Sheldrake, Richard;
Walshe, Nicola;
Hargreaves, Eleanore;
(2025)
Agentic action as an aim for sustainability education: views from secondary school teachers in England.
Environmental Education Research
10.1080/13504622.2025.2464240.
(In press).
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Sheldrake, Richard, et al (2025) - Agentic action as an aim for sustainability education- views from secondary school teachers in England.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
To support young people and their futures, sustainability education is increasingly framed around enhancing young people’s agency. In England, however, sustainability is not a formal subject within the National Curriculum and teachers may have different understandings of what sustainability education involves. New insights were revealed through content analysis of written questionnaire responses from 335 secondary school teachers of different subjects in England: 47% understood sustainability education as supporting students to act and respond to achieve sustainability; 30% included various value-perspectives such as equity; and 26% understood sustainability education as conveying awareness and information to students. Teacher understanding of sustainability education encompassed some elements of agency, although this was mentioned infrequently, such as empowering students (7%) and supporting their decision-making (15%). Differences across subjects were also revealed. These findings suggest areas for subject-specific professional development for teachers to support agency and action for young people.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Agentic action as an aim for sustainability education: views from secondary school teachers in England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/13504622.2025.2464240 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2025.2464240 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Agency; geography; science; sustainability education; teachers |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205020 |
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