Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding of Sustainability: Evidence from Türkiye

Dr Sinem Demirci

June 14^th, 2023

Hello!

Sinem Demirci, PhD

Postdoctoral Visiting Researcher/Lecturer - UCL

sinemdemirci.github.io

sinemdemirci

sinemmdemirci

drsinemdemirci

s.demirci@ucl.ac.uk

Today’s Outline

In this talk, I will be briefly talking about

1. The Place of Education for Sustainable Development in Türkiye’s Teacher Education Context
2. Setting the Scene: Study Context
3. Turkish Pre-service Teachers’ Perspectives on Sustainability
4. Brief discussion on pre-service teachers’ understanding of sustainability and implications for SDG 4.7.

ESD in Türkiye’s Teacher Education Context

• A centralised education system
• Teacher education programmes are offered by higher education institutions(Bourn & Soysal, 2021; TEDMEM, 2021)
• 4-year undergraduate programmes determined by Council of Higher Education (2018)
• Several (under)graduate ESD courses in teacher education programmes has been offered more than 10 years sporadically (Tuncer, 2008; Tuncer & Sahin, 2016).
• Sustainable Development and Education was included as one of the Teaching Specialty Elective Courses by Council of Higher Education in 2018.
• Since then, the number of universities offer this course is increasing.

Setting the Scene: Study Context

• Two complementary studies’ evidences are presented and discussed in terms of SDG 4.7.
• The aim of these studies can be summarized as following:
  • assess pre service teachers’ knowledge of sustainability
  • explore pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs on integrating sustainability into their profession and daily lives.
• Data was collected from a public university in Ankara, capital city of Türkiye.

• Pre-service teachers were voluntarily participated from
  • Early Childhood Education,
  • Elementary Science Education
  • Elementary Mathematics Education
  • Physics Education
  • Chemistry Education
  • Foreign Language Education
  • Computer Education and Instructional Technology

Data Analysis -I

Basic qualitative research design (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) was chosen to be able to explore understandings of pre-service teachers in depth.

In data analysis, we intended to (1) emerge profiles of pre-service teachers that reflect their understandings on sustainability.

• If the participants specify the dimensions of sustainability and explain the interrelationships among them, we categorized them as informed as explicit
• If the participants did not specify the dimensions of sustainability and the interrelationships among them but they explained all of these in an indirect way, we categorized them as informed as implicit
• If the participants specified the dimensions of sustainability but did not explain them and their interrelationships among them, we categorized them as non-informed

After profiles were emerged, (2) profiles were compared by their department and two researchers were coded the interviews.

Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding of Sustainability - I

A semi-structured interview was conducted to understand how pre-service teachers perceive the dimensions of sustainability (Macer, 2004) from economical, social, cultural, and ecological perspectives as well as the interactions among these dimensions.

Department/Major	Frequency (n)
Early Childhood Education (ECE)	10
Elementary Science Education (ESE)	10
Elementary Mathematics Education (EME)	9
Total	29

The sustainability courses available in the Faculty of Education were as following:

Course	Must Elective	Offered to
Education and Awareness for Sustainability	Elective Course	All
Climate Change Education for Sustainability	Elective Course	All
Laboratory Applications in Environmental Education	Elective Course	All
Environmental Sciences	Must Course	ESE
Basic Science	Must Course	ECE
Teaching Science in Early Childhood	Must Course	ECE

Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding of Sustainability - II

• 4 ESE students were informed as explicit who
  • enrolled must and elective courses and
  • participated in several ESD seminars
  • expressed their special interest to teach ESD

• 3 ECE students and 1 EME student were informed as implicit who
  • enrolled at least one ESD elective courses

• Non-informant pre service teachers (n = 22) tried to explain sustainability by using its dictionary definition in a detached way.
  • Some of them were enrolled an elective ESD course

Pre-service Teachers’ Understanding of Sustainability - III - Across Deparments

Elementary Science Education

Early Childhood Education

Elementary Mathematics Education

Data Analysis - II - Pre-service Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs

• In the second study, data was collected from pre-service teachers who enrolled a general elective course on sustainability.
• A self-efficacy scale was administered to 113 university students and its construct validity evidences can be found in our article (Demirci and Teksöz, 2017)

Department/Major	Frequency (n)
Foreign Language Education	12
Elementary Mathematics Education	9
Early Childhood Education	4
Computer Education and Instructional Technology	3
Elementary Science Education	2
Chemistry Education	1
Physics Education	1
Total	32

Pre-service Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs - Daily Life

ITEM	Disagree (%)	Neutral (%)	Agree (%)
I can always find better ways to explain sustainability to other people.	15.38	15.38	69.23
I have skills and knowledge that would allow me to explain sustainability concepts to people.	15.38	23.08	61.54
I can always find better ways to integrate sustainability in my daily life.	15.38	23.08	61.53
I have skills and knowledge that would allow me to aggregate sustainability context into my daily life.	15.38	30.77	53.85
I am typically able to answer people’s sustainability questions.	15.38	38.46	46.15
Even when I try very hard, I won’t be able to explain sustainability to other people.	38.46	23.08	38.46
I don’t know what to do to persuade people to have a sustainable lifestyle.	30.77	30.77	38.46
I find it difficult to explain to people why a sustainable lifestyle is better.	46.15	30.77	23.08
I am not very effective in including sustainability principles in my daily life.	61.54	23.08	15.38
I do not know what to do about integrating sustainability principles into my daily life.	61.54	30.77	7.69

Pre-service Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs - Profession

ITEM	Disagree (%)	Neutral (%)	Agree (%)
I know the necessary steps to include the sustainability context into my profession effectively.	15.38	23.08	61.54
I can always find better ways to integrate sustainability into my profession.	7.69	30.77	61.54
I understand sustainability concepts well enough to be effective in integrating them into my profession.	7.69	38.46	53.85
I wonder if I have the necessary skills to integrate sustainability context into my profession.	15.38	38.46	46.15
Even when I try very hard, I won’t be able to include sustainability to enrich my career as effectively as I do with most subjects.	61.54	7.69	30.77
I cannot include sustainability context in my business life because it needs to be done by specially trained people.	53.85	15.38	30.77
Even when I try very hard, I won’t be able to include sustainability into my daily life.	53.85	23.08	23.08

Discussion and Conclusion - I

United Nations, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

• To ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development through education for sustainable development, we need to increase our capacity to the extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development are mainstreamed in (a) national education policies; (b) curricula; (c) teacher education and (d) student assessment (Indicator 4.7.1).
• To examine the role of embedding sustainability concepts into teacher education programme, two complementary studies were shared to explore pre-service teachers’
  • understandings of sustainability through the ecological, economic, social and cultural aspects
  • self-efficacy beliefs about integration sustainability concepts into their teaching and daily life.
• In the first study, we identified that elementary science pre-service teachers who enrolled both must and elective ESD courses had a more complex understanding than their peers
  • We also observed that enrolling an elective course might not be enough to develop a sound understanding about the interactions between those dimensions.

Discussion and Conclusion - II

• In the second study, we assessed self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers who enrolled a general elective course on sustainability
  • We identified that even though the pre-service teachers seemed to be hopeful about ‘find better ways’ to integrate sustainability into their daily lives, nearly 40% of them remained undecided on how to integrate sustainability into their teaching.
• Overall, we believe that even though enrolling a general elective ESD course is important as an initial step, to be able to raise ESD competent teachers, we need to embed ESD into teacher education programmes (e.g., discipline specific courses & embedding sustainability concepts into other modules/lectures) which, in turn, contribute to achieving SDGs.
  • Some available studies (e.g.,Cockerell, 2020; Ferguson & Roofe, 2020) also argued in a similar vein that more explicit and coordinated efforts are needed to achieve SDG 4.

United Nations, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgement

The studies presented in this talk was collaborated with my awesome colleagues Drs Kaplan Can, Cengizoğlu, Şen (left), and my PhD co-advisor, Prof Teksöz (right).

References

Bourn, D., & Soysal, N. (2021). Transformative learning and pedagogical approaches in education for sustainable development: Are initial teacher education programmes in England and Turkey ready for creating agents of change for sustainability?. Sustainability, 13(16), 8973.

Cockerell, E. (2020). Sustainable development within primary teacher education in Finland: an analysis of university level teacher education.

Council of Higher Education (2018). Öğretmen Yetiştirme Lisans Programları [Teacher Education Undergraduate Programmes]. Retrieved June 01, 2023 from https://www.yok.gov.tr/kurumsal/idari-birimler/egitim-ogretim-dairesi/yeni-ogretmen-yetistirme-lisans-programlari

Demirci, S., Kaplan, G., Cengizoglu, S., & Sen, M. (2017). Pre-service teachers’ Understandings of sustainability based on ontological entities. [Paper presentation]. 26th International Conference on Educational Sciences, Antalya, Turkey

Demirci, S. & Teksöz, G. (2017). Self-Efficacy beliefs on integrating sustainability into profession and daily life: in the words of university students. International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education, 7(2), 116-133.

Ferguson, T., & Roofe, C. G. (2020). SDG 4 in higher education: Challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 21(5), 959-975.Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2015). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. John Wiley & Sons.

TEDMEM (2021). 20. Millî Eğitim Şûrası konularına ilişkin görüş ve öneriler [Remarks and Recommendations on the themes of the 20th National Education Council] (TEDMEM Güncel Yayınlar Dizisi 6). Türk Eğitim Derneği. ISBN: 978-605-74377-1-6.

Tuncer, G. (2008). University students’ perception on sustainable development: A case study from Turkey. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 17(3), 212-226.

Tuncer, G., & Sahin, E. (2016). Message in a bottle: what shapes university students’ understanding of sustainability?. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 25(4), 294-308.