Transforming Teacher Education for the 21st Century: Developing Relevant Competences
for a Changing World

 2. Science Education, Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE), Mauritius)

Abstract: The UN adopted the sustainable development goals in 2015 and emphasized that education is a powerful driver for achieving them by ensuring an inclusive quality education and promoting life-long opportunities for all. Thus, for teacher education programmes to be relevant, it should develop the capacity of teachers to achieve these two objectives. This paper documents the development and implementation of an ESD teacher education programme in Southern African. The paper argues for empowering the 21st century teacher with appropriate ESD compliant resources coupled with an integrated pedagogical approach into “agents of change” who are essential for the transformation of learning processes in Southern African. Furthermore, it will provide insights related to the relevance of the programme in Southern African and will highlight the issues and challenges faced with regard to existing institutional and national education policies. A mixed methodology approach was adopted using a participatory action research through multiple case study model drawing from data generated through personal experiences, interviews, observations and documents analysis, sample in-depth cases of practitioner experiences were constructed. The paper will use a selected case study to illustrate the transformative teaching and learning approaches. Based on these findings, some practical recommendations for better results are discussed and a suggestion is included for future research.