What do We Know About Teacher Educators’ Perceptions of Education for Sustainable Development? A Systematic Literature Review

Teacher educators prepare prospective teachers to deliver Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in schools. Lecturers’ personal perceptions of ESD guide them in this work. While there has been some research into lecturers’ perceptions of ESD in general, teacher educators as a group have been given scarcely any consideration. As groundwork for further research in this area, the research question that is the focus of this paper is: What do we know about teacher educators’ perceptions (understanding, attitudes, ideas about implementation) of ESD? We carried out a systematic literature review, including bibliographic analysis and qualitative content analysis of all the papers identified (N = 12). We found both broad and relatively limited understanding and mainly positive but also some negative attitudes. Common perceptions and/or experiences of barriers and drivers are set out below, as are reports on implementation. We conclude that further research is needed in this important field in order to develop measures to bring about systemic change in teacher education.