Teacher Education for Sustainable Development

Education for sustainable Development (ESD) is a vision that seeks to empower people to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future. It aims at improving access to quality basic education, reorienting education curricula, training and raising public awareness as well as helping people to develop the behaviors, skills and knowledge they need, now and in the future (UNESCO, 2002). The implementation of education for sustainable development (ESD) demand for a review of the current epistemological and pedagogical practices in the context of the objectives of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). All of us should embark on this strategic and essential odyssey that will give our future generations a better world to live in. But as Henry Ford says: “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself” and as the old sayings states: “Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success. Existing ways of educating students will have to change so that education and training is made more creative, relevant and above all, adaptive. To succeed in a changing and complex world, school communities need to grow, develop, deal with and take charge of change so that they can create a future of their own choosing and preparing students to play their roles as effective agents of change. Research has shown that in order to ensure deep, broad, and long lasting reforms of the type envisioned by the UN Decade for Sustainable Development, sustainable leadership of schools must be a priority. Hereupon role of competent and efficient teachers are indispensable in the realization of educational goals the world over. Due to their central role, teachers at all levels require effective and sufficient training to be able to adequately carry out their roles and responsibilities. This confirms the fact that teacher education is an important driver for sustainable development since literally every knowledgeable and skilled individual in micro and macro productive activity has been shaped in some ways by the contribution of a teacher. It is thus important that teacher education programmes are crafted in a manner to energize their impact on the learners and humanity in general. The training of teachers must be given the required attention by the government through relevant and functional teacher education programmes because teachers provide the required competence, skills, knowledge and ideas that would transform them into efficient and useful member of the community he belongs to. It is against this background that this paper focuses attention on objectives, teaching and pedagogical techniques, challenges and barriers and role of teachers in education for sustainable development.