Teacher Education and Sustainable Development: A Critical Review of the Policy-Practice Divide

It has been common knowledge that teacher education is key to the attainment of education and sustainable development, but the incorporation of sustainability in teacher preparation remains unbalanced and limited. The paper is a critical review of the recent literature in teacher education and sustainable development and how sustainability is conceptualised, operationalised, and constrained in teacher education programmes. Approximately 40 peer-reviewed publications and international policy documents were analysed thematically to inform this synthesis. The review applies peer-reviewed research and international policy models to identify the prevailing approaches to sustainability skills, pedagogical and institutional strategies, as well as to outline the common challenges encountered by the method, such as conceptual vagueness, lack of assessment capacity, disconnection between coursework and practicum, and dependence on small-scale projects. The results indicate that sustainability is usually addressed as a supplemental issue instead of being a fundamental organising principle of teacher education, which leads to a lack of evidence of sustainable changes to teaching practice. To make a meaningful step forward, the review proposes the need for whole-programme integration, enhancing the capacity of teacher educators, and conducting more longitudinal and context-sensitive research, especially in underrepresented areas, to make teacher education a long-term force of sustainable development.