The Role of Teachers’ Competencies in Education of Sustainable Development

The education of sustainable development (ESD) in the curricula claims to foster students‘ability to take part in promoting sustainable development. A number of studies show that the implementation of sustainable development is highly demanding for teachers and requires specific knowledge and abilities. Hence, it is important to determine what competencies teachers need in order to develop and implement education of sustainable development and to attain specific educational goals with their students. ESD requires a specific and more constructive focus on teaching, which raises the question of building corresponding competencies in teachers’ education. Teachers have to gain the insight through constructivism, that acquiring competencies is a self-steered and active process, which can be fostered but not created. In this paper we present results from a research carried out in primary schools in North Macedonia aiming to assess the level of teachers’ competencies with respect to ESD. The objective of the study is to explore the perceptions and views on teachers’ competencies in relation to education of sustainable development. For this purpose as research instrument we have designed and applied an online questionnaire on separate samples of teachers and students. The gained results from the empirical analysis are used to promote the awareness amongst teachers about the development of ESD competencies in order to become more alive and integrated within the existing education curriculum.

Keywords: education for sustainable development (ESD), teachers’ competencies.