Issues-Based Enquiry: An Enabling Pedagogy for ESD in Teacher Education and School Geography

Abstract

This chapter addresses the need for innovations in geography teacher education programmes in a developing world context. More specifically, it responds to the need for practical 'how to' examples for ESD integration into school geography by describing a pedagogical experiment that was piloted with in-service Namibian teachers and education development officers (EDOs) enrolled for a Bachelor of Education (Honours) degree in 2014. The theoretical constructs underpinning the experiment's design and pedagogical approach as well as the teacher professional development model are described. This is followed by a description and justification of the methodology used to answer the research question: 'How can issues-based enquiry enable the integration of ESD at the micro level of the classroom?' The findings of the experiment provide evidence of how issues-based enquiry, underpinned by active learning and constructivist epistemology and a model of teacher professional development located in reflexive practice, enabled the teachers to acquire foundational knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge for effective integration of ESD into school geography. This chapter may offer other teacher educators some guidelines on how to develop teacher capacity to integrate ESD into their own programmes.