(Education for) Sustainable Development in Geography Education: review and outlook from a perspective of Germany

Nearly 15 years after the Rio Conference and 10 years after the Lucerne Declaration on Geographical Education for Sustainable Development we are interested to what extent the goals of this declaration have been implemented? What role does Geography play in Education for Sustainable Development in hi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of geography in higher education Vol. 42; no. 2; pp. 157 - 173
Main Authors Sprenger, Sandra, Nienaber, Birte
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Routledge 03.04.2018
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
College Programs
Colleges & universities
Curriculum Evaluation
Data mining
Education
Education for sustainable development (ESD)
Educational Objectives
Foreign Countries
Fundamental Concepts
Geography
Geography Instruction
Germany
Heterogeneity
Higher Education
Human Geography
implementation
Modules
Program Development
Program Effectiveness
Program Implementation
Sustainability
Sustainable Development
Teacher Education
Teacher Improvement
Teacher Qualifications
Teachers
Technical colleges
Training
Universities
university study programs
Germany
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Summary:Nearly 15 years after the Rio Conference and 10 years after the Lucerne Declaration on Geographical Education for Sustainable Development we are interested to what extent the goals of this declaration have been implemented? What role does Geography play in Education for Sustainable Development in higher education? We analyzed the modules of 107 degree programs with Geography as a degree major or as a teacher training subject at 55 German universities, technical colleges and universities of education. We conducted a quantitative text analysis in which we searched the key words "Sustainability", "Sustainable Development", "Education for Sustainable Development" and "Nature-Society Studies" in the Module Regulations. Our data indicate great heterogeneity between the degree programs. The key words were predominantly found in majors in "Human Geography", "Geography" and teacher training programs for "academic high schools". Aspects of the results considered in the paper include: (a) differences in the orientation of degree programs, (b) varying degree of implementation in the modules, (c) different conceptual understanding of the principles of sustainability, (d) the extent to which concepts of Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development are mixed, (e) heterogeneity between mandatory courses and electives.
ISSN:0309-8265
1466-1845
DOI:10.1080/03098265.2017.1379057