EVALUATION OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS OF HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS AS A KEY TO PROVIDING THE NEW GENERATIONS WITH A SAFE AND SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Abstract

Humanity currently faces the great challenge of achieving a safe and sustainable future to give future generations the opportunity to experience the quality of life they deserve; all inside the development of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations that define the world we want with ensure that no one is left behind. This objective implies an inescapable commitment to sustainability, which only can achieved if during the training of our new generations they receive an environmental education that fosters a high environmental awareness in them. However, to achieve this, it is unavoidable that high school teachers must be aware of environmental conservation and sustainability, because then they will be proactive enough to generate that intergenerational commitment to sustainability. The article evaluates the degree of environmental awareness of high school teachers in a Spanish city in order to know what the real situation of their commitment to the environment is; doing differentiated analysis by sex, educational level, age and area of knowledge of arts or science. Furthermore, the article analyses the opinion about whether environmental education for sustainability is the key to change to develop commitment to the environment among the new generations of students and, in consequence, proposes improvement actions to achieve the objective of a safe and sustainable future for the next generations.