The Exploration of Malaysian Pre-Service Science Teachers' Knowledge of Sustainable Development

In producing a young generation with good environmental literacy and contribute towards the exploit of sustainable development, teachers become a vital agent to impart the knowledge of sustainability and value in the classroom. Hence, this study is steered to explore the pre-service science teachers' knowledge of sustainable development concept and to find out how they incorporated knowledge of sustainability in their classroom during practicum training. By adopting mixed methods design, questionnaires were randomly distributed to 100 pre-service science teachers in the Faculty of Education, UiTM whilst 10 pre-service science teachers from the samples were purposely selected to involve in the interviews. The study found that in general, the pre-service science teacher possess moderate knowledge of the sustainable development concept and environmental-related issues as they were having difficulty to explain the term 'sustainable development.' This implied that, the possession of the knowledge is superficial and impart. The study also found that pre-service science teachers incorporated sustainability knowledge using two methods during their teaching practicum; first is by creating "green" classroom environment and second by integrating knowledge of sustainability into environmental-related topic in science. The study suggests that, science teacher training institution should enhance pre-service science teachers' knowledge of sustainable development and expose them to more interesting and effective techniques to incorporate knowledge of sustainability in teaching and learning.