Educators’ competences, motivations and teaching challenges faced in education for sustainable development: what are the interlinkages?

Abstract

Educators’ competences in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a growing field of study. Still, critics warn that competence frameworks should not be used as a technical prescription without reflecting on the complexity of the educational setting. This study aims to shed light on the competences that educators in ESD, across both formal and non-formal educational settings, perceive as necessary for their role while analyzing how their motivations and challenges are interlinked with their ESD competences. These issues are explored through 18 online interviews with ESD educators within the Barcelona Metropolitan Area in Spain, where multiple and diverse ESD settings co-exist. Atlas.ti was used for the content analysis. Results show that a diverse set of competences was persistently perceived among participants as necessary. Across both formal and non-formal contexts, the role of competences such as Transdisciplinary and Empathy was especially interlinked with their motivations and challenges. Nonetheless, competences such as Systems were more relevant in the formal setting, while Participation was emphasized in the non-formal context. We discuss the various ways that educators perceive ESD competences as necessary, which are influenced by their working settings (e.g. formal and non-formal), but also their particular pedagogical challenges and individual motivations for proper diagnosis and training.

Keywords:

• Education for sustainable development
• educators
• competencies
• motivations
• challenges

Reviewing Editor:

• Serafina Pastore
• Education
• Psychology
• Communication
• Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro
• Bari
• Italy

SUBJECTS:

• Study Skills
• Sustainability Education
• Training & Leadership
• Teachers & Teacher Education

Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank Mar Satorras and Maria Heras for their valuable help to pilot the interview guide.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare

Notes

1 The total (N) is the number of times that interviewees referred to the competence in their responses. It is not based on the total number of participants.

2 The letter E use standing for Educator and an assigned number according to the chronological order the interviews took place.

Additional information

Funding

A.C. has been funded by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya through a Doctoral Thesis Grant. I.R.-M. gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Spanish State Research Agency through a ‘Ramón y Cajal’ research fellowship (RYC-2015-17676).

Notes on contributors

Andrea Corres

Andrea Corres, conducted her PhD in the Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA Lab) research group at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Andrea is also a research assistant in the Educational Transformation, Leadership & Sustainability (EDIT) research group at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Isabel Ruiz-Mallén

Isabel Ruiz-Mallén, is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and leads a research line on knowledge co-production and transformative learning at the Laboratory of Urban Transformation and Global Change (TURBA) at UOC.

Marco Rieckmann

Marco Rieckmann, holds the position of Associate Professor of Higher Education Development at the Department of Education of the University of Vechta (Germany). His primary research interests encompass education for sustainable development, global education, and the sustainable development of higher education institutions.