Authorship: Andrea del Carmen Corres Gallardo
Programme: Information and Knowledge Society
Lenguage: English
Supervisor: Dr Isabel Ruiz-Mallén
Departament / Institut: Doctoral School
Subjects: Social Sciences
Key words: sustainability, environmental education, competencies, digital technologies
Area of knowledge: Information and Knowledge Society
Abstract
The main research subject of this thesis is understanding the competences that educators in Environmental and Sustainability and Education (ESE) working in diverse learning settings (i.e., formal and non-formal) need to develop to make education more transformational in a global crisis context. This thesis contributes to this field of research by shedding light on how the different ways ESE competences are understood at the theoretical level and operationalized in practice can shape educators' transformational capacities in ESE while analyzing potential intrinsic and contextual influences in educators’ competences. The thesis also deals with the recent COVID-19 pandemic situation that forced educators to increase the use of digital technologies (DT) by examining how the resulting opportunities and challenges connect with their competences in ESE. Overall, my findings point out a dual necessity when developing educators' competences in ESE for a more transformational education: to strengthen the conceptual approach towards competences from the socio-emotional dimension of learning that are not currently addressed theoretically and, to guide more tailored and suitable future training developments for promoting these competences while considering the different educational contexts and particular challenges.