Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainable Development Through WikiQuESD

UNESCO (2006) indicated that Faculties of Education and teacher training institutions, in particular, need to reorient their study programs to address the quest for Sustainable Development. The latter is an evolving and dynamic concept in terms of its conceptual definition. According to the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987, p. 43) “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In a recent panel review of 37 experts (Makrakis 2011, p. 411) sustainable development was consensually defined as “to making informed, contextual and conscious decisions driven by the principles of solidarity, justice, accountability, equity and transparency for the good of present and future generations, locally and globally and to act upon those decisions for advancing social, economic and environmental wellbeing.” The link between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and sustainable development is being addressed by extensive debates and research which recognize the challenge new technologies bring to the reorientation of education towards learning to live sustainably (Makrakis 2006, 2008, 2011; Paas 2008). Sustainable development is generally perceived as an overlapping of four pillars, dimensions or components, namely environment, society, culture, and economy. According to UNESCO (2005), environmental dimension encompasses key areas such as natural resources, climate change, rural transformation, sustainable urbanization, and disaster prevention and mitigation, while societal dimension embraces human rights, peace and human security, gender equality, indigenous knowledge, cultural diversity and intercultural understanding, health, HIV/AIDS, and governance. Economic dimension, by contrast, includes poverty reduction, corporate Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainable Development Through WikiQuESD