Problem-focused, solution-oriented and transformative solution-oriented geography teaching in the context of ESD: comparison of three teaching approaches

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Janis Fögele; Dr. Nina Roczen
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565032774

Research on education for sustainable development (ESD) has long been concerned with which skills should and can be promoted through ESD. While relevant competence models cover a wide range of cognitive and motivational-affective aspects, it is primarily cognitive sub-competencies that have been empirically assessed and researched to date. In school practice, too, the focus is often primarily on cognitive skills. Neglecting non-cognitive aspects risks ignoring negative emotions, such as hopelessness or fear, that students may experience in dealing with global issues. This may also lead to a "knowledge-behavior gap" in which the knowledge acquired in class does not guide actual action. The proposed GeoLoT-BNE project addresses this critique and is dedicated to the development and investigation of an ESD teaching approach that specifically takes affective-motivational and action-related aspects into account in addition to cognitive skills. The overarching aim of the project is to investigate the students' experiences of different teaching approaches and their effect on the achievement in different ESD target dimensions. Specifically, three different approaches to ESD teaching will be contrasted: (a) the problem-focussed approach currently mainly implemented in geography teaching, (b) the innovative, but so far empirically untested solution-oriented approach and (c) a new approach to be developed, supplemented by elements of transformative learning, namely the transformative-solution-oriented approach. The project has a multi-method design in which quantitative and qualitative methods and results are integrated. Quantitatively, an experimental evaluation of the approaches and an analysis of the affective-motivational experiences in the course of the teaching units will be conducted. In addition, implicit orientations of the students will be qualitatively examined based on group discussions. On the one hand, the project aims to contribute to a better scientific grounding of existing practices in ESD-related geography education. On the other hand, it supports the design of more holistic transformative ESD lessons in practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Johannes Hartig