Exploring Attitudes toward Sustainability Education in a Group of Italian Preservice Teachers: The Role of Environmental Identity and Sense of Community Responsibility

Abstract

In the current educational context, international institutions are being called to rethink education and declining new strategies that aim to teach sustainable behaviors. From this perspective, the present study aims to investigate the attitudes towards the sustainability of trainee teachers, verifying their connection with psycho-social variables, such as environmental identity and sense of community responsibility, and exploring their most common dispositions. In total, 126 Italian preservice teachers were involved in a mixed method study where they were asked to complete a questionnaire and participated in focus groups. The use of a combination of quantitative–qualitative methodologies has allowed us to obtain in-depth information about sustainability education. Quantitative data showed a virtuous circular relationship between environmental identity, attitudes towards education for sustainability, and the sense of community responsibility. Qualitative data showed the high frequency of two key action verbs, avoid and respect, but no specific reference to the educational field. After creating the target concept ‘to teach’, we observed a worrying absence of lemmas related to emotional dimension, and that the communication perspective is set on adults’ point of view, rather than on pupils. Limitations, strengths, and practical implications have been extensively discussed, especially in relation to the field of teacher education.