Shifting Practices, Shaping Futures

Translating ESD into Teacher Education Practice

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Education for sustainable development; teacher education; practice theory

Abstract

This case study reconstructs how identical ESD policy directives produce divergent practices in Germany’s second phase of teacher education, conducted in Studienseminare where seminar leaders (teacher educators) mentor trainees and prepare them for state examinations. Narrative interviews with ten seminar leaders from one federal state were conducted and analyzed using the documentary method, distinguishing communicative from conjunctive knowledge. For this article, two contrasting cases were chosen. They reveal divergent practices under shared governance conditions: Case 1 integrates ESD as subject-specific curriculum analysis within established teaching routines; Case 2 develops project-based approaches despite partial curriculum integration limits. Seminar leaders’ conjunctive orientations constitute these divergent practice configurations: Case 1 frames “teacher education as preparation for teaching”, marginalizing ESD as supplementary; Case 2 exhibits “teacher education as praxis-induced attitude change”, embedding ESD within iterative project-reflection routines. These carrier-level mechanisms suggest policy translation hinges on practical knowledge rather than formal mandates alone. The findings advance practice theory by illuminating orientation-driven practice divergence in educational governance and raise questions about practice transfer across professionalization phases.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Paula Jäger
AU  - Anne-Kathrin Lindau
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/23
TI  - Shifting Practices, Shaping Futures
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference of Growing up the Future: Education for Sustainability (GROUFES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 213
EP  - 221
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_18
ID  - Jäger2026
ER  -