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Understanding the education for sustainable development knowledge and teacher self-efficacy of middle level preservice teachers

Many teacher education programmes emphasise mastery of the subject area of certification. Typically though, their courses do not specifically focus on education for sustainable development (ESD) or sustainable development (SD). However, in line with the UN Decade of ESD (2005–2014), schools and teachers are routinely identified as key channels through which the population learns about and addresses SD. Consequently, this study examined the relationship that exists between preservice teachers’ (PST) knowledge of ESD and their teacher self-efficacy. In particular, it focused on individuals specialising in middle school education due to a documented decrease in quality and quantity of ESD as students reach upper elementary and transition to secondary schools. The data for this mixed-methods study were collected from PSTs attending public higher education institutions in Pennsylvania. The ESD knowledge and beliefs survey was a researcher-designed instrument containing multiple-choice questions to assess knowledge of ESD themes, Likert-type questions to report levels of self-efficacy (confidence in producing student engagement and learning), and open-ended questions on SD subject matter. Findings across the questions indicate the PSTs were not extensively knowledgeable about many of the key themes of SD and ESD. However, responses on selfefficacy suggest they believed that they would be effective when teaching about SD. Moreover, data on PST knowledge of ESD were found not to be related to their personal teaching self-efficacy in the area of SD. In fact, individuals with low SD knowledge were still confident in their ability to teach about SD. This is shown to be problematical because middle school students do not necessarily achieve mastery in a particular area unless their teachers have a thorough understanding of the associated concepts. The thesis concludes by considering how changes in the content and focus of teacher preparation could increase the SD knowledge of teachers, and consequently, students. But this is not to ignore the role that the wider education system plays. Thus, the study argues that less emphasis should be placed on narrow content areas,