Implementing environmental education in pre‐service teacher training

Abstract

Implementing environmental education is a complex, unpredictable and time‐consuming process, which, despite the introduction of cross‐curricular attainment targets, is often ignored in Flemish teacher training curricula. This article reports on implementing environmental education in two teacher training colleges using seven criteria: participant engagement, instructor credibility, intention, functionality, self‐efficacy, school climate and evaluation. One college has a long history of cross‐curricular education, whereas the other college has just started. It was found that the implementation processes in the two teacher training institutions stagnated owing to personal and organizational obstructions. To deal with these constraints, several recommendations are suggested.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the staff of the two teacher training colleges whose participation made this research possible. Our appreciation also goes to Koos Kortland of the University of Utrecht for his comments on this paper.

Notes

Flemish curricula discern seven cross‐curricular attainment targets at secondary level: environmental education, health education, social skills, citizenship education, learning to learn, expressive‐creative education (only in the second and third stages) and technical‐technological education (only for general—not vocational—secondary education in the second and third stages).