33 4. Reflection: Opportunities for enhancing climate change and sustainability teaching in England This survey considers various features of the climate change and sustainability education landscape in England, with a particular focus on school-based teaching practice and related teacher professional development. Consistent with wider findings (e.g., Dawson et al., 2022), it finds that teachers of geography and science at the secondary level of schooling are the most likely to incorporate climate change and sustainability into their teaching, but it also reveals that teachers of other subjects are incorporating these topics, albeit to a lesser extent. It finds limited evidence that teacher professional development is available to support teachers of geography and science, or other subjects, to do more. If young people in England are to have access to education that equips them to live sustainably and respond to the climate crisis, a more expansive, whole-curriculum approach to climate change and sustainability education in schools is needed. It must afford young people access to disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, advanced critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities, and a wide range of experiences so they can make choices about how they respond to climate change and live sustainability. As we set out in the following reflection, this will require changes in the content that is taught, and in the cohort of teachers who are engaged and equipped to incorporate climate change and sustainability into their teaching. This survey, therefore, makes a valuable contribution in the way that it enables opportunities for supporting such change to be identified. This section draws from the analysis and the research literature to reflect on five key opportunities for enhancing related teaching: (1) Moving teacher professional development beyond the ‘self-taught’, (2) The untapped potential of initial teacher education, (3) Extending teachers’ practice outside the classroom, (4) Empowering school leaders, and (5) Building on the National Curriculum. 4.1 Moving teacher professional development beyond ‘self-taught’ This survey reveals significant gaps in professional development related to climate change and sustainability teaching. Less than half of the respondents (44.9%) reported participating in formal professional development related to climate change and sustainability, and nearly one quarter of the respondents (23.7%) reported no participation in professional development at all. These results are notable given that the respondents represent an engaged cohort of teachers with more than 81.5% reported that they ‘sometimes’, ‘often’ or ‘very often’ incorporate climate change and sustainability in their teaching. Perhaps more significantly, however, is that of those who reported participating in professional development, most reported that the type of professional development was ‘self-taught’ (70.5%).
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