The Training of Future Education Professionals from the Perspective of Sustainability: a Formative Experience

Abstract

The following study presents a training experience in which key points were worked on for the inclusion of sustainability in educational context. The difficult situation that our planet is going through, makes it necessary to take measures along this line with urgency. As teacher educators, we propose to include sustainability in our Master's course "Educational Research for the Professional Development of Teachers", aimed at future professionals in the field of education, since they constitute a particularly sensitive group for the formation of future citizens. The innovation was developed within the module "Equality and Sustainability in the desirable school", of the aforementioned Master's course. To this end we designed a didactic sequence, the analysis of which is the objective of this present study. The purpose was to reflect on the concept of sustainability and the importance of forming citizens committed to sustainable human development. In order to gather information on their ideas about sustainability, and their possible evolution after completing the module, an exploratory questionnaire was implemented both at the beginning and at the end of the sequence. The results showed slight changes in the students' initial ideas. They identified a greater range of socio-environmental problems, and including some at a local level. Finally, although we did identify changes in the students' initial perceptions, these were not significant enough to be capable of indicating that the didactic sequence had been the trigger.