Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Much research in Environmental Education and Education for Sustainability, likethat carried out by Alan Reid in his doctoral thesis (Reid 1998), proposes the necessityto analyse what knowledge the teachers have regarding these issues, in order to beable to establish a typology of Geography teachers in general. The methodology usedin these cases is based on personal interviews. In our case we felt it would be betterthat the teachers explain what they know and what they think about sustainabilityand Education for Sustainability and as a result we used two focus group interviewsto gather the information (in the line of Graham Corney’s research).FindingsThe first focus group interview dealt with the concept of sustainability trying toanswer three main questions:• What does sustainability mean to you?• What knowledge do you think you have on sustainability?• Do you think achieving a sustainable society is possible?All the teachers agreed, more or less, on the definition of sustainability. They usedthe Brundtland Report definition (“a process where the exploitation, the orientation oftechnological development and institutional change, are made consistent with futureas well as present needs”) as well as the one introduced by the UICN (“a feature of aprocess or a state that can be maintained indefinitely”). Once the concept had beendefined we asked the teachers to explain the meaning of the definitions. At this point,all the teachers noticed the difficulty and the vagueness of the concept and its definition.The debate brought out different perspectives of sustainability, as Dobson (1996) notesand this meant that some of the teachers showed their pessimism stating that: “sustainabilityis being ideologically instrumentalized”. But some of them stated: “independentas to how to do it, what is important is to work for sustainability”. As a result of thisfirst workshop, the teachers came to the conclusion that the knowledge they have thatrelated to sustainability was diverse, and those who have wider knowledge are thosewho had been involved in ecologist groups, those who belong to green schools or thosewho are personally implicated with sustainability. The group of teachers that confessedto have a more limited knowledge about sustainability claim that this topic isn’t theirmain worry, above all because they think that “the prevalent trend of today’s societyis unsustainable and sustainability is nothing more than an utopia”.The second focus group interview dealt with Education for Sustainability. Thequestions for the debate were: what does it mean to educate for sustainability? Is itnecessary? How should it be worked in schools? What kind of problems do you haveas teachers to teach for sustainability? In the beginning we started off by explainingand evaluating the characteristics of Education for Sustainability defined by StephenSterling (1996): “Education for sustainability is: contextual, innovative and constructive,focused and infusive, holistic and human in scale, integrative, process orientedand empowering rather than product oriented, critical, systemic and connective,ethical, purposive, inclusive and lifelong”.According to the teachers participating in the project, introducing Education forSustainability into the Geography curriculum with the frame developed by Stephen306