Environmental Education in Teacher Education in India: Experiences and Challenges in the United Nation's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Overview & Synopsis

Recognizing the need and importance of environmental education (EE) in India, recently several efforts have been made to reorient and reorganize school education and establish EE more formally. School textbooks, in all subjects and at all levels, have been revised to integrate environmental concepts. The effects of these curricular revisions will not be sustained unless they are coupled with appropriate changes in teacher education curricula. Efforts have been made to develop curriculum and other support materials for introducing EE at all four levels of teacher education in the country. Incorporating EE in teacher education involves deliberating several issues relating to content, learning and teaching methodologies, materials development and capacity building requirements for its effective implementation. This paper, by reviewing some exemplar experiences from India, seeks to examine the focus given to EE in teacher education and the challenges for teacher education in achieving the goals of sustainable development in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD).