Pérez Guilarte, YamiléArmas Quintá, Francisco XoséMacía Arce, Xosé Carlos2025-10-282025-10-282022PÉREZ GUILARTE, Y.; ARMAS QUINTÁ, F. X.; MACÍA ARCE, X. C. (2022). Social Sciences Teaching: Building a Holistic Approach from Student Teachers’ Social Representations. Social Sciences MDPI 11(307). 1 - 17 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci110703072076-0760https://hdl.handle.net/10347/43456The dynamics that today’s society is facing require critical citizens capable of understanding the complexity of problems from their various dimensions. This work aimed to investigate the social representations that future primary school teachers have about socio-environmental problems, sustainability, purposes of socio-environmental education, and strategies to train in Global Citizenship Education and in Education for Sustainable Development. An exploratory case study was carried out, framed in an action-research approach in the classes of Social Sciences Teaching of the Primary Education Degree of two universities in Galicia (Spain): the University of A Coruña and the University of Santiago de Compostela. A quantitative and qualitative analysis was developed by applying a questionnaire to a sample of 200 students. The results showed that students focus on problems such as climate change or environmental pollution, leaving aside issues such as social inequalities, poverty, or gender issues. In addition, they have difficulties in recognizing the strategies by which teachers can provide their students with critical thinking that leads to social transformation. Significant differences were observed in some researched aspects according to the university of origin, the grade, and the gender of the students, with gender being the one that influenced the greatest number of questions.eng© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Social Sciences TeachingSocio-Environmental ProblemsGlobal Citizenship EducationEducation for Sustainable DevelopmentCritical ThinkingPrimary School5404 Geografía regional5403 Geografía humana540306 Geografía socialjournal article10.3390/socsci11070307open access