Environmental Education toward Sustainable Development: Training Early-Ages Pre-Service Teachers to Design Their Own Scientific Didactic Proposals

This study was implemented with 540 early-ages pre-service teachers during three academic courses in Spain. Students designed their own didactic proposals with environmental education aim toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Countless initiatives are being implemented at all educational levels around the world to include these SDGs in didactic programs. However, traditional teaching methods are sometimes insufficient to achieve a “proactive attitude” toward environmental problems by pupils. Certain characteristics of teaching and learning in the early-ages are exploration, motivation, curiosity, questioning, dialogue, collaboration, and reasoning to establish connections between scientific concepts and their environment. Therefore, the study was induced by the interest of introducing scientific methodology to achieve environmental education aims. The design of scientific didactic proposals was helpful for early-years prospective teachers to acquire environmental education skills toward SDGs. They increased their knowledge regarding environmental issues and their feeling of moral obligation to protect the environment and self-reported pro-environmental behavior, being aware of their role as educators. However, future experiences will be specially intended to enhance the importance of met a cognitive and emotive learning in pupils, including observation, identification, argumentation, and discussion