Preservice Teacher Environmental Education Capacities: What Is the Role of Ontario’s Faculties of Education?

Abstract

International advice on what teachers—including Canadian teachers—should know, believe and be able to do regarding environmental education (EE) was published as far back as 2005 in the guidelines and recommendations of the UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability. In Ontario, Canada, this became manifest in one of the few Canadian provincial EE policy frameworks, Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow. Though laudable, the framework provided minimal direction to faculties of education on the development of preservice teacher environmental education (PT-EE) capacities. (Preservice Teacher Environmental Education (PT-EE) is a term unique to the Ontario education context. The focus of the chapter is the “preservice teacher” and not teacher education, the more encompassing term. The authors have retained the original term as it appears in the CATE publication rather than applying the standardized term Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education (ESE-TE) used throughout the balance of this book volume). This chapter presents an argument for the development of PT-EE capacities, using a generic model of PT capacity involving PT “experiences/natures” and “competencies”. In particular, the chapter considers how PT-EE capacities may be described, identified and cultivated within teacher education programmes. The chapter also explores how PT-EE capacity may influence PT-EE programmes and how coordinated efforts at two levels of action—at the faculty level and beyond the faculty—may help institutionalise PT-EE capacities.