ESD in teacher education at universities in Baden-Wuerttemberg

By order of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports of the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, an online evaluation called “ESD in teacher training at higher education institutions in the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg” (German version: Siegmund & Jahn 2014) has been conducted within the project “Learning beyond the day – Education for a world fit for the future”. The evaluation, which was based on different indicators especially developed for teacher training, aimed at surveying the current state of the implementation of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in teacher training at universities in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Furthermore, possibilities as well as constraints and obstacles for ESD implementation in the teacher training at the universities, taking into account instructors’ willigness to implement ESD in their courses, have been collected. An online questionnaire has been sent to 756  heads of subject and instructors at six Universities of Education and nine universities in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. The results indicate that the concept of ESD is currently not yet included in teacher training in a structured manner, both on the structural and the operational level. Its implementation to a greater extent in teacher education is more or less bound to the individual instructors who identify themselves with the ESD concept. While there is a general awareness of the general importance of ESD for teacher training, its actual integration into teacher training takes place especially in traditional “key subjects” such as biology or geography, as well as in sports.

Project term: 2012 - 2013

This project was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport Baden-Wuerttemberg.