FUTURE TEACHERS OF BIOLOGY IN THE SPHERE OF EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Introduction of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is one of the vectors of the development of modern education, driven by the needs of society to ensure sustainable development. Today, preparing future biology teachers to implement ESD is an integral part of their professional training and an important direction in reforming higher pedagogical education. In the draft of higher education standard for specialty 014.05 Secondary Education (Biology) such special competence of future biology teachers as “the ability to understand and implement the strategy of sustainable human development in the process of teaching and upbringing students” has been determined. In our opinion, the statement accumulates the competence of ESD and provides training future biology teachers to implement the functions of education for sustainable development. The above-mentioned statement of competence includes cognitive (the ability to understand the strategy of sustainable development), activity-oriented (ability to implement the strategy of sustainable development) and personal components. Formation of the cognitive component of the competence in question provides for the implementation of the cognitive function of ESD. Activity-oriented component calls for the technological function of ESD while the personal element implies educational part. The distinguished components of the competence of future biology teachers, namely “the ability to understand and implement the strategy of sustainable human development in the process of teaching and upbringing students” are formed and operate on two interrelated levels: personal and professional. In addition, the article outlines the programmatic results of each component of the competence in consideration. Thus, such competence of future biology teachers as “the ability to understand and implement the strategy of sustainable human development in the process of teaching and upbringing students” is an important structural component of the professional competence of a modern biology teacher. The conditions for its emergence are comprised of societal need for training its citizens. Future areas of modern pedagogical research in this area should be the development and implementation of a pedagogical system for the formation of competences of biology teachers with regard to ESD, in particular such competence as “the ability to understand and implement the strategy of sustainable human development in the process of teaching and upbringing students”.