The research presented here focuses on Education for Sustainability into action. It is part of a larger research project with an ultimate goal of catalysing the process of curriculum change towards Sustainability.
A first stage of the project was based on a collaborative study of the teaching guides of the specializations of experimental science (Biology-Geology and Physics-Chemistry) from the Master’s Degree in Secondary Education Teaching at the Universitat de València (Spain). An analysis, searching for terms related to Sustainable Development/Sustainability, as well as for those competences identified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and for the 17 Goals of Sustainable Development (GSDs) in the United Nations 2030 Agenda was carried out from an Action/Research methodological approach searching for deficiencies and opportunities to improve the teaching guides by including Sustainability issues.
This paper shows the results of these analyses and secondly focuses on the positive changes that have been carried out thanks to this collaborative work. During the 2017-18 academic year the number of references to Sustainability in the teaching guides increased: as a result of the reflections of the teachers involved and the research team of the project, the teaching guides were modified, including, among other things, the explicit mention to the GSDs 2030, in both specializations. It is also worth mentioning the involvement of pre-service teachers of experimental sciences in research in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), as well as in designing, testing and evaluating activities to include attention to Sustainability in Secondary school. Part of the interest arisen among students is increasingly reflected in some Master's Degree Thesis developing research and educational proposals focused on ESD
