Meta-Review of a Collection of Papers: Teacher Education and Future Sustainability - A synthesis of formative research papers towards a Handprint learning action approach to ESD informing teacher education

Abstract

Editor’s note:

This meta-review of a collection of papers is a fairly unusual paper for the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education. Normally one would have a Book Review as a review paper in a Journal. However, this meta-review is interesting, because it is a collection of papers (see Appendix A) that were compiled by a team of researchers over an extended period of time, as they wrote up the research they were doing to inform a Handbook for Teacher Education. The Handbook entitled Handprints for Change: A teacher education handbook – Activating handprint learning actions in primary schools and beyond was published in 2022 (Sarabhai, Henze, O’Donoghue, Sandoval-Rivera & Shimray, 2022) and is mainly a collaboration between global South partners working in the ESD ExpertNet project (ESD ExpertNet, n.d), produced with German collaboration. A comprehensive and very useful review of this Handbook was recently published in the South African Journal of Science in a piece entitled Activating handprints, not footprints by Caleb Mandikonza (2024). Readers can download the Handbook, and the Review of the Handbook (see reference list), and then read this review of the papers that were put together and published by the Handbook author team as they prepared the Handbook. This process is instructive for SAJEE readers, as it shows us how important it is for a Handbook for Teacher Education to be research-led / research informed. It also makes explicit the reasoning that went into the design and development of the Handbook for Teacher Education. It is further very useful for post-graduate scholars and researchers who wish to research aspects of ESD and teacher education informed by the Handbook, or if they are considering doing teacher education research, to inform themselves on the latest thinking in ESD, based on global South scholarly work.

Abstract
This meta-review paper provides a reflective overview of a set of 20+ papers (see Appendix A) that were drafted to inform a handprint learning action approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The research reflected on was undertaken through an international collaboration in the ESD ExpertNet partnership involving researchers from India, South Africa, Germany and Mexico. The research helped to inform collaborative work to design and develop a Handbook for Teacher Education, which makes the ESD handprint learning action approach to ESD explicit for teachers. The handbook was informed by theoretical and practical research in Mexico, South Africa, Germany and India. The handprint action approach was first developed and launched in India, then taken up by learning materials and curriculum activities in South Africa, and was enriched to expanded practical research in Mexico and Germany. Over time, the collaborating researchers documented their research in a series of papers, which we reflect on here. We start with a reflection on the starting points, the practical research activities undertaken and the co-design and deepening of our understanding of the handprint action approach to ESD, and the work we did to co-develop this with teachers and teacher educators, and later make this more explicit for its implications for teacher education, captured then in a Handbook for Teacher Education titled Handprints for change: A teacher education handbook – Activating handprint learning actions in primary schools and beyond (Sarabhai et al., 2022). This meta-review paper should be read in conjunction with the papers that are collated in Appendix A.