Diffusing Education for Sustainability into Teacher Education Programme in Nigeria: A Theory in Use

Abstract

The benefits of integrated understanding of the issues, acquisition of the knowledge and the skills, understanding of the right perspectives, and development of appropriate values in respect of the intertwined actions and reactions of environment, economy and society make Education for Sustainability(EfS) an innovation that must be explored – more importantly for communication within the formal education sector, because such learning may be more sustainable than the one received through the informal system. This paper therefore explores an application of the “Diffusion of Innovation Theory” which identifies information, its communication, the social system and time as the four essential elements involved in the dissemination of information about an emerging problem; and in this context, an education that combines the study of development and environment as the innovation that should be communicated within the formal education sector, using the socially critical orientations and based on negotiations between the teacher and the recipients(learners). The paper thus reflects on the educational implications of the theory and suggests that curriculum of teacher education institutions must be reviewed to accommodate the learning content of EfS (e.g. climate change, green economy, democracy equity and social justice, structural change, reclamation of social bonds, waste disposal/management/recycling) and theorising more on learner -friendly approaches, so as to have a trickle down effects on the younger generation of school children who are the final recipients of environment and development-related education.