The Challenge of Mainstreaming ESD in Hungary

Abstract

The chapter gives an overview of a transition process in Hungary, marked by a major development that led to a network on environmental education (EE), which has slowly begun transforming into practitioners of ESD. In presenting the milestones and main lessons of this journey, emphasis is placed on how theoretical frameworks, personal and institutional changes in teachers’ professional knowledge as well as infrastructural criteria initiated changes in the practice of everyday life in Hungarian schools. We claim that a living network emerged from isolated innovations bringing about systemic changes needed for mainstreaming sustainability in education. This way, personal motivation and local knowledge were integrated into a system through network learning, resulting in a vivid network of practitioners and experts as well as changes in educational policy. Through the analysis of success factors in the development process, six key features emerged: (1) slow, step by step changes; (2) horizontal knowledge management (snowball effect, peer tutoring and network learning); (3) reward; and (4) support for stakeholders; (5) empowerment of practitioners and (6) institutionalisation of initiatives are needed for meaningful, long-term systemic changes. Hungarian examples show how EE can initiate the transition towards ESD and envisage some future steps to be taken to facilitate the process.