27 3.2 Teachers’ professional development 3.2.1 Experiences of professional development KEY FINDINGS • Less than 13% of respondents reported a focus on climate change and sustainability during their initial teacher education (ITE) and the largest proportion of these respondents teach geography and/or at secondary level. • Less than half of the respondents reported participating in formal professional development related to climate change and sustainability. • ‘Self-taught’ was the most commonly reported type of professional development related to climate change and sustainability. • Respondents who teach geography at any level of schooling reported that they had undertaken professional development related to climate change and sustainability more frequently than those who did not teach geography. • Respondents who teach science at any level of schooling were less likely to report that their ITE course included a focus on climate change and sustainability than those not teaching science. Respondents were asked to indicate the types of professional development related to climate change and sustainability that they had experienced. Overall, less than half of the respondents (44.9%) reported participating in formal professional development related to climate change and sustainability.18 Almost one quarter of the respondents (23.7%) reported that they had not participated in any professional development related to climate change and sustainability at all. Of those who had participated in related professional development, the most commonly reported type was ‘self-taught’ (70.5%). Further, amongst the cohort who had participated, only 12.6% of these respondents reported that their ITE included a focus on climate change and sustainability, with even fewer reporting participation in their first year post-qualification (3.6%). (Here, it is worth reiterating that respondents reported a wide range of years of teaching experience, therefore this finding relates to ITE over many years, not only to recent practice.) 18 In this instance, formal professional development includes: ‘Initial Teacher Education course included a specific focus on teaching about climate change and/or sustainability’; ‘formal training in teaching about climate change and/or sustainability education during my NQT/ECT year/first year of teaching’; ‘training (departmental, INSET, CPD) to support teaching related to climate change and/or sustainability’ (since becoming a teacher), and ‘training in climate change and/ or sustainability education offered by organisations from outside my school’ (since becoming a teacher). The reference to informal professional development includes ‘self-taught’.
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