Teaching for Sustainable Futures: Prospects for Professional Growth for Educators

Dear Colleagues,

Teaching plays a fundamental role in advancing sustainable futures. The educator workforce across all education sectors is asked to include sustainability among the competing demands of curricula imperatives. Preservice and continuing educators need to be knowledgeable and well prepared to contribute to the education of their pupils who are the future custodians of the planet. This is a challenging remit given the interconnected planetary issues including water scarcity, food insecurity, inequality and climate change. The pivotal role of educators in preparing people of all ages to respond to these issues, reimagine what their future is as a global citizen, and who will commit to contributing to a more just knowledge society and sustainable future.

This Special Issue will explore some of these opportunities and explore approaches for incorporating sustainable futures in education by focusing on the critical role of teacher professional development. We invite articles that explore this focus including retheorising conceptions of how teachers understand sustainability, how they intersect with curriculum directives, teaching methods, leadership actions enable teacher growth and the foundation to build a deeper understanding of sustainable futures among their students. We are particularly interested in contributions that consider wide ranging aspects of teaching for planetary wellbeing.

A broad range of manuscripts are invited, including those with an emphasis on the following themes:

• Educators’ beliefs and knowledge that underpin their capacity to teach for a better future;
• Teacher development from across the career span for sustainable futures;
• Innovations in teacher preparation for sustainable futures;
• Professional development approaches;
• Collaborative approaches to the teacher education and continuing professional development;
• Didaktik and pedagogy in/for ESD;
• Key competencies for ESD;
• The importance of place-centred experiences for educators for sustainable futures;
• Psychological research on educators in their sustainable professional development;
• University curricula and sustainable futures;
• School and early childhood curricula and sustainable futures;
• Inclusive education and sustainable futures;
• The contributions of various disciplines, and interdisciplinary lenses including from environmental education to educator growth;
• Education for citizenship and social justice.

We encourage contributors to explore theoretical frameworks, present empirical studies, and share practical insights on the professional development of educators at all levels to work towards sustainable futures. Submissions should demonstrate a clear research methodology, present novel findings, and offer implications for both research and practice.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Jeana Kriewaldt
Dr. Sally Windsor
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• curriculum and sustainable futures
• education for sustainable development
• didaktik and sustainability
• key competencies
• inclusive education and sustainability
• environmental and geographical education
• citizenship and social justice education