Environmental and sustainability issues prevail in modern society. Southern Africa, where this study is based, is one of the regions most at risk from intersecting issues of climate health risk, and poverty-related ills. Education has the potential to facilitate catalytic transformation of society through development of understandings of these intersecting environment and sustainability concerns, and to support engagements in more sustainable social practices oriented towards the common good. This requires a rethinking of education within a wider common good frame. It also has implications for how quality education is considered. However, little is said of how this could be done, especially in teacher education. The paper shares two cases of teacher educators’ change project experiences, as they emerged via professional development support and the mediatory processes applied in courses conducted by the Southern African Development Community Regional Environmental Education Programme (SADC REEP) aimed at enhancing professional capacity of teacher educators and other environmental educators for mainstreaming environment and sustainability education (ESE). These courses are framed using a change project approach, and involve teacher educators as main participants. In-depth data were generated from interviews with two teacher educators, their assignment write-ups, and observations of their teacher education practice. Realist social theory, particularly the principle of emergence, was used to trace the emergence of change in teacher education practice. Sociocultural learning theory was used to explain mediation of learning-oriented changes in teacher education practice. We illustrate how the change project model and approach contributed to mediating change in practice, showing emergent attributes of capacity for mainstreaming ESE and elements of a concept of quality education among course participants oriented towards the common good. In conclusion, we argue that ESE seems to be a sensitising construct for initiating and sustaining change for ESE in teacher education. In addition, the change project has proved to be a potential vehicle for mainstreaming the notion and practice of ESE into social systems and teacher education 1 In this paper we use the term, environment and sustainability education (ESE), to indicate that it includes an emphasis on environmental education(EE), and education for sustainable development (ESD). ESE, as used in this paper, includes a strong focus on the interrelated nature of environmental, societal, political, and economic concerns, and the way in which this term is used is oriented towards the wider common good.

中文翻译：

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南部非洲师范教育背景下环境与可持续教育的兴起：一个共同的关注点

在现代社会中普遍存在环境和可持续性问题。这项研究所基于的南部非洲是受气候健康风险和贫困相关疾病相交问题影响最大的地区之一。通过发展对这些相互交织的环境和可持续性问题的理解，教育有可能促进社会的催化转型，并支持参与面向共同利益的更可持续的社会实践。这就需要在更广泛的共同利益框架内重新考虑教育。这也对如何考虑素质教育有影响。但是，关于如何做到这一点，尤其是在师范教育方面，人们知之甚少。本文分享了两个案例，介绍了教师教育者的变革项目经验，它们是通过专业发展支持和在南部非洲发展共同体区域环境教育计划（SADC REEP）举办的课程中应用的中介程序而出现的，旨在提高教师教育者和其他环境教育者的专业能力，将环境和可持续性教育（ESE）纳入主流。这些课程采用变革项目的方法进行构架，并邀请教师教育者作为主要参与者。深入的数据来自对两名教师教育者的访谈，他们的作业记录以及对他们教师教育实践的观察。现实主义的社会理论，特别是出现的原理，被用来追踪教师教育实践中变化的出现。社会文化学习理论被用来解释在教师教育实践中以学习为导向的变化的中介作用。我们说明了变革项目模型和方法如何促成实践中的变革，展示了在面向共同利益的课程参与者中，将ESE主流化的能力的新兴属性以及素质教育概念的要素。总之，我们认为ESE似乎是启动和维持ESE在教师教育中的变革的敏感构造。此外，事实证明，变革项目是将ESE的概念和实践纳入社会系统和教师教育主流的一种潜在手段。在本文中，我们使用术语“环境与可持续性教育（ESE）”来表示它包括一个重视环境教育（EE），以及可持续发展教育（ESD）。本文使用的ESE尤其关注环境，社会，政治和经济问题的相互关联性质，并且该术语的使用方式面向更广泛的共同利益。