Incorporating Education for Sustainable Development Into Teachers’ Continuous Professional Development Through Critical Environmental Agency

Educational reforms contend that to build vested student interest in sustainability issues, students need enhanced sustainability literacy skills. We believe that the connection between Education for Sustainable Development and public change in behavior and action will become more prevalent when students are afforded personal community-based connections to the environment. In this chapter, we discuss how the framework of Critical Environmental Agency could be used to align this personal connection with Education for Sustainable Development. We present a case study of a teacher professional development program as an example of how this alignment was strengthened, which led to enhanced content and pedagogical practices. The program was designed for middle school and high school science teachers from rural school districts in geographic regions whose watersheds flowed to the Gulf of Mexico. The challenges experienced by rural science teachers presented in this case study, though less severe, nod to the similar experiences of teachers of the Global South where perspectives of educators and learners need to be heard and valued. The findings from this study lead us to shift the way we plan for Continuous Professional Development experiences and work to encourage implementation in rural classrooms.