Critical Reflections on Smart Mobility: Raising the Awareness of Geography Educators for the Social Implications of a Digital Mobility Transition

To promote an inclusive mobility transition as part of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, which focuses sustainable and inclusive cities and communities, it is crucial to integrate the social implications of smart mobility into educational contexts. Educators, as key actors and change agents, represent a decisive group in the societal transformation processes necessary to achieve the SDGs within the framework of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Geography educators, in particular, can play a pivotal role by fostering a fundamental understanding of the digital mobility transition and encouraging a critical attitude in teaching processes. It is, therefore, essential to raise awareness of the social implications of smart mobility among educators in schools and extracurricular learning settings in order to help them to integrate this topic into everyday teaching and create appropriate learning environments. Given the current research gap in this area, the perspectives of (geography) educators on the transition to digital mobility are of great interest. We conducted semi-structured expert interviews with geography teachers and educators at extracurricular learning sites in Hannover and Hamburg (Germany) to examine their views on smart mobility and its associated societal consequences.