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After the end of the first Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development, coinciding with ongoing international evaluation processes, questions about the implementation of the Education for Sustainable Development programs and assessments continue to be raised. The present study examined Education for Sustainable Development implementation at the local (teachers’) level, assessing what teachers think and know about Education for Sustainable Development and how they implement it in secondary school classes in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. By providing novel data from a teacher survey in 2019, this study revealed that Education for Sustainable Development in some aspects still lacks concrete structural implementation in educational contexts. Using a longitudinal approach, we additionally compared data from an earlier representative assessment in 2007 to the data from 2019. In reference to the preceding evaluation report, the present study showed, for example, that teachers’ attitudes towards Sustainable Development Goals were significantly higher in 2019 compared to 2007. This study provides clarification of the needs and achievements of the Education for Sustainable Development implementation process. In sum, our analysis found that from the teachers’ perspective, more abstract policies are not needed, but instead teachers ask for very concrete support that is close to teaching and the schools’ objectives. The results of our study help, in a larger sense, to navigate society towards a more sustainable direction and towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by highlighting the remaining challenges of these broad objectives.
For the field of teacher education, a particularly wide discrepancy exists between (1) higher education discourses and policies advocating a wide diffusion of international dimensions, specifically of study-related mobility (such as Erasmus stays abroad), within higher education degree programs; (2) the ideals and demands placed upon teacher education graduates to possess relevant international competences and experiences in view of their role as multipliers and professionals in increasingly multicultural and global societies; and (3) the ground-level practices, as evidenced by comparatively low mobility rates in teacher education degree programs in Europe. The study reverts to the question where this discrepancy is actually produced and how it could be addressed, thereby closing a gap in student mobility and higher education internationalization research on the diffusion barriers at work in the field of teacher education.
The thesis is set in the field of international and comparative education, and pursues a multilevel and contextualized comparative approach, involving two strands of investigation: (1) a theory-based and process-oriented quantitative inquiry into relevant obstacles for eventual participation in study-related mobility among students in teacher education degree programs; (2) and a multilevel (policy, institutions/staff, students) inquiry into the trajectories of internationalization in teacher education, in view of current higher education internationalization models. By linking and contextualizing findings from different levels and investigation strands, the study draws conclusions and gives recommendations on ways to foster study-related mobility in teacher education degree programs. Through the study’s conceptualization of participation in study-related mobility as a process, and through its reflections on strategically managing internationalization, its findings are also relevant to the higher education sector in general.