In my master's thesis I researched possibility of integrating sustainable education into fine art pedagogy studies at The Faculty of Education in Ljubljana. Since 2014, The Faculty has been involved in the Eco school program, which actively strives to raise awareness, educate, and promote sustainable development in educational institutions.
Since the importance of principles and guidelines for sustainable development has been emphasized in the field of art teaching in schools for quite some time, it is crucial that teachers familiarise themselves with sustainable practices and principles during teacher training and studies. It is also highly important for teachers to have a good environmental awareness to implement change into school curriculums. My main motivation behind research of sustainable education in context of fine art pedagogy lies in exploring possibilities of integrating sustainable education into previously mentioned study programme and investigating how to upgrade sustainable practices that are already in use at The Faculty of Education. To do this, it is necessary to assess students' views on sustainable practices, their attitudes, and habits regarding ecological practices.
With the help of selected literature, I examined guidelines for sustainable development in education, which are set by the European Union, UNESCO, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, as well as goals for sustainable development set by the University of Ljubljana. The next step was researching and interpreting findings by Slovenian and foreign authors who are experts in the field of sustainable art education. Finally, I looked for examples of good practice or research that has been carried out in the field of sustainable education at the higher education level and included them in my theoretical part of thesis.
In the empirical part of my master's thesis, I used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to find out how familiar are students of fine art in education with sustainable practices and whether they use them during their studies. At the end, I analysed obtained results with the help of appropriate methodological approaches and compared them to findings from studied literature.
In the last part of my master's thesis, I conceptualized workshop activities that would encourage students of fine art pedagogy to actively participate in the process of finding new sustainable practices and become engaged in the sustainable development of the faculty.
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