A Study on ESG at Teacher Education University of Elementary School: Focusing ESG Literacy Curriculum

Objectives The purpose of this study is to provide basic data for designing a sustainable curriculum by analyzing the curriculum of teacher education universities by using ESG literacy content elements as an analysis tool as a way to introduce ESG in universities. Methods This study was conducted using a literature study analyzing previous studies related to understanding ESG and extracted content elements necessary for cultivating ESG knowledge. Four teacher training universities were selected as the subjects of this study. To analyze the curriculum, we used the ‘2023 Curriculum’ provided on the websites of four teacher training colleges. In order to improve the validity of the study, four experts were interviewed to collect opinions on the validity of the analysis tool and the validity of the curriculum analysis results. Results First, the university's ESG education content elements were extracted by dividing them into environment (E), society (S), and governance (G). Second, as a result of analyzing the curriculum of the four teacher training col-leges, it was found that overall, the operation of the curriculum related to ESG understanding was very insufficient. Although it contains some content elements that are related to the E and S dimensions, the subjects of the G di-mension were found to be very insufficient. Third, as a way to include ESG understanding elements in the curricu-lum of teacher training colleges to improve the ESG capabilities of prospective teachers, it is necessary to include ESG content elements in major subjects rather than liberal arts subjects. Conclusions The significance of this study is to derive implications for curriculum operation by extracting ESG un-derstanding content elements of teacher training colleges for sustainable curriculum operation and analyzing the curriculum based on this. By improving the ESG understanding capacity of prospective teachers in the era of cli-mate crisis and environmental crisis, teachers at school will be able to contribute to sustainable school operation.