Social representations of sustainable developement of polish, french and german students

Sustainable development has become a major reference for national and international policies and seems to be the new action program for the entire planet. Education and training at all levels are considered as fundamental instruments for contributing to the transformation of attitudes and behaviors in favor of this new guiding model of society. Since 1990, many statements entering higher education in the context of sustainable development have been adopted at international and national conferences. The Talloires Declaration is the first official statement of university administrators for a commitment of higher education towards sustainable development. At national level we can observe a realization of international guidelines at the political level as a progressive commitment of higher education institutions. In almost all corporate documents on sustainable development in higher education, institutions are expected to consider all dimensions of sustainable development and integrate them into their primary missions, that is education and research but also their institutional organization. According to Wals and Blewitt (2009) institutions are entering in a third wave (after the environmental wave and the wave of green campus), which is focused on teaching and learning processes for sustainable development. But as sustainable development itself, its inclusion in education is the subject of extensive discussions between different actors. The uncertainties in the scientific fields, the multitude of definitions (politicians, experts, scientists ...), the different regional organizational cultures of actors and institutions involved, and the different convictions and representations strongly rooted make difficult the implementation of educational strategies for sustainable development. However it seems crucial to understand the issues of sustainable development, especially by European Studies Master's students, as they certainly represent the future professional actors in the field of issues concerning European Union, which declares itself sustainable development as its fundamental objective.

Based on the definition of « Master of European Studies », especially its critical and interdisciplinary dimension, it seems that this Master provides an enabling environment for teaching issues linked to sustainable development. The research is based on the structural theory of social representations (Abric, 1994) and its use in the teaching of "socially acute questions" (QSV), which seems to offer a theoretical framework that helps to understand what sustainable development means for students.

The research questions are: Is there a social representation of sustainable development of students MEE? What is its content and how is it structured? Are there differences between the social representations of sustainable development in the three countries (Germany, France and Poland)? What are the differences compared to the institutional definition, as defined by the European Union? The polish, german and french students, are they fully aware of the integral dimension of sustainable development?

To answer the questions we have chosen to conduct a questionnaire survey. It is a questionnaire specific to the study of social representations. It is based on the methodology used in research on the social representations of the economy and on the socially acute questions (Verges et al., Legardez 2004, Legardez & Simonneaux 2006) and was adapted to the specific needs of this research. It is composed of four thematic parts. The first part is designed to identify elements (words and expressions, attitudes, declared practices) of a social representation of sustainable development and its organization. The second part deals with education for sustainable development seen by the students. And finally, the last part aimed to see how the students imagine the integration of sustainable development in their future professional life. For data processing we used software developed by Pierre Verges specifically for analyzing the structure of social representations, the software for data processing Sphinx as Word and Excel.

The survey was realized from December 2009 to February 2010. The sample consists of 91 polish, french and german students pursuing the « Master of European Studies ». The objective of this Master is to form professionals in the field of European policy and European programs (consultants, European project managers, local government representatives from the European Commission, information officers, trainers ...).

It is an exploratory and descriptive study of socials representations in order to identify its thematic content and its structure. A confirmatory analysis could be subject of future research. Furthermore, it seems important to work on development of didactic strategies based on the results.

It appears that, according to sociocultural and political contexts, there are different models of sustainable development in the natural knowledge of the students. While the Polish, origin of a new EU member state, highlight the interspatial dimension, the Germans and the French rather combine the intergenerational dimension with sustainable development. However, the three groups establish - with different intensity - a strong link between environment and sustainable development. In a first step of this analysis we concluded that the natural knowledge of students do not correspond to referent knowledge, those inherent in the European strategy for sustainable development. In particular the objectives of economic prosperity and social equity are hardly part of the natural knowledge. In a second step, the analyzed results were discussed in terms of support and obstacles in the process of teaching and learning. Two major obstacles have been identified. The student’s focus on the environmental sphere may prevent them from understanding the complexity of the concept of sustainable development. This lack of debate is problematic for the active participation in society and
can represent a risk of interpretative excesses.

01/10/2009; active