Abstract
Most schools do not offer a standalone environmental course. It is the subject teachers’ responsibility to integrate environmental education into their teaching. School teachers therefore need to develop environment-related pedagogical content knowledge. This chapter proposes a conceptual framework for teacher knowledge: Environmental Pedagogical Content Knowledge (EPACK) and uses it to shed light on pre-service teacher education. Currently, most teacher education programs offer a series of workshops or an elective course to respond to the call for environmental education. However, given its hybrid nature, EPACK cannot be effectively developed solely through such a quick fix approach. Teacher education programs need to consider an integrated approach from Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) perspective within methods courses because these courses provide a meaningful context to teach ESD that is pedagogically situated in the teaching of subject matter. This argument leads to a blended model of teacher development for environmental and ESD proficiency.
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Zhou, G. (2015). Environmental Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Conceptual Framework for Teacher Knowledge and Development. In: Stratton, S., Hagevik, R., Feldman, A., Bloom, M. (eds) Educating Science Teachers for Sustainability. ASTE Series in Science Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16411-3_11
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