Is Degrowth Education an Alternative in the Minds of Educators in the Face of the Serious Eco-Social Crisis and Global Warming?

Enrique-Javier Díez-Gutiérrez, José Jesús Trujillo Vargas, Ignacio Perlado-Lamo de Espinosa, Eva Palomo-Cermeño (), Luis-Miguel Mateos-Toro, Antonio Pérez-Robles, Luisa-María García-Salas and Kelly Romero Acosta
Additional contact information
Enrique-Javier Díez-Gutiérrez: Departamento de Didáctica General, Específicas y Teoría de la Educación, Facultad de Educación, Universidad de León, 24071 León, Spain
José Jesús Trujillo Vargas: Departamento de Educación, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, 26006 Logroño, Spain
Ignacio Perlado-Lamo de Espinosa: Departamento de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Alcalá, 28801 Madrid, Spain
Eva Palomo-Cermeño: Departamento de Estudios Históricos y Sociales, Lengua Española, Literatura, Filosofía Moral y Didácticas Específicas, Rey Juan Carlos University, 28942 Madrid, Spain
Luis-Miguel Mateos-Toro: Departamento de Didáctica, Centro de Magisterio Virgen de Europa, Universidad de Cádiz, 11300 La Línea de la Concepción, Spain
Antonio Pérez-Robles: Departamento de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales y las Matemáticas, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, 26006 Logroño, Spain
Luisa-María García-Salas: Departamento de Psicología, Centro de Magisterio Virgen de Europa, Universidad de Cádiz, 11300 La Línea de la Concepción, Spain
Kelly Romero Acosta: Education Department, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7, Canada

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: The aim of this research is to find out whether education students and professionals are aware of the seriousness of climate change and the environmental crisis and whether they receive training to deal with it in their professional future. More specifically, this study aims to analyze if they are aware of the degrowth proposal and consider they should train themselves and future generations in it to tackle this ecosystemic crisis profoundly. The methodology used was qualitative, through focused semi-structured in-depth interviews. The results of the data analysis, carried out with Atlas.ti, are structured around four dimensions: (a) Climate change, sustainability-consumption-social implications, (b) Growth, degrowth, collapse, (c) Personal attitudes towards caring for the planet and (d) Educating/training for degrowth. It is concluded that there is a general awareness concerning degrowth as a relevant issue and a possible alternative, but this is not applied in educational and curricular practice. The need to review the initial training plans for future teachers to introduce these elements is discussed. A limitation of this study is the scarcity of literature on degrowth in education and the need to expand the research sample in order to generalize the findings obtained in the research.

Keywords: degrowth; climate change; curriculum; teacher training; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/4/1668/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/4/1668/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:4:p:1668-:d:1593146

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().