Abstract

This paper addresses the association between socio-scientific controversies and key competencies in sustainability from science education (SE) and environmental education (EE), specifically in initial teacher training (ITT). It is suggested that new research opportunities are also obtained from the articulation between SE and EE, with those on the factors that affect the development of the key competencies outlined by Wiek et al. (2011) being particularly relevant. In order to verify this proposal, quantitative methodologies were used, which investigate the concepts of socio-scientific controversies and the relative degree of deployment of key competencies for sustainability. In order to achieve this, the BIOHEAD-citizen questionnaire and a case study test evaluated with rubrics were applied to trainee teachers to collect evidence of conceptions of controversies in various topics and the relative degree of development of three competencies, namely, systems-thinking, strategic, and normative competencies. The association of both sets of data was done with linear models, based on the score for each competency as a dependent variable. The best model obtained shows a statistically significant explanation of systems-thinking on the part of two systems of conceptions: socio-environmentally negative and socio-political religious; whereas for the other two competencies (strategic and normative) no independent variable resulted in a relevant model. These results suggest that conceptions are important for the development of key competencies, supporting the importance of a symbiotic relationship between SE and EE, the’implications of which are discussed for ITT.