The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets up education as a fundamental tool to educate and raise awareness of the importance of sustainable development; thus, education in schools must fulfill this purpose. Regarding to Primary Education in Spain, legislation establishes that sustainability must be addressed in a transversal manner, although it is explicitly mentioned in the curriculum as content to be addressed by the social sciences subject. Given that, in practice, textbooks are one of the most used tools by teachers, in this paper, we analyse the treatment given to sustainability by the activities of the textbooks of social sciences in Primary Education of the main Spanish publishers, from two perspectives: analysis of cognitive complexity and study of the subtopic regarding sustainability addressed in each activity. For the analysis of cognitive complexity of activities, Bloom’s taxonomy (six cognitive categories) and Costa’s questioning levels (three levels of questioning) were used. The results reveal an abundance of cognitively simple activities, along with a shortage of cognitively complex activities. The most addressed subtopics are environmental problems and recycling.
Socio-environmental problems are some of the major concerns of today’s society, and education is an essential area to raise awareness and mould future citizens who will be committed to sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how future primary and secondary education teachers in the area of social sciences perceive the socio-environmental problems that affect today’s society, for their subsequent inclusion in the curriculum. To this end, a study was carried out by means of a questionnaire, which showed that trainee primary and secondary teachers have a high consideration of these environmental problems, with hardly any differences noted according to sex or type of degree studied. This perception is positive in terms of the subsequent inclusion of socio-environmental problems in the development of the curriculum by the participating trainee teachers, who largely prefer an autonomous model for curricular implementation.
In recent years, the energy policies of both Spain and the European Union have pursued the development of renewable energies, including solar power. One way these installations will appear in the Region of Murcia is on bodies of water, which do not alter existing land uses, but ground-mounted solar energy installations do bring about such changes. The Region of Murcia is located in the south-eastern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. Positioned on the leeward side of the westerly zonal circulation, characteristic of mid-latitudes, and influenced by the layout of the Betic mountain ranges that cross it from north-west to south-east, it experiences significant scarcity and irregularity of rainfall. In contrast, it benefits from an abundance of sunlight, with more than 3400 h of sunshine per year. This makes it one of the most productive locations for capturing solar energy and converting it into electricity. As a result, the land occupied by photovoltaic parks has increased at the expense of dry farming areas, irrigated land, and woodland. High energy prices have also led to self-consumption measures, with solar panels being installed on the roofs of industrial buildings, floating panels in irrigation reservoirs, photovoltaic solar farms associated with desalination and lift irrigation pumps, and pressure required by localized irrigation, etc.
Resumo En las últimas décadas ha cobrado una importancia creciente el estudio del paisaje, tanto en la educación formal como en la no formal, debido a la degradación del entorno y al abandono de los modos de vida tradicionales. Este hecho ha supuesto la pérdida en muchos casos de la diversidad patrimonial, cultural e identidad de algunos territorios, plasmada en su variedad paisajística. El presente trabajo pretende poner en relieve la importancia del estudio del paisaje, su valor educativo y analizar la enseñanza de de este concepto en los manuales escolares de Ciencias Sociales que desarrollan los textos normativos de enseñanzas mínimas y básicas dictadas por el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia en la etapa de Educación Primaria en España.