Majid, Nasreen; Reed Johnson, Jo Anna; Marston, Sarah; Happle, Andrew; (2023) Reconceptualising Preservice Teachers' Subject Knowledge in Climate Change and Sustainability Education: A Framework for Initial Teacher Education from England, UK. Presented at: BERA Conference 2023, Birmingham, UK.

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Abstract

The climate emergency has rightly been hitting the headlines. The immediacy and momentum has grown through climate activism from youth organisations such as Fridays for Future and prominent youth activists such as Greta Thunberg of Sweden and Vanessa Nakate of Uganda. The young are demanding change in all aspects of their lives and are challenging their current curriculum provision to encompass climate change and sustainability education as a ‘golden thread’ across all aspects of their curriculum. They are demanding this to support future generations to understand the deep rooted, environmental and societal concerns around the climate emergency and how the young can develop skills to become change makers in building a better future for the world. This paper shares the work done at The University of Reading to reshape teacher training in England to build climate change and sustainability literacies with trainee teachers (Majid, Reed Johnson, Marston, & Happle, 2022). This important work was conceptualised as part of a National Climate Education Action Plan (Reading, 2021)- highlighting nine points to shape and deliver climate change and sustainability education in England, at scale. The action plan is now featured in the DFEs Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy (DFE, 2022). This paper highlights the conceptual aligning and rational for the development of the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) framework. Core ideas of positionality, climate justice and climate action form the back bone of the framework (Thew et al., 2021). These ideas are explored and rationalised within the paper to highlight their importance in shaping these key ideas with the next generation of teachers. The initial data sets from a pre- survey are drawn upon to explore the current landscape of knowledge, attitude, values, behaviours, competences and capabilities (Thew et al., 2021 that trainee teachers need to shape their own agency in teaching climate change and sustainability education. The notion of authenticity and creativity are drawn upon to understand the shaping of trainee teachers’ identity (Gandolfi & Mills, 2022; Illeris, 2014) in this integral area of study. It is argued that the idea of knowledge must be reconceptualised to bring the training of teachers into the 21st Century. The intersectionality that the climate emergency poses (Wilkens & Datchoua-Tirvaudey, 2022) is at the heart of reshaping the notion of knowledge to enable future generations of teachers to support their pupils to understand geo-political landscape being shaped through the climate emergency(Kranz, Schwichow, Breitenmoser, & Niebert, 2022). This work aspires to have a lasting effect on future generations; supporting them to connect further with nature, support their pupils to develop eco-capabilities, (Walshe, Moula, & Lee, 2022), understand the risks but know the opportunities to reshape the educational outcomes for the future. The knowledge constructs (Majid, 2023)within the framework emphasis the notion of systems thinking (Karaarslan Semiz & Teksöz, 2020), hence enabling future generations to recognise how we must connect all aspects of our lives to reshape our thinking and live sustainable lives. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) are drawn upon to build the ideas of global citizenship and how this shared framework needs to be utilised to support the reversing of the damage done to the planet. An integral aspect of this is the notion of ‘green jobs’ and through the framework, it is aspired that, trainee teachers will develop a range of approaches to support future generations in understanding how they can develop core skills to alleviate the impact of the climate crisis. Next steps for this work are to showcase how the impact of the framework will be measured, over time. The ripple effect of trainee teachers taking the core values of the framework into their own teaching and therefore the impact this aspires of have on their pupils. This work is an important aspect of further reshaping of ideas within the ITE Climate Change and Sustainability Framework.

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