The Future of Education

Starting from the late 1980s, the term of sustainable development (SD) has reflected distinct concerns such as development, environmental protection, and poverty alleviation, but currently this term has been used to reveal linkages between various concerns dealing with human rights, diversity, food security, clean water, renewable energy, the preservation of the environment, sustainable use of natural resources, peace and security (UNESCO, 2010). Although there is still no consensus among practitioners on the definition of SD, many authors (e.g Mckeown, 2002; Summers & Childs, 2007) hold the same belief in that education has a crucial role on SD. The literature pertinent to conceptualizations of SD (e.g Kilinc and Aydin, 2013; Summers and Childs, 2007) has indicated that student teachers prioritised environmental issues and centralisation of the environment over economic growth and social issues. Such findings reflected that current teachers lack a sound understanding of SD although they developed an awareness on the consequences of human actions in sustainable life styles and their importance in shaping a conscious future generation. In this aspect, the present study aimed to investigate Turkish elementary science teacher educators’ mental models on SD so that we as SD educators could have some tips regarding how to prepare elementary science student teachers to teach SD issues in the formal education. A total of 21 teacher educators purposively selected participated in the present phenomenology study. They were asked to draw a picture about SD and then explain it. These individuals were also expected to complete a questionnaire including open-ended questions previously used in the field of ESD (e.g Kagawa, 2007; Sahin, Teksoz, and Ertepinar, 2009) in order to reveal their understandings of SD in detail. The preliminary analysis indicated that sustainable use of natural resources largely outweighed other sustainability-related issues such as cycling economy, social wellbeing, future generations, etc. in these teacher educators’ mental models. Their existing conceptual framework about SD did not reflect holistic thinking about various aspects of SD. For effective teaching of SD issues, the teacher educators should be provided some opportunities so that they could become aware of various SD related concerns and their linkages.