Sustainability education for trainee teachers: landscape and mirror classes as educational tools

Abstract

Under the sustainability education paradigm, the landscape has a key role as an identity object of study in the interaction between nature and society. This research is motivated by a practical experience with trainee teachers on the systematized analysis of local degraded landscapes in Spain. This study is based on environmental, sustainability, and global citizenship literacies—the guarantors of sustainability education. A mirror class methodology was implemented with the objective of evaluating the effectiveness of sustainability learning and the influence of students’ personal factors. A quasi-experimental methodology was followed through a didactic and statistical analysis of student reports and a validated questionnaire. The findings reveal a 2.9/4 global didactic evaluation, one that is higher in didactic tasks and lower in comparative ones, and a statistically significant learning acquisition of +0.8. The results suggest that the study of local landscapes captures interest and mirror classes bring distant realities closer, thus achieving a successful eco-social education and didactic transfer.