Ecological sustainability in Austrian and British geography textbooks
Abstract
This paper discusses and compares the thematic representation of ecological sustainability in the frame of education for sustainable development (ESD) in British and Austrian lower secondary geography textbooks. For this purpose, two textbook series from each of the two countries have been selected and analyzed by using a qualitative content analysis. The findings suggest a topical focus of the Austrian textbook series on the subject of agriculture in connection to resource use, whereas the British sample emphasizes topics related to the Earth’s service function (Maude, 2014). The British textbooks offer a problem-based and contextualized approach to topics related to ecological sustainability, which corresponds to ESD claims. The Austrian textbooks, on the other hand, provide neither sufficient reference to geographical content knowledge regarding climate change and global warming, nor enough contextual information to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of ecological sustainability issues. Both textbook series reveal shortcomings with regard to addressing learners’ experience realms and fail to establish a connection between consumer behavior, production processes and associated negative repercussions on climate and the environment. Finally, all textbooks demonstrate a lack of pluralistic and in particular ecocentric views.References
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