inTuition taster: Making ESD relevant

In the ever-evolving landscape of Further Education (FE) and Skills, CPD is essential for enhancing teaching and student outcomes. However, traditional top-down CPD models, often led by senior management or external agencies, have been criticised for limiting teacher autonomy and failing to address educators’ unique needs.

This article, based on a doctoral research study, explores the importance of teacher agency in CPD, arguing that empowering educators to shape their own learning leads to sustainable improvements in teaching practice.

It presents case studies of alternative CPD models, focusing on collaborative and teacher-led initiatives, which embed teacher agency within CPD frameworks through a participatory, ground-up approach.

These models, when employed in the right spirit, offer a more effective and engaging professional development experience, fostering collaboration and autonomy in CPD, which can enhance teacher development and the overall quality of education in FE and Skills institutions.

Theoretical framework

Teacher agency is defined as the capacity of educators to act purposefully and reflectively within their professional environments (Priestley et al, 2015). It encompasses the autonomy teachers have in making decisions about their professional practice and the learning opportunities they engage with to develop this.

I am not the most sustainable person. I might get the bins wrong and not always recycle, I might occasionally shop from Shein and opt for next-day delivery (emergency only), and I absolutely eat meat! I am not here to preach to you about living your ‘best sustainable life’. However, I do teach within the Further Education (FE) and skills sector where promoting education for sustainable development (ESD) is increasing in prominence.

As our planet undergoes rapid environmental, social and economic changes, lifelong learning and high-quality education are essential in preparing for a sustainable future. UNESCO (2020: 8) explains how ESD “empowers learners with knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to take informed decisions and make responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society, empowering people of all genders, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity”.

This quote suggests that ESD goes beyond the typical subject content within programmes of study offered in FE. So, as teachers in the sector, how do we excite, engage and motivate our learners to want to learn about these things, and how do we do this when we are not necessarily experts in sustainability?

My journey in ESD began in 2021, where I co-designed a project with a horticulture teacher to promote sustainable practices through a fashion show. Fast-forward four academic years, and I am now leading on ‘embedding sustainability’ within my role as an advanced practitioner, and in my third academic year undertaking action research projects with sustainability at their core. Nearing the end of my Technical Teaching Fellowship (TTF), I’m also investigating how sustainability concepts can be integrated into existing vocational and technical programmes.

My interest in sustainability has stemmed from fashion, the subject I have lived and breathed since I was 16. Sustainability in this context is not just about carbon footprints, recycling and turning the lights off. In fashion terms, it is about greenwashing, transparency and conscious consumerism, and this is where my knowledge, skills and values with regards to sustainability have been shaped.

Ultimately, my engagement and interest in these principles of sustainability stem from my subject specialism and none of this has been ‘extra’.

In this article, I aim to show how contextualising ESD in your subject areas can improve awareness and motivate your learners for a sustainable future.Having an impact

In my experience, incorporating sustainability within education appears to result in content that is fragmented, inconsistent and often seen as an optional topic rather than a key curriculum component. It is evident from professional development sessions and workshops I have delivered that most educators have a preconception of sustainability, associating it purely with the planet and environment.

We can all tick the ‘sustainability box’ by saying we will upload our resources for learners to access as opposed to printing full-colour copies, or turn the lights off as we leave the classroom. However, these stereotypical associations with sustainability hold little long-term value, will attract minimal engagement from learners and disregard natural opportunities for promoting subject specific sustainability. As a reader, ask yourself:

• Do you feel confident in embedding sustainability within your curriculum design?
• Can you confidently dissect sustainability into its wider parameters to recognise those natural opportunities within your subject specialism?

As a global issue, we have a moral duty to promote and raise awareness of sustainability. But, ultimately, as dual professionals, our goal is the development of our teaching practices and our subject specialist practices, whether vocational, technical or academic (ETF, 2018). Therefore, in most cases, we are not (nor are there expectations that we should be) ‘sustainability experts’.

Seldom is there training to become so, and this makes it difficult for educators to have the confidence to integrate relevant concepts of sustainability into their teaching, and leads to missed opportunities to foster contextualised sustainable practices. This is not helped by the sheer breadth of areas that sustainability covers, as can be seen in the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Suggestion 1: Simplifying sustainability

Frewen and Bonner (2024) advocate ESD as a holistic framework rather than an isolated topic for a single ‘green project’ or ‘green lesson’. One such framework is to consider the SDGs, although a more simplified framework is the 3Ps – people, planet and profit.

‘People’ focuses on human wellbeing, such as poverty, zero hunger, good health and inequalities. ‘Planet’ hones in on the protection and restoration of natural resources, such as clean water, affordable energy and climate action. ‘Profit’ promotes sustainable growth, such as decent work, industry innovation and responsible consumption and production.

ESD aims to help learners understand the interconnectedness of the 3Ps, extending beyond initial conceptions that sustainability solely refers to ‘saving the planet’. Too often this stereotypical assumption results in subject areas failing to recognise opportunities to embed and promote sustainability.

This broader understanding of sustainability allows for a more holistic approach and may provide opportunities to consider interdisciplinary knowledge and skills. Topics we may not initially have realised have any resonance with sustainability may actually be concerned with – or promote – sustainable practices.

Suggestion 2: The power of contextualisation

The ETF (2025) advocates for ESD to be delivered as part of a core subject specialism, rather than as parallel standalone content. Freud (2024) advocates that we will never get anywhere in normalising sustainable actions if we modularise sustainability, emphasising that educating about sustainability is not the same as education for sustainability.

I am confident that most of you would switch off from a topic if it held no personal resonance for you, in the same way our learners need to see the relevance of their learning with their lives and aspirational careers to feel remotely attached and interested in it.

Research in other fields, such as Claire (2023), highlights that when content reflects learners’ daily lives, personal interests and aspirational careers, motivation and engagement are ignited, and learners can retain new information when it is connected to prior knowledge.

We all feel more at ease when content is familiar, so when the SDGs are contextualised to subjects educators already master (and learners have chosen to study), there is the opportunity to ignite an initial sense of security to explore sustainability without feeling overwhelmed by unfamiliar content. Contextualisation holds the potential to demystify sustainability, which in turn can encourage natural integration into curriculum design.

Practitioner research, part 1

Always an advocate of ‘practice what you preach’, and keen to solidify my theory to further gain buy-in from other teams and individuals, I piloted an initial project for eight weeks with Level 2 creative media learners as part of their tutorial programme to both simplify and contextualise sustainability.

The first four weeks introduced the learners to sustainability (the 3Ps) while the second four weeks saw the production of a collaborative media campaign to promote the 17 SDGs that launched during ‘Green Week’ at the college.

Learners were each allocated an SDG for them to research further (I was lucky that the group had 17 learners in). This was to include an overview of the specific goal and its primary aim, a minimum of five key facts and one top tip that people could do to contribute to the achievement of the goal. Learners had creative freedom over the aesthetic of these; the only guideline was using the colour corresponding to the SDG logo so that when pulled together as a campaign there was cohesion.

Prior to the research, when asked “Do you think creative media is about sustainability?” only 18 per cent of learners initially agreed. When asked again following the eight-week tutorial programme, 100 per cent agreed and elaborated with examples as to how or why they thought this including references to marketing, production, social media and promotion.

For example: “Sustainability is not just about the planet but also the people, infrastructure and economy. We learnt about the economic, cultural, social and environmental elements of sustainability. At the start I was unsure, then as the project progressed, I got into it. At the end, I was really interested” (Level 2 creative media learner).

Over the weeks, it was evident that learners’ perceptions of the relationship between creative media and sustainability evolved significantly. This suggests that with increased education, through promotion of the SDGs and a contextualised project aligned to their chosen vocation, understanding of the interconnectedness between their subject specialism and sustainability can drastically improve (by 82 per cent, to be precise).

Practitioner research, part 2

Alongside my own pilot study in practice, my advanced practitioner role enabled me to carry out research with a wide range of educators across the college. During the 2024/25 academic year, 88 educators took part in an ESD professional development (PD) session.

These sessions, although similar in content, were contextualised to curriculum areas (to model what I was promoting) and focused on the use of the 17 SDGs and the 3Ps as two frameworks to dissect to recognise opportunities for contextualisation within subject areas. In addition, bespoke PD was offered on a one-to-one basis, which included working with educators to identify how they were already promoting sustainability through their planning and resources, and dissection of core subject-specific content in line with the 17 SDGs and 3Ps. This was supplemented by informal observations and feedback specific to ESD.

At the beginning of all PD sessions, it came to light that there was a greater recognition among educators of the 17 SDGs in comparison to the 3Ps (probably because I have been championing the goals for the last three academic years). However, despite this, as expected, there was a preconception among educators that ESD was primarily an environmental concern.

This narrow understanding can overshadow important social and economic elements, which can seamlessly align with subject specialisms. The PD sessions aimed to dispel these preconceptions by providing contextualised examples and through the modelling of teaching practices that promote ESD. For example, several of the teaching and learning strategies I had opted to use in these PD sessions were naturally promoting sustainability, allowing educators to reflect on and recognise how they are already promoting sustainability within their subject areas, often without realising.

These sessions included group work and collaborative mind-mapping that encouraged educators to work together, think critically, problem-solve and communicate with others – all essential skills for lifelong learning, employment and contribution to society. People and profit boxes were ticked on our 3Ps framework; as well as SDGs 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, all without even having to mention climate change.

This supported the educators in recognising that sustainability is also about nurturing a mindset that values social, environmental and economic wellbeing. Feedback suggested the session was effective in boosting confidence and raising awareness of current contributions to the promotion of sustainability. For example, one educator, an inclusion teacher, highlighted how “the tasks in the session supported us to recognise what we are already doing to promote sustainability”.

At the end of each session, using a Likert scale (1 being not at all and 5 being extremely), educators were asked: “How confident would you feel in promoting sustainability in context to (subject specialism)?” They were also asked to justify their response. Following the sessions, 80 per cent of educators rated themselves as a 4 or above, with responses further supporting the idea that contextualisation to subject areas is a more effective way to develop learners’ knowledge, skills and values in this important topic. For example: “I find it easier to explain sustainability in context rather than generally” (engineering teacher) and “[contextualisation is] more relatable to the students” (inclusion teacher).

Recommendations for practice

Gjerris (2023) asserts that “there is no such thing as sustainable education, only sustainability within our education”. This really resonates with my vision of ESD as part of what it means to be a dual professional in FE. For me, it starts with simplifying and contextualising sustainability, not seeing it as a bolt-on, and this can be seen through my research.

Feedback from both educators and learners emphasise the importance of relevance in learning about sustainability. Teachers believe that when learners see the direct relevance to their subjects or careers, they are more engaged. Similarly, learners find sustainability more engaging when it aligns with their personal interests. Enhanced engagement is seen as complementary to relevance, indicating that relatable contexts help learners absorb and retain information better.

There are several recommendations for others in the FE and skills sector. Learners need to be able to recognise the alignment with sustainability for authenticity, not just so that educators can ‘tick a box’ on their planning documents. As educators become more familiar with sustainability and its components, it is vital that learners are also ‘upskilled’.

An initial introduction to either the 17 SDGs or the 3Ps frameworks would be an effective way to start an academic year: What do learners already know? Do they consider the subject to be concerned with sustainability? Are they interested in sustainability? Like everything, routine is key. Displaying your chosen framework on delivery PowerPoints will aid with familiarity and recognition – the more we see something, the more it resonates and makes connections.

Insights gained from PD sessions indicate the importance of ongoing professional development to support educators in recognising both the 17 SDGs and the 3Ps in context to their curriculum. Continued efforts in this area will help maintain and further enhance educators’ confidence and ability to integrate sustainability into their teaching practices, regardless of the subject. A useful starting point is the ETF’s (2025) subject-specific ESD case studies.

Dissection of the frameworks in context to subject areas is required with curriculum teams to maximise relevance, identify where current practice is already supporting the promotion of both the 17 SDGs and the 3Ps, and consider where further integration could occur to foster a holistic approach to sustainable education.

How confident do you feel embedding sustainability into your subject area? Let us know through the survey.

References

Claire A. (2023) Teaching literacy in elementary grades using literature contextualization and classical and contemporary literature. Cordova Public College.

Education Training Foundation. (2018) Dual professional toolkit. See: et-foundation.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Dual-Professional-toolkit_2.pdf

Education Training Foundation. (2025) Case studies. See: et-foundation.co.uk/resources/esd/esd-resources/esd-in-different-subject-areas

Freud B. (2024) We measure what we value. See: coconut-thinking.com/2024/04/12/we-measure-what-we-value

Frewin C and Bonner C. (2024) Sustainability in the curriculum: why we don’t need to sacrifice content to prepare for tomorrow. FE News. See: b.link/ewkgkwax

Gjerris M. (2023) Hope as the engine of change. Sustainable Education Summit, Coventry.

UNESCO. (2020) Education for sustainable development: a roadmap. See: unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374802.

Sophie Harris FSET is a 2024 ETF Technical Teaching Fellow and an experienced advanced practitioner for vocational and technical education delivering T Levels, BTEC, UAL and EAL.

Views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SET.