Developing a curriculum to begin to embed Education for Sustainable Development in primary undergraduate initial teacher education

The following paper will outline a small-scale case study carried out by a group of lecturers committed to developing a curriculum for global responsibility within an English Initial Teacher Education (ITE)institution. The context for this paper is an ITE provider operating in an educational environment where the content and teaching of the National Curriculum tends to be seen as the primary focus. We outline a three-week cross-curricular project based around the theme of sustainability, our starting point in developing a new curriculum, and present findings from students and tutors based on perceptions of their awareness and understanding of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through this project. Our findings suggest that there was demonstrable, though limited evidence of student engagement with ESD issues. However, the most encouraging outcome of the project was tutors developing their own knowledge of ESD and how it can and should be embedded across the curriculum.