack of awareness regarding the increase in social inequities and culture, along with the inaction of governments in the face of an uncertain future. In the critical analysis of environmental sustainability, various ideas, beliefs, social representations, and worldviews arise, from which epistemological, axiological, and ontological perspectives are recognized, which allow the construction of models on the same environmental reality and perhaps contribute to fostering the vision of a possible future [10].

Some recent research [11,12] identified specific approaches to sustainability based on the evaluation of multidimensional indicators that examine economic, social, and biophysical aspects, prioritizing those that guarantee people’s access to basic health and welfare services. In general, however, environmental sustainability may have a common denominator in all the definitions that constitute the spectrum of interpretation of the environmental field: equity over time. These assumptions demonstrate the current commitment to improving the living conditions of all the beings that inhabit the planet, contributing to a transition in the ways of feeling, thinking, and acting concerning our relationship with others. Understanding the perceptions and practices of teachers on sustainability can contribute to defining priority lines of research, proposing educational guidelines for teacher training, as well as guiding the development of public policies for curricular environmentalization from a critical perspective.

The first typologies of sustainability come from analyzing the convenience of replacing natural capital with manufactured capital [13], prevailing in instrumental rationality that conceives the economy as an autonomous dimension separated from the biophysical, social, and cultural subsystems. Weak sustainability comes from an institutionalized rationality paradigm, which separates the subject from the object, turning nature into a scenario external to the observer, which can be manipulated for eco-efficiency and socio-efficiency [14]. For its part, strong sustainability advances a critique of sustainable development as the only alternative to combat socio-environmental inequities and inequalities. From this perspective, it is considered that natural capital cannot be replaced by another type of capital. Therefore, a critique of the development model that defends hyper-consumption and the law of the market must be advanced [15].

The contribution of natural capital and ecosystem services in understanding the complexity of the environmental system allows the positioning of ecosystem services as those characteristics, functions, or ecological processes that contribute to sustainable human well-being [16]. The governance of natural spaces as a strategy that mitigates threats to ecosystems [17] requires the support of communities; thus, the study of the ideas that people build about the value of nature could help define priorities and guide the development of public policies for environmental conservation [18,19,20].

Among the typologies of environmental sustainability that prevail in the social imagery of communities, there are weak, strong, and super-strong sustainability types [21]. The criteria for the different kinds of sustainability are characterized (

Table 1. Typologies of sustainability from the epistemological, axiological, and ontological components.

Sustainability Categories	Epistemological Perspective	Axiological Perspective	Ontological Perspective
Weak Sustainability	The idea of a split between man and nature prevails, which is intended to guarantee resources to future generations, maintaining certain conditions over time.	The causes of unsustainability are associated with the worldview that legitimizes the paradigm of modernity. Only the human being can be considered a moral subject, having reason and the freedom to make decisions.	The subject–object duality prevails, which is why it resorts to giving economic value to nature and assuming scientific–technological measures for its conservation.
	The teacher’s interest is focused on promoting practical knowledge with activities that include pro-environmental actions, programs, and projects focused on individual responsibility, risk mitigation, and the rational use of resources.	An anthropocentric view of reality and territory is imposed, promoting social practices that endorse consumption, the satisfaction of needs, and the accumulation of capital.	Scientific–technological knowledge eclipses other forms of knowledge in such a way that the other beings of nature become goods and services.
	Knowledge that promotes pro-environmental activities that endorse the idea of supply, the use of resources, and care for the environment is prioritized (responsible consumption, zero waste, principle of the three Rs, etc.).	It advocates the teleological and anthropocentric perspectives of economic sustainability (calculation of ecosystem values, resource inventories, etc.).	It proposes scientific–technological solutions to the environmental crisis (bioremediation, Green Chemistry, Water Analysis, etc.).
Strong Sustainability	Considers certain types of interactions between man and nature centered on the anthropocentrism–biocentrism transition.	The environmental crisis is the product of market laws and the loss of value.	The value of nature is not only economic; it also has ecological, social, and cultural values, with which the relationship between being and the world is articulated.
	The professor’s programs and projects involve the development of environmental awareness and decision-making in the face of hyperconsumption and social inequities.	Although an anthropocentric view of reality and territory prevails, there is a certain openness towards biocentrism and environmental citizenship.	Scientific–technological knowledge is privileged over other forms of knowledge.
	It considers the study, conservation, and maintenance of ecosystems to raise awareness and recognize biological, social, and cultural diversity (initiatives for the study and conservation of species, etc.).	Consolidates environmental education processes in the territory (training programs in disease prevention, land use, urban agriculture, etc.).	It formulates productive projects focused on the application of scientific and technological principles from sustainability (biological control, food safety, healthy school, obtaining products from research at school, etc.).
Super-Strong Sustainability	Considers the plurality of views on the man–nature relationship.	The environmental crisis is a social construction; therefore, wills must be united for resolution.	Recognizes the meaning and sense that social groups build about nature.
	The programs and projects are built from local interests, affectivities, dialogues of knowledge, and environmental situations of the territory and culture.	The biocentric perspective contributes to recognizing environmental complexity.	The dialogue of knowledge, epistemological plurality, and interdisciplinarity emerge.
	It proposes strategies that favor interaction, dialogue, consensus, and recognition of natural heritage and cultural diversity (IAP and sustainability, social cartography, analytical mapping, urban acupuncture, etc.).	Promotes citizen training processes towards sustainability (critical environmental education, precautionary principle, nature as a subject of rights, barter and minga, etc.).	It tends towards epistemological pluralism, the recognition of intrinsic values of nature, and human capacities (ethnobotany, sumak kawsay, ancestral rituals, study of ancestral seeds).

Source: Porras, 2017 [22].

), taking the epistemological, axiological, and ontological perspectives as axes of reflection [22]. In this way, weak sustainability is related to an epistemological position in which the idea of separation between man and nature prevails, relating the environment to a deposit of resources that must be guaranteed to future generations, a fact that corresponds to the economist postulates of the Brundtland report [23]. At the axiological level, weak sustainability advocates anthropocentrism, converting the other beings of nature into goods and services that satisfy the needs of humanity. For its part, the ontological perspective refers to the subject–object duality as a characteristic of late modernity, assuming that the vanishing of science and technology will bring about the long-awaited progress of countries.

Strong sustainability is associated with the transition between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, which recognizes the importance of environmental awareness and decision-making in the face of socio-environmental conflicts. The axiological perspective of strong sustainability recognizes the loss of values that affects hyperconsumption, a situation for which it is necessary to promote environmental citizenship committed to solving socio-environmental problems [24,25]. Regarding the ontological perspective, the intrinsic value of nature is highlighted, which transcends the economic gaze, based on the recognition of the ecological, social, and cultural reality from which the relationship between being and the world is articulated.

Super-strong sustainability focuses on the recognition of nature–culture coevolution and epistemological plurality. At the axiological level, an ethical perspective is based on the biocentric view of reality [26], where citizen training processes regarding environmental sustainability are promoted, strengthening global citizenship. The ontological component suggests the deployment of human capacities, the dialogue of knowledge, and interdisciplinarity.

3. Materials and Methods

Considering teachers’ ideas and experiences regarding sustainability as the object of study, it is believed pertinent to adopt in this research a mixed approach, as a paradigm that integrates quantitative and qualitative methods, in order to enrich and improve the understanding of phenomena, project new studies and formulate more complex problems [27]. The investigation of the ideas that science teachers build on environmental sustainability was based on a questionnaire validated by experts, with which the epistemological, axiological, and ontological elements that underlie the representation of sustainability are identified, created by the authors of this research, within the framework of the group "Science Education, Environment and Diversity" of the National Pedagogical University of Colombia. This first phase of the study, exploratory in nature, examines a topic that has rarely been addressed in educational research. It is related to the articulation between sustainability ideas and the sustainable experiences developed by teachers. The descriptive tendency of this study advanced towards a closer vision of the social representation of sustainability, particularly the different typologies on which a framework of interpretation of environmental reality is built by teachers.

The second phase of the investigation constitutes the consolidation of the analysis of the educational praxis of the teachers, emphasizing the type of educational proposals they formulate from the interpretation of what environmental sustainability means. At this stage, the adoption of the analysis of the teachers’ responses provides elements to understand the complexity of the environmental field, in addition to recognizing the didactic approaches that guide the decision-making of teachers. From a sustainable perspective, the results derived from the study make it possible to consolidate proposals for permanent learning by teachers in order to improve their professional development and facilitate adaptability to change, as occurs with the adoption of flexible learning environments focused on education toward sustainability [28]. It is clear that education toward sustainability requires contextualized teacher training programs to face the challenges of the systemic crisis that the planet started experiencing after the pandemic [29]. However, the analysis of epistemological, ontological, and axiological aspects in the teachers’ responses contributed to recognizing Sterling’s three levels of learning [30], with the purpose of giving greater emphasis to aspects of a metadisciplinary order with which to face problems that require epistemological, pedagogical, didactic, and methodological positions. From this point of view, it is important to recognize the role of the Faculties of Education in the transformation of the environmental reality, contributing to the training of professionals who are aware of their role as promoters of culture, promoting the deployment of skills and competencies with which to respond to the challenges of sustainable development [31,32].

The questionnaire consisted of a series of open questions on issues related to environmental sustainability from the educational field and were built by the authors of this article. The way in which the questions were formulated allows them to be applied in any context where education for sustainability in urban contexts is a concern for teachers. The objective of this study focused on recognizing the experiences and practices developed in educational contexts, highlighting the perspectives on which environmental sustainability is built.

The questions asked were as follows:

• What environmental potentialities are part of the locality where the educational institution is located?
• What are the main environmental problems that affect the city?
• How do you articulate the environmental potential of your locality with the proposals you develop?
• How can the environmental educational proposals that you develop contribute to environmental sustainability?
• What aspects of your environmental educational practices allow you to recognize the importance of the environment and sustainability in the city?
• Do you participate in any educational network related to the environmental field?
• What entities, organizations or people can contribute to environmental sustainability? Explain your answer.

This research was carried out with the participation of practicing teachers who carry out their work in educational institutions in the city of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. It involved a total of 22 teachers who worked in the area of Natural Sciences and Environmental Education and participated in environmental projects and proposals. There was a validation process and ethical component of the research: “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study”. The questions were examined and approved following the guidelines of the research ethics committee of the university to which we are linked as research teachers. The participating teachers are between 30 to 50 years of age, with average experience of 15 years. The demonstration method used was for convenience, since it allowed for selecting those accessible cases of teachers who agreed to participate in this study, particularly those science teachers who attended the invitation and belong to educational institutions located in various locations in the city of Bogotá.

In this study, 77% of the participants were women, and 23% were men; all work as teachers in Bogotá and their institutions are located in the urban area. All the participants are developed their work in the area of Natural Sciences and Environmental Education. Public educational institutions make up 64% of the total, while 36% are private sector educational institutions. It should be noted that Bogotá is organized into 20 locations. In this regard, it is important to note that the participants and their educational institutions are located in 10 locations. For ease, each is named based on its location. (

Table 2. Distribution of Bogotá locations.

City-Urban Zone	Distribution	Locations
Bogotá, Colombia	South East	∘ Ciudad Bolívar ∘ Usme ∘ Antonio Nariño
	South West	∘ Bosa ∘ Kennedy
	Central East	∘ Chapinero
	Central	∘ Barrios Unidos
	North East	∘ Usaquén
	North West	∘ Engativá ∘ Suba

Source: Self-made.

).

Bogotá is located in the highlands of the Andes, in the Eastern Cordillera; the urban area is at an altitude of 2600 m above sea level, and the rural area can reach an elevation of more than 4000 m above sea level.

In the urban area, there are 17 wetlands declared protected areas and the Fucha, Tunjuelo, Salitre, and Torca rivers, which run through the city from east to west and flow into the Bogotá River. Water recovery and the conservation of ecosystems constitute environmental policy objectives aimed at improving pollution and environmental degradation that affect biodiversity and the quality of life of the city’s inhabitants.

4. Results

When investigating the ideas about “Environmental Sustainability”, the beliefs, knowledge, and skills of practicing teachers are recognized as a polysemic concept that, in the second half of the 20th century, has become the axis of environmental discourse to mitigate the global environmental crisis. In fact, the emergence of sustainability as a hinge concept between the paradigm of modernity and late modernity [33] endorses the establishment of an awareness of the finiteness of resources, ecological thinking, and the general idea of an increase in inequities and social inequalities related to environmental conflicts. In the last 60 years, we have moved from the debate on mitigation and adaptation to the rise of anti-reflexivity as a justification for some social groups to preserve the status quo and maintain the privileges of empowering the environmental field.

The initial discourse of sustainability associated with eco-development, or the principle of synchronous and diachronic solidarity, based on the guarantee of present resources for future generations, becomes an oxymoron since development is considered unlimited growth, which is openly contrary to the philosophy of sustainability. These ideas are justified by Ehrenfeld [34], who stated that “economic development itself is undermining the very roots of sustainability.” Instead of being an appropriate market mechanism for creating human satisfaction, consumption has become a central cause of unsustainability, both in environmental and human terms. From this perspective, the Brundtland report “Our Common Future”, beyond being the document on which the environmental crisis is positioned as the greatest challenge facing society, also advocates the subject dichotomy between man and nature [35].

4.1. Teachers’ Responses Regarding Sustainability Typologies

The results describe the factors related to specific frameworks of interpretation of the environmental reality of the teachers surveyed (

Table 3. Sustainability typologies.

Typologies	Relevant Aspects	Teachers n = 22	Proportion %
Weak Sustainability	Duality of man and nature	6	27
	Anthropocentrism	5	23
	Pro-environmental activism	5	23
Strong Sustainability	Relationship beings–world	1	5
	Anthropocentrism–biocentrism	2	9
Sustainability Super Strong	Coevolution between nature–culture biocentrism	3	13

Source: Self-made.

), who give greater prevalence to weak sustainability, as this perspective defends a supposed supremacy of man over nature, legitimizing a discourse that prioritizes the satisfaction of human needs with the unlimited availability of resources, a clear example of the split between man and nature.

There is a majority tendency of the teachers surveyed (73%) to consider the postulates of weak sustainability as the epistemological, axiological, and ontological axes on which the representation of environmental reality is built. The epistemological criteria that support the affirmations of the teachers, from weak sustainability, consider the environment as a deposit of resources, prevailing the idea of a split between man and nature, in addition to ratifying a contradictory postulate of the Brundtland report, which consists of guaranteeing resources from the present to future generations, without reflecting on the almost null capacity that citizens have to make decisions of this magnitude, much less the time in which a change of generation is projected. These postulates are ratified with affirmations of practicing teachers, such as “sustainability is related to the rational use of resources in accordance with the dynamics of nature so that they can be regenerated and thus guarantee the enjoyment of future generations” (T4).

Regarding the axiological perspective of weak sustainability evident in the teachers’ responses, elements of the modernity paradigm stand out, particularly anthropocentrism, which only considers the human being as a moral subject, possessing reason and the freedom to make decisions. Some statements reaffirm this perspective of weak sustainability: “Sustainability are processes that allow the use of renewable and non-renewable resources, guaranteeing their presence and quality” (T9). In the same way, anthropocentrism is linked to efficiency, and responsible consumption is indicated in the following response: “sustainability is a process that seeks a balance between the environment and what human beings consume of the environment, that is, it seeks to curb the impact environmental that we cause by reducing, dosing and controlling consumption” (T14). The ontological aspects included in the teachers’ responses give the dichotomy of culture and nature a priority factor within the anthropocentric paradigm. This prevails over the subject–object duality, which is why nature is given economic value, and measures are taken toward scientific–technological conservation. For example, response T6 states that sustainability is “sustainable human and economic development with protection of ecosystems to ensure quality of life in all dimensions”.

In relation to strong sustainability, there was a response rate of 13.5% associated with positions that go beyond economic aspects, focusing on the environmental education of people and on the emergence of a discourse that includes biological diversity and culture. In this sense, Professor 16 affirmed that sustainability is a “process in which societies advance maintaining a balance with nature without exhausting or affecting it to a great extent. In all economic processes, care and respect for biological diversity must be taken into account, in harmony with life and living things”.

The percentage of answers from teachers, framed in super-strong sustainability, reached 13.5%, considering a biocentric view of nature, the opening towards an epistemological pluralism, the recognition of intrinsic values of nature, and the development of human capacities. The response of Professor 22 confirmed this view of super-strong sustainability, considering it “a current of environmental thought, which allows us to reflect on human actions in the face of the imminent crisis of civilization that exists today and that it intends through processes of reflection, thought and action contribute to the maintenance and survival of life in all its complexity”.

4.2. Environmental Projects or Activities Led by Teachers in Educational Institutions

Overall, 50% of teachers stated that their experiences are related to school environmental projects, as they are one of the main strategies used to develop interdisciplinary pedagogical work around environmental realities that are problematized through transversal projects with the educational community, oriented towards sustainability. In addition, 41% of teachers expressed that their approach to environmental issues for sustainability is carried out through the articulation of natural sciences and environmental education, especially environmental projects that they implement with the group of students in charge of the courses—that is to say, with a specific population with which they develop their chairs. In all, 9% of teachers promote environmental work through school research hotbeds, with students participating in different lines of interest in which they carry out their research projects in extracurricular spaces (Figure 1).

In the Colombian context, educational policies seek to incorporate the environmental dimension into the school curriculum, as outlined in the National Environmental Education Policy [36] and in Decree 1743 of 1994 [37], which advances the creation of projects in school environments, through which it seeks to promote the development of research in the school, with various strategies and the implementation of interdisciplinary and transversal pedagogical proposals, with a participatory sense of the educational community [38]. For the teachers who participated in this study, it is relevant to work on environmental projects in the school context, both in cross-curricular projects as well as in the formation of school research hotbeds and the Natural Sciences and Environmental Education chairs, which adopt a theoretical practical character in which environmental projects with a territorial approach are energized.

4.3. Main Environmental Problems That Affect the City

Each teacher identified more than one environmental problem, given the city’s complexity in terms of demographic growth and urban expansion. Among the main environmental problems, the following stood out: 77% mentioned the contamination of water sources, including rivers, streams, and wetlands of the city, followed by the mismanagement of solid waste produced daily by the industrial, commercial, and residential sectors, mentioned by 64%. Air pollution, appearing in 50% of responses, is generated in significant proportion by fixed sources in the industrial sector and mobile sources that comprise the transportation system that circulates in the city, especially using fossil fuels (

Table 4. Environmental problems stated by teachers.

Environmental Problems	Answers	Percentage (%)
Contamination of water sources in the city	17	77
Urban growth	7	32
Poor solid waste management	14	64
Lack of education and environmental awareness	6	27
Atmospheric pollution	11	50
Biodiversity loss	4	18
Improper use and contamination of the soil	5	23
Extractive mining	2	9
Climate change	2	9
Hyperconsumption	2	9

Source: Self-made.

).

Other problems also identified by teachers are urban growth at 32%, followed by the lack of education and environmental awareness at 27%, inappropriate use and soil contamination at 23%, and biodiversity loss at 18%. To a lesser extent, other problems were identified, such as mining extraction, as it is an activity that is carried out mainly in the eastern hills, with 9%; hyper-consumption, which is part of the current reality of the city; and finally, climate change, also with 9%, which only recently began to be considered as another of the environmental problems of the capital.

The contamination of water sources constitutes one of the problems related to the lack of environmental awareness and a lack of planning and management to reduce waste dumping into wetlands and rivers (Figure 2). In addition to the implementation, the entire wastewater treatment plant must be fully operational. This progressively reduces water pollution and allows for better management, contributing to city environmental sustainability. Another problem is the high production of solid waste. In Bogotá, 6500 tons are produced per day, with a limited margin of use in recycling [39], which requires a public policy that involves structural strategies of citizen culture regarding the responsibility each citizen has for the waste they generate.

Air pollution is another problem affecting the health and well-being of the human population and local biodiversity. Thus, the environmental observatory of Bogotá, with different monitoring stations, has managed to determine that 20 tons of particulate material are produced daily [40], which has led to the establishment of alerts from the Mayor’s Office for poor air quality, restricting activities outdoors for seniors and children. On the other hand, the teachers pointed out the lack of awareness and environmental education as another problem; that is to say, work is required from different entities and institutions that promote the development of educational programs and strategies for the general public, given that the recognition of these problems and their educational approach can contribute significantly to the transformation towards sustainable practices.

4.4. Educational Proposals of Teachers Related to Urban Environmental Sustainability

Below are some of the answers provided by the participating teachers to the following question: In what way can the environmental educational proposals that you develop contribute to environmental sustainability? For this, a table was designed in which the information from the responses provided is systematized, and the following criteria were created: the population to which the educational proposal is directed, the purpose of training, the approach to sustainability, and strategies or methodologies and pedagogical techniques used (

Table 5. Educational proposals and urban environmental sustainability.

Answers	Approach to Sustainability	Educational Strategies or Methodologies
The school research seedbed project develops actions to recognize and care for ecosystems and biodiversity in the local context of the eastern hills. It seeks to promote the appropriation of the territory and city.	Care and conservation of biodiversity	Project research, research hotbed
	Territory appropriation	Context recognition
Transversal environmental training is promoted with the educational community for sustainability that links both the local environment and its wetlands, as well as the school garden project. (Engativa).	Conservation of wetland ecosystems	Educational community project research
	Cultivation of life–urban agriculture in the school context	Recognition of contexts
Knowledge and responsible practices with the environment seek to contribute to improving the environment in general, which includes the three wetland ecosystems and people’s quality of life. Emphasis is placed on organizing communities to promote responsible consumption habits.	Responsible practices in favor of environmental sustainability through proposals for both social and natural improvement	Community education
Through the development of projects of the ancestral orchard, the custodian of seeds project, the pollinators, the butterfly garden, the compost bin, and the vermiculture, we experience the change and transformation that contributes to environmental formation and sustainability.	Value training	Sustainable practices from school to the city
Develop STEM projects for water recirculation and the implementation of alternative energies with various prototypes that contribute positively in this context.	Agroecological practices and alternative energies for a sustainable city	STEM projects, alternative energy projects
Consolidation of an environmental culture that integrates theoretical and practical aspects of environmental potential at the level of eastern hills, forest reserve areas, water sources, parks, and problems associated with pollution towards the formation of environmentally responsible citizens.	The construction of an environmental culture and the formation of an environmentally responsible citizenship with the environment of the city	Recognition of the context and its environmental potential
Loss of vegetation cover and mining exploitation in the locality and urban agriculture is proposed as a project based on clean production.	Agroecological practices as a response to environmental problems in the city	School garden

Source: Self-made.

).

5. Discussion

Environmental education in Colombia has been promoted in part by public and participatory policies to advance its institutionalization through the National Environmental Education Policy PNEA in 2002. This policy incorporated conceptual and methodological referents that establish the basis of an Education for Environmental Sustainability.

Sustainability and development are part of the commitments to the international agenda of the United Nations Organization with the declaration of Environmental Education of Belgrade, the Rio de Janeiro Conference of 1992, and the declaration of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014). Some aspects involve the design and implementation of educational proposals in formal and non-formal scenarios at different levels of training, the creation of post-graduate training programs, as well as the need to develop research processes in this matter. Therefore, it is important to recognize the role of teachers and the pedagogical proposals that they advance in the face of the environmental crisis and its challenges [41,42], especially in cities that demand particular attention to face various problems, which make it possible to move towards sustainable societies and the promotion of environmental culture.

The present study highlighted that most of the teachers lead the proposals and environmental projects aimed at working on training processes that promote knowledge, attitudes, and values in students, oriented to the recognition of the local environment in its complexity, the problems on the global–local scales, and the approach of alternative solutions that correspond to the Post-2015 Global Agenda, by proposing as an educational goal that all students achieve the knowledge, skills, values, and actions that are needed to build sustainable and peaceful societies, from the pedagogical work that they carry out in their educational institutions [43,44].

Teachers develop various pedagogical strategies that accompany teaching practice, in which the vision of thinking globally and acting locally is embraced, by linking objectives of collaboration, solidarity and participation with their students to contribute to a sustainable future [45]. These aspects are shared with what was proposed by Murga Menoyo and Novo (2017, p. 55), who stated that “sustainability leads to a global development that articulates global needs and conditions with local possibilities and practices” [46], oriented towards planetary citizenship that requires humanity’s commitment to nature.

The proposals are based on contextualized education, recognizing that, although theory is important and global problems can be assessed, it is also necessary to identify local environmental realities. It is in this part that the majority of educational proposals are built from the recognition of the environmental potentialities that the city of Bogotá has, in particular, to re-take elements of its main ecological structure, such as water sources, wetlands, high mountain ecosystems, páramos, Eastern Hills, forest reserves, and general biodiversity [35]. These aspects constitute areas of environmental interest for Bogotá, D.C., and are projected as the articulating axis for a sustainable city [47]. A recent study showed that biosphere reserves (BR) and geo-parks (GP) in Japan can serve as platforms to contribute to education for sustainable development; thus, articulating these places with the curriculum increased the awareness and knowledge of the regional sustainability of the students surveyed [48].

In accordance with the above, some of the strategies proposed by teachers consider recognizing areas of environmental interest essential. In this regard, they express that the actions they carry out promote the recognition of the territory as a way to build a link with the city [49,50] to strengthen the environmental identity that affects how we perceive and act towards the world [51], from a training proposal based on experiential experience, problematization, reflection, and the promotion of values for environmental training as a basis for decision-making and the projection of actions towards sustainability [52,53], which constitutes an exercise of construction, participation, and permanent reflection.

It should be noted that all the proposals led by the professors recognized that, when living in the city, it is important to assess how specific problems obey the dynamics of the urban context in an expanding capital with accelerated urban growth and infrastructure development, with a number close to eight million inhabitants, who on a daily basis demand a series of services for their development, and at the same time the increase in solid waste, hyperconsumption, loss of vegetation cover, mining in the hill sector, and the pressure on the city’s wetlands and rivers. Environmental issues are collected in the different projects and pedagogical strategies carried out by teachers [54], pointing out that education must provide a correct perception of the problems and promote favorable attitudes and behaviors towards sustainability.

Among the main educational strategies and methodologies, it is important to highlight those related to project-based learning, problem-based learning, the creation of school research hotbeds, the development of the PRAE school environmental project, transversal educational projects, STEM projects, field trips for context recognition, and pedagogical intervention activities that show the richness and diversity of ways in which the perspectives of environmental sustainability can be addressed in the school educational context.

These findings make it possible to show that teachers have advanced in the design and implementation of various pedagogical strategies due to the commitment they have to their teaching work and their interest in being able to contribute to environmental training processes aimed at the environmental sustainability of the city, as currently demanded by international organizations in the face of a need for change in teaching practice, which integrates the principles and values of sustainable societies [55]. Likewise, some pedagogical strategies for the SDGs are based on problem-based learning, service learning, simulations, and case studies that incorporate sustainability into the curriculum [56].

In this study, three elements were observed that allowed us to glimpse education proposals that advance toward environmental sustainability. In the first instance, correspondence was identified between proposals for recognition of the context and the use of pedagogical outputs aimed at the knowledge and conservation of ecosystems. Secondly, the proposals for project-based learning and problem-based learning, or transversal projects, related to resolving local environmental issues. Thirdly, there was correspondence in the proposals that contemplated the development of intervention projects with a critical approach that advocate an environmental culture for the transformation of realities through actions that integrate both the natural component and the social system to improve the quality of life and the natural environment, with alternatives consistent with the current challenges demanded by an education that contributes to environmental sustainability (Figure 3).

This finding is related to the Final Report of the Decade and the data provided by the 484 participants (member states, groups involved, and United Nations agencies) from 125 countries, specifically on pedagogical processes and types of learning, thus indicating that the perception of those surveyed is that Education for Sustainable Development more effectively achieves its objectives through three types of learning: first, participatory and collaborative learning; second, one that is based on problems; and third, one that adopts a critical approach. These results are very promising, although there is still a long way to go because, as stated by other researchers [57], when questioning teachers from the Małopolska region in Poland about what methods and forms they use to develop creativity in their students, related to environmental sustainability, their results showed that teachers apply only some of the recommended methods; that is, the majority use the most common didactic forms, which may not support the development of creative skills, maintain transmissive pedagogies and instruction, or consider mental health both in higher education and in other levels of training [58,59,60,61,62,63], which do not respond to the demands of today’s world.

6. Conclusions

It was highlighted that all the proposals led by the professors recognize that, when living in the city, it is important to measure how specific problems obey the dynamics of the urban context in an expanding capital with accelerated urban growth and infrastructure development, with a number of close to eight million inhabitants, who on a daily basis demand a series of services for their development, concomitant with the added increase in solid waste, hyperconsumption, loss of plant cover, mining in the hills sector, and pressure on the city’s wetlands and rivers. Environmental issues are collected in the different projects and pedagogical strategies that teachers advance.

It is important to recognize that teachers and educational institutions seek to provide knowledge, develop skills, and promote alternative solutions jointly with their students, educational community, and/or community of the local context to advance in the construction of an environmental culture that provides foundations, values, and attitudes in the participants about the relevance of cohabiting and coexisting with others, in a commitment to the sustainability of not only human life but also of other forms of life, under another rationality and from education to continue promoting practices that are oriented towards processes of conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity in general in the city, responsible consumption, proper management of solid waste and intervention with urban agriculture proposals, the management and recirculation prototypes of water, the reduction of contamination of water sources, and the use of alternative and clean energies.

It is recognized that there is still a long way to go to make citizens aware that environmental problems must be assumed from local contexts. Solution alternatives should not depend solely on environmental policies but rather on initiatives that start in educational institutions and can transcend if the community is involved. This aspect is key to configuring real actions sustained over time and replicated in other latitudes of the world. Addressing the sustainable development objectives in the school in an integrated way allows the actions to be harmonized with the projects and not atomized. Joining efforts by reviewing environmental projects in the different sectors of the city is a goal that should be worked on in the future.

One of the contributions of this paper focused on proposing a typology of sustainability from a complex perspective based on the formulation of indicators for each of the epistemological, axiological, and ontological dimensions present in the teachers’ ideas. The fact that the majority of the participating professors referred to the principles of weak sustainability ratifies the prevalence of a tendency to separate man from nature, hand in hand with the ideas of the Brundtland report, where a general allusion was made to social, political, cultural, and aesthetic aspects, for which it is necessary to recognize the importance of epistemological pluralism in the formation of citizens. It is worth proposing a civilized model that avoids the reification of the world, inviting us to consider the complexity of environmental problems, particularly environmental conflicts that compromise the various forms of life and the permanence of man on the planet.

Teacher training must incorporate the in-depth analysis of the environmental reality, particularly issues related to social inequality, the progressive deterioration of nature, and the possibility of thinking about a world that recognizes biological and cultural diversity. It is necessary to generate public policies in teacher training processes, which contribute to consolidating a critical vision of sustainability, closer to the super-strong perspective, in which the protection of cultures is promoted, in addition to consolidating epistemic plurality and the resolution of environmental problems [63]. From these conditions, educational proposals that seek to contribute to environmental sustainability from urban contexts must start from local needs and build strategies to respond to the demands of the contemporary world.

Among the limitations of the work, it stands out that there is still a lack of greater articulation between the sustainable development objectives, but key axes such as environmental justice could contribute to generating actions in accordance with demands such as climate change. However, as this study demonstrates, when discussing different epistemological perspectives, such as ancestral traditions with institutional proposals, it is possible to find paths appropriate to the conditions of the context.

This study can be extended to other regions, taking into account the axes of interest on which the questions were structured. Furthermore, this study serves as the basis for other investigations that review regional and national levels or a comparison study.