<P><FONT color=#33711E><STRONG>Day 1 – Session 2C: <br>Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability</STRONG></FONT></P>

Queen’s Park 5, 2nd Floor
16:30 - 16:50

2.C.1. Guidelines and Recommendations for Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability
Rosalyn McKeown, University of Tennessee, United States of America

In 1998, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development work programme on ESD called for UNESCO to develop guidelines for reorienting teacher training to address sustainability. This responsibility was  passed  to  the  UNITWIN/UNESCO  Chair  at  York  University  in  Toronto,  Canada.  The  UNESCO  Chair established an International Network of 30 teacher-education institutions from 28 countries willing to change curricula, programmes, practices, and policies to address the issue of sustainable development in locally-relevant and culturally-appropriate ways. Starting in 2000, participants kept track of their efforts in journals, chronicling successes and failures. The work of the International Network was synthesized in “Guidelines and Recommendations for Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability” published by UNESCO. This paper discusses that publication and the recommendations it makes.

Download the paper (word, 75kb) and presentation (pdf, 1.2mb)

16:50 - 17:10
2.C.2. Capacity Building for ESD: Implications for Teacher Education and Training
Chan Lean Heng, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Education and teachers are key drivers for the attainment of sustainable development. The principles of sustainable development foster the creation of a society where there is mutual respect and responsibility, equity and equality in all dimensions of economic, socio-cultural, physical, environmental and political life. Teachers play a critical role in informing and facilitating trans-disciplinary understandings, values, perspectives, commitment and practice of sustainable development. However teachers themselves need to be equipped with the perspectives, knowledge, skills and values of sustainable development before they can orientate their students. This paper explores the discourse and scope of sustainable development, especially the social aspects which tend to be neglected in school curricula relative to the environmental aspects. The paper then delineates the implications for teacher education and training. In particular, this paper reviews the current instructional pedagogies of teacher educator institutions and proposes an education methodology. As an illustration, a training module using the guidelines of the proposed methodology will be outlined and past experiences using this methodology will be described.

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17:10 - 17:30
2.C.3.  Education  for  Sustainable  Development:  Experiences  from  Chulalongkorn
University, Thailand
Athapol Anunthavorasakul, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
The Faculty of Education of Chulalongkorn University has several courses and programmes for undergraduate and graduate students related to the concepts of Sustainable Development (SD) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). At the present time, the Faculty offers eight ESD courses in the pre-service teacher education curriculum. In each course, we select and integrate knowledge, attitudes and skills from various disciplines, and
offer courses such as Education and Society, Society and Education for Sustainability, Environmental Education, Man and Environment, Peace Education, and Teacher and Community Development. In addition, another eight courses have integrated the concepts of ESD into some parts of their content. Furthermore, courses such as Education in the Future Society (for 20 Masters Programmes in education), Critical Analysis in Education, and
Education for Sustainable Development (for 11 Doctoral programmes in education) have been developed as required core courses for all graduate Education programmes.

Download the paper (word, 130kb) and presentation (pdf, 3.3mb)

17:30 - 17:50
2.C.4. Reorienting Teacher Education for Sustainable Development
Taruna Choudhery Dhall, Kurukshetra University, India
In Indian spiritual philosophy there is the belief that God created human beings for a purpose: to live; to help others live and to provide what we can for future generations. However these values are being weakened in society today. In recent years globalization and other changes have exposed humans to previously unimagined consumption patterns, fostering greed and resulting in the erosion of values. This scenario has prompted us to explore possibilities of putting in place an education system that aims at individual development in harmony with nature and society. Education, with its inherent capacity to influence the current and future generations, can be mediated through competent teachers. A study of a pre-service teacher education programme in northern India revealed that the design of the curriculum primarily caters to the development of knowledge (about content) and teaching skills. This teacher education programme is apparently deficient in the development of feelings about self and others. This calls for reorienting teacher education programmes in a manner that they create awareness among teacher trainees about the need for interpersonal values and empathy. Teachers trained in such a manner can effectively play their role, not only in cultivating human values but also in preventing the erosion of these values, and move towards the harmonization of humans, nature and society.

Download the paper (word, 50kb) and presentation (pdf, 120kb)