Original Research

Strengthening education for sustainable development through curriculum coherence in Geography teacher education in eSwatini

Ben de Souza, Lungile K. Sihlongonyane

Received: 17 Apr. 2026; Accepted: 18 June 2026; Published: 30 July 2026

Copyright: © 2026. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

Background: Teacher education holds the key to developing education for sustainable development (ESD) concepts in future teachers who, in turn, work with learners. However, research in southern Africa has shown that the integration of ESD in teacher education is weak. Specifically, there is a gap in understanding how sustainability knowledge coheres within the teacher education curriculum across specific national and institutional contexts.

Aim: The study examined how ESD is represented and how it can be strengthened through curriculum coherence in Geography teacher education.

Setting: The study focused on undergraduate and postgraduate Geography teacher education curriculum at a university in eSwatini.

Methods: A qualitative analysis of curriculum documents was undertaken for four course outlines, guided by Rata’s Curriculum Design Coherence Model. The analysis examined the conceptual organisation, progression and alignment between content, pedagogy and assessment.

Results: The findings showed that while disciplinary concepts and inquiry-based pedagogies provide entry points for ESD, sustainability is weakly integrated. Conceptual progression across course levels is inconsistent. Assessment practices are weakly aligned with pedagogical intentions. As a result, ESD is insufficiently developed as a coherent strand of teacher knowledge.

Conclusion: The main limitation is not the absence of ESD content, but weak curriculum coherence. Strengthening conceptual sequencing and aligning pedagogy with assessment are, therefore, necessary to support cumulative sustainability learning.

Contribution: The study proffers a coherence-based perspective of Geography teacher education, demonstrating that effective ESD integration depends less on the addition of sustainability content and more on the deliberate organisation and sequencing of disciplinary knowledge. This perspective offers a practical approach for improving ESD integration in teacher education programmes.

Keywords: conceptual progression; curriculum coherence; education for sustainable development; eSwatini; Geography teacher education.

Introduction

Education for sustainable development (ESD) has emerged as a global educational priority aimed at reorienting teaching and learning towards more sustainable, just and resilient societies. While sustainability broadly refers to the long-term maintenance of environmental integrity, social well-being and economic viability, ESD specifically refers to the educational processes and practices designed to develop the knowledge, values, competencies and dispositions required to support sustainable futures (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] 2020). Education for sustainable development therefore extends beyond environmental awareness to include critical engagement with social justice, economic development, cultural diversity and responsible citizenship. It emphasises capabilities such as systems thinking, critical reflection, anticipatory action and ethical reasoning, which are necessary for engaging complex challenges, including climate change, urbanisation and resource degradation (UNESCO 2020; Wiek, Withycombe & Redman 2011). In teacher education, Brandt et al. (2022) argued that this orientation positions teachers as key actors in enabling informed and responsible engagement with sustainability concerns. This situation extends teachers’ role beyond the delivery of subject content towards supporting meaningful engagement with knowledge and action. Contemporary ESD discourse further emphasises transformative learning, participatory engagement, indigenous and local knowledge systems, and action-oriented pedagogies that enable learners to respond to complex socio-ecological challenges in context (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2022).

In Southern Africa, the integration of ESD into teacher education remains weak. Although policy frameworks have endorsed ESD at regional and national levels (Didham & Ofei-Manu 2021), its translation into programme design and classroom practice is largely partial. Studies indicate that ESD cannot be reduced to the addition of sustainability topics. It requires attention to how knowledge is organised, how it progresses across levels and how it is made meaningful through pedagogy and assessment (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2022; Mandikonza & Kavai 2023). These challenges are evident in Geography teacher education, in which the subject’s concern with human–environment relations and spatial processes offers strong potential for engaging sustainability questions (De Souza 2025). Geography also enables forms of learning that connect conceptual knowledge with lived contexts through fieldwork, inquiry and place-based approaches (Wilmot et al. 2025; Wilmot & Brooks 2024). In addition, Geography provides opportunities for engaging both scientific and indigenous ways of knowing about environmental change, resource management and human–environment interactions, making it a particularly relevant subject for ESD in African contexts.

In eSwatini ESD is supported through broader national commitments to sustainable development, environmental management and curriculum reform (De Souza 2024; Kyamogi 2022). Teacher education plays a critical role in these efforts because teachers are expected to support learners in understanding environmental and social challenges affecting local communities. Geography occupies an important position within secondary school education as a subject that explicitly addresses human–environment relationships, development issues and spatial processes. Geography teacher preparation at the university level is offered through both undergraduate Bachelor of Education programmes and postgraduate teacher preparation routes, creating multiple pathways through which ESD-related knowledge and practices can be developed among future teachers. Despite these opportunities, little research has examined how sustainability knowledge is structured within Geography teacher education curricula in eSwatini or whether curriculum design supports coherent progression in ESD learning across programme levels.

Thus, teacher education programmes in eSwatini and comparable contexts lack stronger curriculum structures for developing ESD-related capabilities among pre-service teachers (De Souza 2025). Sustainability is typically not organised as a coherent strand across courses, and teacher educators are expected to incorporate it into existing courses without a shared framework for sequencing knowledge or linking concepts to practice. This results in weak coverage and limited progression in how sustainability is understood and taught. Consequently, the central challenge is not simply whether ESD is present in teacher education curricula, but whether sustainability knowledge is organised in ways that support cumulative learning, conceptual progression and meaningful pedagogical application. This study, therefore, approaches ESD integration primarily as a curriculum design problem situated in the broader teacher education and sustainability policy contexts.

This study addresses this gap by examining how ESD is represented and can be strengthened in Geography teacher education curricula at a university in eSwatini. It uses Elizabeth Rata’s Curriculum Design Coherence (CDC) Model (Rata 2019, 2021, 2024) as an interpretive framework for a qualitative analysis of undergraduate and postgraduate Geography education course outlines. The study focuses on course outlines as evidence of curriculum in the higher education context in investigating how subject concepts, pedagogical approaches and assessment practices are organised in relation to ESD. The study seeks to understand not only the presence of sustainability-related content but also how disciplinary concepts, pedagogical approaches and assessment practices are organised to support the development of sustainability-oriented teacher knowledge. The study is guided by the following research questions: (1) To what extent is ESD represented in Geography teacher education curricula?, (2) How can ESD be strengthened in existing Geography teacher education course structures through improved curriculum coherence?, and (3) How does a coherence-based analysis demonstrate opportunities and constraints for integrating sustainability knowledge in Geography teacher education programmes?

Literature review

This section reviews literature relevant to the study, with attention to two areas: (1) Education for sustainable development and transformative education in Southern Africa, and (2) key issues in Geography teacher education. It also engages current debates on knowledge, curriculum organisation and progression, which are central to understanding how ESD can be structured in teacher education. In addition, the review examines tensions between competency-based, transformative and knowledge-led approaches to curriculum design, as these debates are particularly relevant to the organisation of sustainability education in teacher preparation programmes.

Education for sustainable development and transformative education in southern Africa

Education for sustainable development has become a key orientation for education systems seeking to respond to sustainability challenges. It focuses on equipping learners with knowledge, competencies and dispositions that support informed engagement with issues such as climate change, urbanisation and resource degradation (UNESCO 2020).

Much of the ESD literature is informed by transformative education, which emphasises critical reflection, shifts in understanding and engagement with contextual problems (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2025). These perspectives challenge transmissive approaches to teaching and call for pedagogies that support participation, reflection and action. Transformative approaches further emphasise learner agency, democratic participation and the capacity to question dominant assumptions about development and human–environment relations. In Southern Africa, transformative learning has been associated with socially just responses to environmental and sustainability challenges, particularly in which education seeks to engage complex socio-ecological realities (Gwekwerere & Shumba 2021).

An important feature of ESD discourse in Southern Africa is the recognition that sustainability knowledge emerges from multiple knowledge traditions. This includes scientific knowledge, indigenous knowledge systems and local community-based understandings of environmental change and resource use. Researchers argue that meaningful sustainability education requires engagement with these diverse knowledge sources while also enabling learners to develop conceptual understanding that can be transferred beyond specific contexts (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2022). The challenge for curriculum design is therefore not simply inclusion of diverse forms of knowledge, but how such knowledge is organised, related and made educationally meaningful.

Geography, with its integration of physical and human sciences, offers a context in which such pedagogical approaches can be developed. When well structured, it can support systems thinking, spatial reasoning and ethical engagement with sustainability issues (Wilmot & Brooks 2024). Geography is particularly well positioned to mediate between scientific explanations of environmental processes and local experiences of sustainability challenges, making it a valuable disciplinary context for ESD.

Despite these possibilities, the integration of ESD into teacher education remains weak across southern Africa. Policy frameworks support ESD (Didham & Ofei-Manu 2021), but curriculum implementation usually lacks coherence. Studies indicate that ESD integration requires attention to curriculum design, pedagogy, institutional arrangements and teacher capacity (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2022; Mandikonza & Kavai 2023). A recurring concern is the gap between policy expectations and classroom practice, in which teachers may not have access to the conceptual and pedagogical resources needed to engage sustainability in meaningful ways (Mandikonza & Lotz-Sisitka 2016; Schudel et al. 2021). Research in the region shows that sustainability content is, to a large extent, fragmented and does not extend across subject areas, limiting opportunities for cumulative learning (Tlhabanelo 2020). This challenge is particularly significant in teacher education because fragmented curriculum structures can limit future teachers’ ability to develop coherent understandings of sustainability and its educational implications.

Competency-based approaches have been proposed as one response to these challenges. Wiek et al. (2011) identify key competencies for sustainability, including systems thinking, anticipatory and normative competence. These frameworks offer guidance for curriculum development and assessment. However, critiques in curriculum studies point to the risk that competencies may be taken as generic skills without sufficient grounding in disciplinary knowledge (McPhail & Rata 2016). From a curriculum design perspective, this raises questions about how sustainability competencies relate to the organisation of subject concepts and the progression of knowledge. A central debate concerns whether competencies should be viewed as outcomes that emerge from engagement with structured disciplinary knowledge or as stand-alone capabilities that can be developed independently of knowledge domains (see Annala 2022; Parker 2002). Knowledge-led curriculum scholars such as Young (2013), Muller and Young (2019) and Deng (2022) argue that competencies become educationally meaningful when they are grounded in coherent conceptual structures that enable cumulative learning and increasingly sophisticated understanding.

Assessment practices are also identified as a constraint in the literature. Conventional assessments that prioritise recall do not capture the forms of understanding associated with ESD. Alternative approaches, including portfolios, reflective tasks and community-based projects, are proposed to align assessment with sustainability learning outcomes (Gwekwerere & Shumba 2021). However, without alignment to conceptual progression, such approaches may remain disconnected from the core structure of the curriculum. This suggests that assessment should evaluate both sustainability competencies and the conceptual knowledge that underpins them.

Institutional conditions further shape the integration of ESD (De Haan 2010). Leadership, policy clarity and resource allocation influence how sustainability is taken up in teacher education. Equally, implementation depends on how teachers interpret and work with these frameworks in specific contexts. This highlights the importance of curriculum coherence, in which knowledge, pedagogy and assessment are aligned to support cumulative learning and meaningful engagement with sustainability. Even so, coherence should not be understood as restricting transformative or participatory learning. Rather, coherent curriculum structures can provide the conceptual foundations through which learners engage critically, ethically and practically with sustainability issues. This balance between conceptual progression and transformative engagement is an important challenge in contemporary ESD practice and research.

Training Geography teachers: Concepts and practices

Geography teacher education involves the development of both disciplinary knowledge and the pedagogical capacity to make that knowledge accessible. Literature emphasises that teacher preparation should support engagement with Geographical concepts, inquiry-based teaching and reflection on professional practice (Mzuza & Van der Westhuizen 2023; Wilmot 2018). This becomes more complex in the context of sustainability education, in which teachers are expected to connect abstract processes to lived realities.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is central in this regard. Studies highlight the importance of linking conceptual understanding, awareness of learner misconceptions and appropriate instructional strategies (Lee & Kriewaldt 2025; Smit et al. 2023). In Geography, this includes supporting learners to move between local experiences and broader spatial processes. From a curriculum coherence perspective, PCK is not only about teaching strategies but also about how concepts are sequenced and related across topics and levels. For sustainability education, this requires teachers to connect concepts such as scale, interdependence, resilience, adaptation and human–environment interaction in ways that support progressively deeper understanding. For example, the South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) Grade 10 – Grade 12 for Geography emphasises Geographical knowledge such as Place, Spatial processes, Spatial distribution patterns, and human and environmental interaction (South Africa Department of Basic Education 2011). This emphasis entails that teachers need to develop strong PCK to realise the learning objectives. However, as many studies have shown in the (Southern) African context, and indeed globally, teachers often lack the content knowledge of what they are expected to teach in schools (Taylor 2019).

Self-directed learning and professional development are also emphasised in the literature. Teachers who engage in ongoing learning are better able to adapt their teaching and integrate new themes, including sustainability (Golightly 2022, 2025). These practices support responsiveness to changing contexts but require a strong conceptual base to avoid fragmentation. Without clear curriculum structures, efforts to integrate ESD may depend on individual initiative instead of systematic design.

The integration of geospatial technologies, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), offers further opportunities for Geography education. These tools support data-driven inquiry and spatial analysis. However, challenges such as limited training, access and pedagogical support constrain their use (Mzuza & Van der Westhuizen 2023). Where GIS is taught without conceptual grounding, it becomes procedural rather than analytical. Geographic Information Systems can therefore function not only as a technical skill but also as a means of developing systems thinking, spatial reasoning and evidence-based decision-making relevant to ESD. When linked to conceptual knowledge and inquiry-based tasks, it can support engagement with sustainability issues such as urban change and environmental management (Kim 2018).

Another area of concern is the development of professional identity among pre-service teachers. Research indicates that many student teachers express commitment to sustainability and social responsibility, but face constraints in enacting these orientations in practice (Nousheen, Zia & Waseem 2024). These constraints include rigid curricula, limited mentoring and restricted opportunities for practice-based learning. This suggests that teacher education programmes need to support not only knowledge and skills but also the conditions under which these can be enacted. From the perspective of CDC, these challenges point to the need for stronger alignment between conceptual knowledge, pedagogical approaches and assessment practices. Without such alignment, ESD remains weakly integrated and dependent on individual courses or teachers. A coherent curriculum provides a structure in which sustainability can be engaged systematically, supporting progression in understanding and the development of informed and capable teachers. This perspective aligns with the CDC Model used in this study, which emphasises the deliberate selection and sequencing of concepts, the connection between concepts and content, the relationship between knowledge and competencies, and the alignment of assessment with intended learning. Examining Geography teacher education through this perspective provides a basis for understanding how sustainability knowledge may be strengthened in existing programme structures.

Theoretical framework

This study draws on the CDC Model (Rata 2019, 2021, 2024) as the analytical framework for examining Geography teacher education curricula in eSwatini. Elizabeth Rata is an education scholar from New Zealand who studies how knowledge is organised in school subjects. She developed the CDC Model (Figure 1) to help teachers structure knowledge clearly so students can build understanding step by step. Her work responds to concerns that some curricula are too fragmented or skills-focused. Rata draws on ideas from Émile Durkheim about knowledge and society, Basil Bernstein on knowledge structures and Michael Young on powerful knowledge. She synthesises these to emphasise coherent and knowledge-rich curricula.

FIGURE 1: Curriculum coherence model.

The model provides a way to analyse curriculum in terms of the relationships among subject concepts, content selection and the sequencing of knowledge over time. It distinguishes between disciplinary concepts, which provide the basis for generalisable understanding and the contextual content through which these concepts acquire meaning. In this view, curriculum coherence depends on the systematic organisation of concepts and their progression, as well as their alignment with pedagogy and assessment. This perspective is relevant in the context of debates about curriculum direction, including tensions between competency-based approaches and knowledge-focused models (McPhail & Rata 2016). It also provides a basis for engaging contextual and indigenous knowledge in structured disciplinary frameworks, an issue of significance in southern African education systems. Similarly, critical perspectives on the political economy of knowledge caution against curriculum approaches that may inadvertently reproduce exclusion through fragmented or overly localised forms of knowledge (Rata 2000). These considerations are important for examining how ESD is positioned in teacher education curricula.

The CDC Model is particularly relevant to this study because the research problem concerns not merely the presence of ESD in Geography teacher education, but how sustainability-related knowledge is organised in the curriculum. The framework provides analytical tools for examining whether sustainability concepts are systematically developed across courses, whether content supports conceptual progression, and whether pedagogy and assessment are aligned with intended learning outcomes. Consequently, the model enables a focus on curriculum structure rather than simply curriculum content.

At the centre of the model is a distinction between disciplinary concepts and contextual content. Concepts provide the basis for generalisable understanding, enabling learners to move beyond specific cases and engage with broader patterns and principles. Rata (2024) noted:

The CDC Model’s selection of the curriculum material requires the explicit recognition of propositional knowledge so that its conceptual or epistemic structure can guide the design method. The epistemic structure consists of conceptual integration; that is, the building of ever-increasingly complex abstract concepts internal to the structure. These have a generalising function so they can be applied to a range of local material phenomena. (p. 263)

Content, in contrast, refers to the empirical and contextual material through which these concepts are encountered and understood (Rata 2024). Curriculum coherence depends on how these two elements are related. Where concepts are clearly structured and progressively sequenced, content can be selected to support meaning-making and application. Where this relationship is weak, curriculum knowledge may become fragmented, limiting opportunities for cumulative learning.

This distinction is particularly relevant for ESD in Geography teacher education. Sustainability issues are mostly introduced through contextual examples such as climate change, urbanisation or resource use. Without a clear conceptual structure, however, these topics may remain disconnected, leading to limited progress in understanding. For example, topics such as climate change adaptation, resource management and sustainable development require engagement with broader geographical concepts such as human–environment interaction, spatial interdependence, systems, scale and change. The CDC Model therefore enables an analysis of whether sustainability-related content is organised in ways that support conceptual development across course levels.

The framework also engages debates in curriculum studies concerning the relationship between knowledge and competencies. Competency-based approaches to ESD emphasise skills such as systems thinking and anticipatory reasoning (Wiek et al. 2011). While these are important, they require a foundation in disciplinary knowledge to be meaningful. Research comparing knowledge-focused and competency-based curriculum approaches highlights the need for a structured knowledge base to develop higher-order capabilities (McPhail & Rata 2016). From this perspective, curriculum coherence is not achieved solely through the inclusion of competencies, but through the careful sequencing of concepts that enable learners to engage complex problems with increasing depth.

This position does not imply that competencies, values or transformative learning are unimportant. Rather, the CDC Model suggests that these dimensions are strengthened when they are supported by coherent conceptual knowledge. In the context of ESD, competencies such as systems thinking and critical reflection are more likely to develop when sustainability issues are connected to structured disciplinary understanding. The framework therefore complements rather than opposes transformative approaches to sustainability education.

The model is also relevant to current discussions on the integration of contextual and indigenous knowledge in the curriculum. In southern African contexts, there is a strong emphasis on ensuring that curricula are responsive to local realities and histories. The CDC Model does not take contextual knowledge as separate from disciplinary knowledge. Instead, it positions content as the medium through which concepts acquire meaning. This allows local and indigenous knowledge to be incorporated in ways that support conceptual understanding. Such an approach is important for Geography teacher education, in which engagement with place, community and environment is central.

A further dimension of the framework concerns the broader conditions under which curriculum knowledge is organised. Rata’s (2000) analysis of the political economy of neotribal capitalism highlights how contemporary economic and policy contexts can shape knowledge structures that may limit access to systematic forms of knowledge. In curriculum terms, this may be reflected in an over-reliance on localised or experience-based content, with insufficient attention to conceptual progression. While this critique is contested, it offers a perspective on how curriculum choices may include or exclude forms of knowledge that enable participation in wider social and economic systems. In the context of ESD, this raises important questions about how sustainability knowledge is structured.

To operationalise the CDC Model in this study, three dimensions guided the curriculum analysis. Firstly, the selection and sequencing of subject concepts were examined through course aims, objectives, learning outcomes and topic progression. Secondly, the relationship between concepts and content was examined by analysing how sustainability-related themes and topics were linked to disciplinary Geography knowledge. Thirdly, the alignment between knowledge, pedagogy and assessment was examined through teaching approaches, practical activities and assessment requirements contained in the course outlines. These dimensions provided the analytical basis for identifying patterns of coherence, fragmentation, progression and alignment in the intended curriculum.

Applying the CDC Model in this study involves analysing Geography course outlines along three key dimensions. Firstly, the organisation and sequencing of subject concepts across undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Secondly, the selection and use of content in relation to these concepts, including the extent to which sustainability issues are used to support conceptual understanding. Thirdly, the alignment between conceptual progression, pedagogical approaches and assessment practices. This allows the curriculum to be examined not only for the presence of ESD, but for the coherence of its integration in the structure of disciplinary knowledge.

For this study, the framework is used to analyse the intended curriculum as represented in course documents. The analysis does not seek to evaluate classroom enactment of the curriculum or student learning experiences. Rather, it focuses on how sustainability-related knowledge is represented, structured and sequenced in official institutional curriculum documents. It does not focus on whether ESD is explicitly named, but on how sustainability-related knowledge is organised and how it can support or constrain meaningful learning. Through curriculum coherence, the framework highlights pathways for integrating ESD in ways that support cumulative knowledge-building and informed engagement with sustainability challenges.

Research methods and design

Design

This study adopted a qualitative curriculum document analysis design to examine how ESD is represented, organised and enabled in Geography teacher education curricula at a university in eSwatini. Document analysis (Bowen 2009; Cohen, Manion & Morrison 2018) was selected as an appropriate methodological approach because the study focused on the intended curriculum, that is, officially prescribed course outlines and their embedded pedagogical and assessment orientations. The aim was to analyse how curriculum structures support or constrain the integration of sustainability in teacher education. The study was located in an interpretivist paradigm, which recognises curriculum texts as socially constructed artefacts shaped by disciplinary traditions, institutional priorities and policy contexts. From this perspective, course outlines are not mere descriptions of content but reflect particular ways of organising knowledge and guiding teaching and learning. This orientation is consistent with the CDC Model (Rata 2019, 2021, 2024), which views curriculum as a structured system of knowledge in which concepts, content, pedagogy and assessment are related in specific ways.

Document analysis was considered particularly appropriate because the study sought to examine how sustainability-related knowledge is formally represented in curriculum documents rather than how it is enacted in classroom practice. The focus was therefore on the intended curriculum as represented in official course outlines that guide teaching, learning and assessment in Geography teacher education programmes.

Selection of documents

Four course outlines were purposively selected for analysis: Two undergraduate ‘Curriculum Studies in Geography’ courses from a Bachelor of Education programme and two postgraduate equivalents from a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme. These courses were selected because they form the pedagogical core of Geography teacher preparation, in which the integration of ESD would be most evident and consequential. Each course outline included descriptions of course aims, learning outcomes, content topics, pedagogical approaches and assessment structures.

The selected course outlines were the current versions in use at the time of data collection and represented the most recent approved curriculum documents available in the department. The study did not seek to analyse every course in the Geography teacher education curriculum. Instead, it focused on Curriculum Studies in Geography courses because these courses explicitly address the teaching of Geography as a school subject and therefore provide the most direct evidence of how sustainability-related knowledge, pedagogy and assessment are organised for future teachers.

The inclusion of both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes was deliberate. Geography teacher education at the institution is offered through multiple pathways, including the Bachelor of Education and the PGCE. Analysing both pathways provided a more holistic understanding of how ESD is represented across the institution’s Geography teacher education provision and enabled examination of curriculum coherence and progression across programme levels. The intention was therefore not to compare programmes, but to explore how sustainability-oriented teacher knowledge is structured across the principal routes through which Geography teachers are prepared. These documents were considered to provide a representative view of the intended Geography teacher education curriculum at the institution.

Analytical framework

The analysis was informed by the CDC Model (Rata 2019, 2021, 2024) and supported by the ESD competency framework proposed by Wiek et al. (2011). The coherence model provided the primary analytical language, focusing on the organisation of subject concepts, their sequencing across levels, and their relationship to content, pedagogy and assessment. In this study, particular attention was given to the distinction between disciplinary concepts and contextual content, and to how this relationship supports or limits cumulative knowledge-building. The ESD competency framework (Wiek et al. 2011) was used as a complementary heuristic to identify potential opportunities for engaging systems thinking, anticipatory, normative, strategic and interpersonal competencies in the curriculum. While the coherence model guided the analysis of knowledge structure and progression, the competency framework enabled identification of the types of sustainability-oriented learning that the curriculum may afford.

The two frameworks were used in complementary ways. The CDC Model served as the primary analytical framework for examining curriculum coherence, conceptual progression and alignment among content, pedagogy and assessment. The ESD competency framework was then applied to identify whether opportunities existed in the curriculum for the development of sustainability-related competencies. This ensured that competencies were analysed in relation to curriculum structure rather than as stand-alone outcomes.

Data analysis procedures

Data analysis followed a qualitative content analysis process (Krippendorff 2019), guided by principles of curriculum coherence. The analysis was iterative and interpretive, moving between close reading of documents, coding and conceptual interpretation. Analytic memos were used throughout to document emerging insights and decisions. The analysis unfolded in three stages, shown in Figure 2.

FIGURE 2: The analytical framework for the study.

In the first stage, structural coding was used to identify curriculum elements contained in the course outlines, including course aims, learning outcomes, content topics, pedagogical approaches and assessment requirements. In the second stage, conceptual coding was undertaken using categories derived from the CDC Model, including concept selection, concept sequencing, concept–content relationships and alignment between knowledge, pedagogy and assessment. During this stage, sustainability-related themes and references to ESD were also identified. In the third stage, coherence analysis was conducted to examine relationships across the coded data and to identify patterns of progression, fragmentation, alignment and gaps in the intended curriculum.

Coding was conducted collaboratively by both of us through iterative reading, discussion and refinement of analytical categories. An initial coding framework was developed from the CDC Model and the ESD competency framework and was refined as analysis progressed. Differences in interpretation were discussed until agreement was reached, and analytic memos were used to document coding decisions and emerging interpretations. This process enhanced transparency and consistency in the analysis.

Rigour and trustworthiness

Rigour in qualitative document analysis is established through transparency, systematicity and reflexivity (Bowen 2009; Cohen et al. 2018). Credibility was strengthened by maintaining a clear audit trail of coding decisions and analytic interpretations through detailed memos. Comparison across undergraduate and postgraduate course outlines enabled identification of patterns and variations in curriculum organisation, enhancing the trustworthiness of the findings. Reflexivity was maintained by considering how our positions as an ESD teacher education researcher in Southern Africa (lead author) and a Geography teacher educator in eSwatini (co-author) informed the interpretation of the data. The involvement of researchers with different professional backgrounds provided opportunities for critical dialogue throughout the analysis. While the co-author brought contextual knowledge of the Geography teacher education programme, the lead author contributed an external analytical perspective that helped interrogate assumptions and strengthen interpretive rigour.

Dependability was further supported through systematic documentation of coding procedures, analytical decisions and framework application. Confirmability was enhanced through the use of analytic memos and ongoing reflection on how the researchers’ perspectives may have shaped the interpretation of the curriculum documents.

As the study focuses on the intended curriculum, the findings are not generalised to classroom practice. Instead, they are reported as an analysis of curriculum structure and its implications for integrating ESD in teacher education.

Ethical considerations

All course outlines were supplied by the co-author responsible for teaching the courses analysed, reflecting her interest in professional development and in researching her own practice. Each document was converted to a textual format for analysis, and a document profile sheet, adapted from Bowen (2009), was used to capture relevant metadata, such as year of issue, programme level, course purpose and assessment structure. As the study focused exclusively on analysing course outlines, it was classified as non-human subject research. No human participants were involved, and therefore, formal ethical clearance was not required. Permission to use the course outlines for research purposes was obtained through institutional processes governing access to curriculum documents.

Because one of us teaches the courses under review, particular attention was given to reflexivity and the management of potential insider-researcher bias. The co-author’s familiarity with the curriculum provided important contextual insights regarding programme structure and course intentions. Similarly, the lead author, who was not directly involved in the design or teaching of the courses, provided analytical distance and an independent perspective during coding and interpretation. Regular discussions between the authors were used to challenge assumptions, interrogate interpretations and ensure that conclusions remained grounded in the documentary evidence.

While the co-author teaches the courses under review, curriculum design is not an individual activity but a collaborative process involving multiple stakeholders. The study is thus positioned as a form of structured professional reflection, aimed at improving practice, particularly in relation to ESD, which UNESCO promotes as a cross-cutting theme in curricula. The lead author contributes an additional critical perspective to strengthen this reflective process.

To maintain ethical integrity, the study does not reproduce the original course outlines in the results section. Instead, we present summarised tables that capture key aspects of the documents. This approach recognises that, although course outlines are generally distributed to students and are not strictly confidential, they remain institutional documents that should be handled responsibly in research. In this study, they are viewed as data sources for analysing curriculum design and coherence.

Results

This section presents findings from the curriculum document analysis of four Geography teacher education course outlines: Two undergraduate courses (Curriculum and Teaching [CTE] 325 and CTE 326) and two postgraduate courses (CTE 525 and CTE 526). The analysis examined how ESD is structured in the curriculum, including subject concepts, content selection, progression across levels, and alignment with pedagogy and assessment. Instead of focusing on whether ESD is explicitly stated, the analysis considered how sustainability-related knowledge is organised and the extent to which it supports cumulative learning. Guided by the CDC Model, particular attention was given to the selection and sequencing of concepts, the relationship between concepts and content, and the alignment among curriculum aims, pedagogy and assessment.

Five findings emerged:

1. Disciplinary concepts provide a foundation for sustainability engagement.

2. Sustainability content becomes more visible but remains weakly integrated.

3. Pedagogical approaches support engagement but lack conceptual direction.

4. Misalignment between conceptual aims and assessment practices.

5. Limited progression towards sustainability-oriented teacher knowledge.

Disciplinary concepts provide a foundation for sustainability engagement

Across all four courses, Geography is framed as a discipline concerned with human–environment relationships, spatial processes and social responsibility. This is evident in course descriptions, objectives, and core content in both introductory courses (CTE 325 and CTE 525), see Table 1.

The outlines show that sustainability-related ideas are embedded in foundational concepts such as citizenship, environmental interaction and spatial thinking. The inclusion of ‘Geography and environmental education [or] education for sustainable development’ (CTE 325) and ‘Integrating ESD into teaching geography’ (CTE 525) signals recognition of sustainability in the discipline. However, these references are not linked to clearly defined conceptual sequences. The outlines present Geography as a discipline relevant to environmental and social issues, but sustainability is not structured as a conceptual strand in this foundation.

From a curriculum coherence perspective, the outlines demonstrate the presence of disciplinary concepts that could support sustainability learning. However, the relationship between these concepts and ESD is largely implicit. While sustainability-related topics are included, the documents provide limited evidence of how concepts are sequenced to support increasingly sophisticated understanding of sustainability issues across programme levels.

Sustainability content becomes more visible but remains weakly integrated

In the second-level courses (CTE 326 and CTE 526), sustainability is more explicitly addressed through applied topics such as recycling, mitigation and innovation. These are introduced in both objectives and course content, see Table 2.

The outlines show a shift from conceptual framing in the introductory courses to applied sustainability activities in the advanced courses. Recycling, mitigation and product development are considered central components of ESD. The connection between these activities and earlier conceptual content is not specified. For example, topics such as ‘mitigation measures’ and ‘recycling’ are not explicitly linked to prior study of human–environment systems, spatial processes or citizenship aims introduced in CTE 325 and CTE 525. This separation indicates that sustainability content is added later without a clear conceptual bridge across levels.

The CDC Model draws attention to the distinction between conceptual progression and content accumulation. Although sustainability content becomes more visible in the later courses, the analysis suggests that the curriculum relies primarily on the addition of sustainability-related topics rather than on the systematic development of sustainability concepts across levels.

Pedagogical approaches support engagement but lack conceptual direction

All four courses promote a wide range of teaching strategies, many of which enable engagement with real-world contexts relevant to sustainability.

The outlines include fieldwork, GIS, case studies and group-based learning, see Table 3. These approaches provide opportunities to engage with environmental and social issues in local contexts, particularly through ‘fieldwork’ and ‘Geography of the home and school environment’. The outlines do not specify how these methods support the development of particular concepts. For example, fieldwork is listed as a technique, but there is no indication of how it contributes to understanding processes such as spatial interdependence or environmental change. As a result, teaching strategies are presented as methods without clear links to conceptual development in sustainability.

Viewed through the CDC Model, these pedagogical approaches provide opportunities for meaningful engagement with sustainability issues. However, the course outlines provide limited evidence of how pedagogical activities are intentionally linked to conceptual progression. As a result, the relationship between teaching methods and knowledge development is weakly specified in the intended curriculum.

Misalignment between conceptual aims and assessment practices

Assessment structures across the four courses are similar, with emphasis on tests, assignments and final examinations. While ESD appears in assessment tasks, the format of assessment remains largely unchanged, see Table 4.

The outlines indicate that ESD is included in both continuous assessment (‘ESD projects’, ‘field work… innovations’) and examinations (‘Section A tests deeper understanding on ESD theme’). However, the dominant structure remains the 3-h written examination. The pedagogical emphasis on fieldwork, innovation and community engagement is not matched by assessment formats that capture these forms of learning in depth. There is no reference to portfolios, reflective tasks or sustained project-based assessment. This limits the extent to which students can demonstrate applied understanding of sustainability.

This finding suggests a partial disconnect between curriculum intentions and assessment design. While the curriculum includes practical and sustainability-oriented activities, assessment practices remain predominantly structured around traditional examination formats. Consequently, opportunities to assess applied sustainability understanding appear limited within the intended curriculum.

Limited progression towards sustainability-oriented teacher knowledge

All four courses emphasise professional preparation, including teaching practice, instructional strategies and assessment design. Sustainability is included, but not structured as a developmental strand across the programme.

There is a shift from general professional preparation in the first courses to applied and critical engagement in the later courses. The inclusion of ‘critically utilise’ and ‘critically innovate’ in CTE 526 indicates an expectation of higher-level engagement, see Table 5. But the outlines do not show how sustainability knowledge develops from foundational concepts to applied teaching competence. Sustainability appears as a topic in certain modules rather than as an organising principle across the curriculum. There is no explicit statement of what teachers should know, understand, and be able to do in relation to ESD at each level. From a curriculum coherence perspective, progression is evident in the increasing complexity of some learning outcomes, but the developmental pathway for sustainability-oriented teacher knowledge remains largely implicit. The absence of a clearly articulated conceptual sequence limits the extent to which ESD functions as a coherent strand across the Geography teacher education curriculum.

Discussion

The study aimed to examine how ESD is represented and how it can be strengthened through curriculum coherence in Geography teacher education. The study focused on undergraduate and postgraduate Geography teacher education curriculum at a university in eSwatini. The analysis of the four course outlines provides a basis for examining how ESD is structured in Geography teacher education in eSwatini. Interpreting these findings through the CDC Model highlights a central issue: the curriculum contains many of the necessary elements for sustainability education, but these elements are not organised in ways that support systematic knowledge-building. This finding suggests that the challenge is less about the inclusion of sustainability topics and more about how sustainability knowledge is organised, sequenced and connected across the curriculum.

A key starting point is the status of the course outlines themselves. Course outlines are not simple administrative documents. They are evidence that the curriculum is made explicit. They specify how knowledge is sequenced and how learning is to be evaluated. In this sense, analysing course outlines provides direct access to the intended curriculum. As Rata (2024) argues, curriculum coherence depends on the principled selection and sequencing of knowledge. The outlines analysed in this study reveal how such selection and sequencing are enacted and where they remain underdeveloped. What is absent from these documents is as analytically significant as what is included, particularly in relation to how sustainability knowledge is structured. The findings should therefore be understood as evidence of how ESD is represented in the intended curriculum rather than how it is enacted in teaching practice.

From a coherence perspective, the presence of strong disciplinary foundations in Geography is significant. The course outlines frame Geography as a field concerned with human–environment relationships, spatial processes and citizenship. These conceptual resources align with what Zimmerer (2017) identifies as essential for engaging socio-ecological systems. In the CDC Model, concepts function as the organising principles that enable knowledge to move beyond isolated facts. Rata (2024) notes that concepts provide the means for organising content into a coherent structure that supports cumulative learning. The introductory courses include references to the philosophy of Geography, its aims and its social relevance. These elements provide a conceptual basis from which sustainability could be developed as a structured domain of knowledge. Therefore, the issue is not the absence of relevant concepts, but the absence of explicit connections between those concepts and sustainability. Sustainability appears in introductory courses as a topic or reference point, without being linked to a sequence of ideas that develops across levels. This weakens the epistemic structure of the curriculum. Without clearly specified conceptual relationships, sustainability remains peripheral to the disciplinary core, even though the discipline itself contains the necessary intellectual resources.

The pattern observed in the advanced courses supports this point. Sustainability becomes more visible through topics such as recycling, mitigation and entrepreneurship. These inclusions indicate an attempt to connect curriculum content to local realities, which is consistent with research in Southern African ESD that emphasises contextually grounded learning (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015, 2022). However, in the coherence model, content must be selected and sequenced in relation to concepts if it is to support cumulative knowledge-building. Rata (2024) states that content selection is not sufficient for coherence as it must be organised by the conceptual structure of the discipline. In the courses analysed, sustainability-related content is introduced at later stages without clear reference to earlier conceptual work. Recycling and mitigation, for example, are presented as practical activities, but their relationship to broader geographical concepts such as systems, interdependence or spatial distribution is not specified. This suggests that sustainability content is largely additive rather than developmental, limiting opportunities for students to build increasingly sophisticated understandings of sustainability issues over time.

This separation between conceptual and applied knowledge reflects a broader tension identified by McPhail and Rata (2016) between competency-based and knowledge-led approaches to curriculum design. The inclusion of activities such as product innovation and community engagement suggests an emphasis on competencies associated with ESD, including problem-solving and systems thinking (Wiek et al. 2011). However, the development of such competencies depends on access to structured knowledge. When competencies are introduced without a clear conceptual foundation, they risk being enacted at the level of activity rather than with depth of understanding. The findings indicate that sustainability is framed as something students do rather than as something they come to understand through a progression of ideas. Here, the findings should not be interpreted as a rejection of competency-based or transformative approaches to ESD. Rather, they suggest that transformative engagement and sustainability competencies are likely to be strengthened when supported by coherent conceptual structures that enable learners to understand why sustainability challenges occur and how they may be addressed.

Pedagogy occupies a critical position in this relationship between concepts and content. The course outlines include a wide range of teaching approaches (fieldwork, case studies, GIS and group discussions) that align with established practices in Geography education (Wilmot et al. 2025; Wilmot & Brooks 2024). These approaches provide opportunities to engage with real-world sustainability issues, particularly through place-based learning. In the coherence model, however, pedagogy is not an independent element. It mediates the relationship between knowledge and learners. As Rata (2019, 2021, 2024) explains, pedagogy must be aligned with the conceptual structure if it is to support cumulative knowledge-building.

The outlines list pedagogical strategies extensively, but they do not indicate how these strategies are used to develop specific concepts. Fieldwork, for instance, is identified as a key method, but there is no indication of how it contributes to understanding geographical processes or sustainability-related systems. This absence suggests that pedagogy is viewed as a set of techniques rather than as a means of engaging with structured knowledge. The result is a curriculum in which learning activities may be contextually rich but lack epistemic direction. This is particularly important for ESD because transformative and action-oriented pedagogies require clear conceptual foundations if they are to move beyond participation alone and support a deeper understanding of sustainability challenges.

Assessment practices further illustrate the issue of misalignment in the curriculum. Across all four courses, assessment is dominated by tests, assignments and final examinations, even where the stated aims emphasise practical engagement, entrepreneurship and ESD application. From a coherence perspective, assessment is not an endpoint but part of the knowledge-building process. Thus, assessment must reflect the conceptual progression of the curriculum if coherence is to be achieved. The reliance on written examinations limits the extent to which students can demonstrate engagement with sustainability in practice. While ESD appears in assessment tasks, it is largely assessed through written responses in a standardised examination format. This creates a disjuncture between the forms of learning promoted in the curriculum (fieldwork, innovation and community engagement) and the forms of knowledge that are evaluated. This concern is also raised in ESD literature, in which assessment is identified as a big constraint on pedagogical innovation (Gwekwerere & Shumba 2021). The findings therefore suggest a need for stronger alignment between curriculum intentions, learning activities and assessment practices if sustainability-oriented learning is to be meaningfully supported.

The question of progression is central to the CDC Model and provides a framework for interpreting the programme’s overall structure. Progression involves more than increasing complexity. It requires the systematic development of knowledge through sequenced concepts and content. Rata (2024) describes progression as the cumulative building of knowledge through the sequencing of concepts and content across levels. She says:

[T]he teachers could see how curriculum progression is built upon the increasingly abstract knowledge and more detailed material content that students will encounter as they advance through the years at school. (p. 271)

In the courses analysed, there is a shift from general disciplinary foundations to applied sustainability activities and teaching practice. However, this shift is not organised as a clear developmental trajectory. Sustainability does not appear as a strand introduced, developed and extended across the four courses. Instead, it emerges intermittently, with greater visibility in later courses but limited connection to earlier learning. This has implications for teacher knowledge. While the programme places strong emphasis on professional preparation, it does not clearly specify what teachers should know about sustainability or how this knowledge develops over time. As a result, ESD remains an additional component in the curriculum rather than a defining feature of teacher expertise. Similar patterns are observed by Nousheen et al. (2024), who argue that commitments to sustainability in teacher education are often not supported by coherent curriculum structures.

The findings also raise questions about knowledge selection in the context of knowledge. In Southern African curriculum debates, there is a strong emphasis on the inclusion of local and indigenous knowledge. The course outlines reflect this through content such as community engagement, local environments and entrepreneurship. The coherence model does not exclude such knowledge. Instead, it provides a way of integrating it into a structured curriculum. Rata (2019, 2021, 2024) emphasises that contextual knowledge must be related to disciplinary concepts if it is to contribute to generalisable understanding. In this sense, indigenous, local and scientific knowledge need not be viewed as competing forms of knowledge. Rather, curriculum coherence provides a means through which different knowledge traditions can be related to broader conceptual understandings of sustainability. Where this relationship is not made explicit, there is a risk that knowledge remains tied to specific contexts, failing to enable broader conceptual insight. This concern connects to earlier work by Rata (2000) on the political economy of knowledge, which highlights how curriculum structures shape access to systematic forms of knowledge. In this study, the fragmented integration of sustainability suggests that students may engage with environmental issues at a practical level without gaining access to the conceptual tools needed to analyse them in depth.

The curriculum analysis shows that the challenge is not the absence of ESD content in the curriculum, but the way it is organised. The Geography curriculum contains conceptual resources, relevant content and appropriate pedagogies. What is missing is the alignment of these elements into a coherent structure. The CDC Model shows that integrating ESD is not a matter of adding new topics. It requires the deliberate sequencing of concepts, the selection of content that builds on those concepts, the use of pedagogy to support conceptual understanding and the alignment of assessment with this progression. Therefore, this study demonstrates how coherence or the lack of it is produced at the level of curriculum design. Geography, with its focus on human–environment relationships and spatial processes, remains well positioned to support sustainability education (De Souza 2025). The issue is whether these strengths are mobilised through a coherent curriculum structure that enables future teachers to develop systematic and transferable knowledge of sustainability needed in schools. Thus, much as the CDC Model is usually applied in schools to investigate how teachers support learners to make sense of the designed curriculum, it is also important, as we have done here, to employ similar theoretical and research designs in teacher education because this is where everything starts.

A broader contribution of this study is its demonstration that curriculum coherence is an important consideration in teacher education as well as in school curricula. Teacher education programmes play a foundational role in shaping how future teachers understand disciplinary knowledge, pedagogy and sustainability. Examining coherence at this level, therefore, provides insights into how ESD may be strengthened before teachers enter professional practice. In this respect, the study extends the application of the CDC Model beyond school curriculum analysis and demonstrates its value for examining the intended curriculum in teacher education contexts.

Conclusion

This study examined four Geography teacher education course outlines in eSwatini to assess how ESD is represented in the intended curriculum using Rata’s CDC Model. The findings indicate that while sustainability-related content is present and supported by strong disciplinary foundations, including human–environment relationships, spatial thinking and socially relevant geographical knowledge, it is not organised through a coherent conceptual sequence that supports cumulative learning. Sustainability concepts are introduced with limited connection to foundational knowledge and show weak progression across course levels. In addition, pedagogical approaches and assessment practices are not well aligned with the knowledge and competencies required for ESD, limiting its development as an integrated aspect of teacher expertise. The study, therefore, identifies curriculum coherence as a challenge of sequencing and alignment rather than content absence. It argues that strengthening ESD does not require only the addition of new sustainability topics, but rather the reorganisation of existing curriculum elements through clearer conceptual structuring, stronger progression, and closer alignment between knowledge, pedagogy and assessment. The study further demonstrates the value of curriculum coherence as an analytical perspective and highlights the importance of teacher education curricula in shaping how future teachers understand and enact ESD in schools.

Acknowledgements

The authors, Ben de Souza and Lungile K. Sihlongonyane, declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

Ben de Souza: Conceptualisation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Lungile K. Sihlongonyane: Resources, Validation, Writing – review & editing. All authors reviewed the article, contributed to the discussion of results, approved the final version for submission and publication, and take responsibility for the integrity of its findings.

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings, and content.

References