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Title:
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FIRST-YEAR TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS REFLECTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS ABOUT SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ENHANCING LEARNING PRACTICES |
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Author(s):
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Anu Liljeström, Henriikka Vartiainen, Petteri Vanninen, Jorma Enkenberg, Sinikka Pöllänen |
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ISBN:
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978-989-8704-00-9 |
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Editors:
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Theodora Issa, Nurfadhlina Mohd Sharef, Tomayess Issa and Pedro Isaías |
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Year:
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2013 |
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Edition:
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Single |
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Keywords:
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Learning ecosystem, Teacher education, Education for sustainability, OpenForest portal |
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Type:
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Full Paper |
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First Page:
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53 |
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Last Page:
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62 |
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Language:
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English |
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Cover:
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Full Contents:
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click to dowload 
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Paper Abstract:
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The priority objective of every society is to educate students to engage in creating a more sustainable future. In that, teachers play a crucial role. To meet the challenges, the goal of the present study was to investigate how first-year teacher education students (N = 121) reflect on, understand, and perceive the future of education for sustainable development. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire designed to measure the use of diverse environments, communities, and technology at different school levels and how student teachers perceive them as a part of their past learning experiences and future teaching. The results indicated that, during their school history, the student teachers have had very few experiences with learning in diverse physical environments or social and technological environments outside of the classroom. The earlier experiences also correlated strongly with the intended teaching. Furthermore, most of the student teachers perceived sustainable development only as an ecological phenomenon. This raises a challenge for teacher education programs to widen the student teachers perspectives on learning and teaching by involving them in real-life activities and work with communities situated outside the classroom and the lecture hall. New technology can serve as a great support in that type of enterprise. The findings provide grounds for developing teacher education practices and an open learning environment, the OpenForest portal, further to meet these challenges |
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