Teacher Education for Sustainable Development: A Review of an Emerging Research Field

  • Daniel Fischer*
  • , Jordan King
  • , Marco Rieckmann
  • , Matthias Barth
  • , Alexander Büssing
  • , Ingrid Hemmer
  • , Detlev Lindau-Bank
  • *Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Journal contributionsScientific review articlesResearch

    100 Citations (Scopus)
    577 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Teacher Education for Sustainable Development (TESD) is a niche innovation in teacher education that empowers teachers to prepare learners to address global socio-environmental challenges. To advance the diffusion of this niche innovation into general teacher education, this article offers a systematic literature review based on a qualitative analysis of 158 peer-reviewed publications on TESD research. Our results show that TESD research is a growing field characterized by five types of inquiry: designing learning environments, understanding learner attributes, measuring learning outcomes, promoting systems change, and advancing visions for the field. Major innovation potentials of TESD for more general teacher education are its emphasis on the grand socio-environmental challenges of our times, methodologies to engage with knowledge diversity (e.g., inter/transdisciplinarity), and sustainability science learning approaches (e.g., backcasting). We suggest that future work builds from this review to strengthen links between teacher education and TESD in enhancing quality education.

    Original languageEnglish
    JournalJournal of Teacher Education
    Volume73
    Issue number5
    Pages (from-to)509-524
    Number of pages16
    ISSN0022-4871
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 01.11.2022

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2022 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

    Research areas and keywords

    • assessment
    • international teacher education
    • learning environment
    • systematic literature review
    • Teacher Education for Sustainable Development
    • teacher education research methodology
    • Sustainability education

    ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

    • Education

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