Summer 2005

Education for sustainability

Defining a vision

Martha Monroe believes that educators are society’s promise to the future. By providing the next generation with the knowledge and skills to assess problems, resolve them, and preventnew ones arising,the current generation lays a foundation of hope for all those who follow.

As we look forward, few challenges loom quite as large as sustainability. Although there have been great advances in our understanding of how some areas of agriculture and forest management can be more sustainable, there is much yet to do to convert all our hopes and visions into reality. Most of us still don’t even know what questions to ask to determine the more sustainable option, let alone being able to summon the wherewithal to make more appropriate choices.

The Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) gives every nation a reason—and a nudge—to begin important conversations among ministries, industries, community groups, decision-makers, educators and neighbours. Those conversations might begin with: Where are we going? How can we get there? How can we be sure it will be better than here in all the ways we care about?

A sustainable future is one in which economic development does not come at the cost of quality of human life or environmental quality. Rather, all three elements must be met to some degree. These three elements of sustainability give everyone a framework to ask more specific questions of the options before them: Does this choice provide fair and equitable opportunities for people? Will this choice allow all people to obtain a livelihood and earn income? Will this choice help maintain our life-support systems?

Moving towards sustainability will not be easy. At the individual level, it is hard to know enough to consider all relevant questions and ramifications. It is much more comfortable to develop narrowly defined expertise. But sustainability questions demand that we think broadly and more creatively than we ever have before.

As we begin to imagine what will be necessary to become more sustainable, we can more easily identify some elements of the educational efforts that are needed to build this critical foundation. Of course the details and specifics will vary between Namibia and Nebraska, and perhaps every school and professional association should develop its own list of elements to ensure that all educational programs prepare tomorrow’s citizens for sustainability. Nevertheless, some common dimensions might be as follows:

1. Education for sustainability should be grounded in a sense of place or a home territory, and rooted in understanding the world around us. Youth should first understand where they come from, beginning with the home, growing to the neighbourhood and then moving into larger community. Place can be the natural environment, including local plants and animals, watersheds, weather patterns, and topography. It can also be social and cultural norms: systems of governance, community organisations, decision making, and local economy. Rather than memorising their place, youth should come to know it by experiencing it, using it, and enhancing it. Developing a sense of place from textbooks is difficult. It requires exploration of the world around us. Coming to know your place means developing a deep understanding of your community.
2. Education for sustainability should help learners see connections. Connections can be drawn by looking forward in time and asking: What will happen if …? or What are the consequences of …? Connections may also be revealed between formerly distinct disciplines. Consider the ecology, economics, and social benefits of urban forests. If we do not see connections, we are less likely to realise how development, social equity, and environment are intertwined. Such connections are less visible to learners who spend their days in 50-minute periods of mathematics, science, language arts, and history. They are more likely to become evident where learning is facilitated by teams of teachers working on similar units or on community projects. The real world is rich in connections. Using our own communities to study water quality, public transportation, emergency response or sources of food can help learners see existing connections.
3. Education for sustainability should empower individuals. Learners must engage in critical thinking and decision-making skills to be able to contribute to a sustainable future. Every possible sector needs leaders to move society in new directions. Skills for participation and action should be encouraged. The evolution of environmental impact statements and development projects suggests that community participation is ideal. Skilled participants would be even better.
4. Education for sustainability should encourage experimentation and recovery from failure. A sustainable future could mean new products, new patterns, new tools and new systems. Some people cannot understand something new until they see it. Many more of us may not believe a new idea is better until we have evidence. It is critical to try out new ideas, tweak them, improve upon them and demonstrate their success. It is also critical to remove the negative stigma associated with failure. Not all experiments will be successful and disappointments should be expected. A climate that encourages experiments and accepts that there will be failure may be helpful in moving toward sustainability. A small but well-visited flavour graveyard at an ice-cream factory in Waterbury, Vermont, celebrates even their most short-lived flavour combinations with witty limericks. Sweet potato pie ice-cream was not a hit, but inviting us to laugh at such mistakes and mourn the retirement of varieties that were not profitable, helps reinforce the notion that trying new ideas is good, even when they don’t work.

Do educators have any experience in empowering learners, conveying a sense of place, revealing connections, and promoting experiments? I believe we do. Here are a few examples from North America.

In the agricultural state of Vermont, educators and farmers want students to better understand where their food comes from. But talking about food production is not enough. They also want students to eat locally grown food. This is a challenge as most schools are not even in session when the bulk of the fruits and vegetables are harvested. Still, a collaborative project connecting classroom, community, farms, school gardens and the cafeteria has been devised. Food, health, and community well-being are promoted with instructional units on nutrition, agriculture, local history and Vermont’s farm life. Hands-on skills such as cooking and farm-based investigations are central to the project. Students explore local and global food systems through problem-solving activities that follow a product from field to table. This program helps youth develop a sense of place and build connections between their own food, local farms and the larger world.

Teachers in Florida use environment-based education at the high school level to engage students in long-term community projects. Students conduct a variety of projects, such as developing community history booklets, constructing interpretive trails, monitoring weather and water quality, and establishing artificial reefs. These real-world action projects build confidence and skills, empower youth, and help teach connections. A recent study suggests that these programs can lead to increased critical thinking skills and achievement motivation in participants. Engaging students in the process of solving community problems helps them understand connections and builds action-taking skills.

A community-based action project called the Monday Group has functioned in Lee County Public Schools in Florida for many years. It engages high school youth in exploring local problems, developing solutions, and implementing them. A number of rules have been developed over the years to guide student activity. One rule demands persistence. This empowers students to continue to work towards change despite setbacks and frustration. It works both to accept and move beyond expected failure, recognising that real change takes time and often multiple attempts. Monday Group students have successfully spearheaded the development of new parks and protection for local endangered species.

Strategies for education for sustainability are being explored, developed and implemented in a number of programs and schools around the world. Despite the challenges of curriculum restraints, short teaching periods, discipline-based training and textbooks, and standardised tests, some educators are able to help students develop life-long skills and perspectives that will enable them to function in a sustainable world. They are building hope.

References

Capra, (2000). ‘Ecoliteracy: A systems approach to education’ within ‘Ecoliteracy: Mapping the terrain’, Learning in the Real World, Berkeley, California, pp.27–35.

Ernst, J & Monroe, M C (2004). ‘The effects of environment-based education on students’ critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking’ in Environmental Education Research, 10(4), pp.507–522.

Hammond, W F (1992). ‘The Monday Group’, Project WILD at World Renewable Energy and Environment Conference, Bethesda, Maryland.

Hammond, W F (1996/97). ‘Educating for action: A framework for thinking about the place of action in environmental education’ in Green Teacher, 50, pp.6–14.

Kaplan, S (2000). ‘Human nature and environmentally responsible behavior’ in Journal of Social Issues, 56 (3), pp.491–508.

Kaplan, S & Kaplan, R (1982). Cognition and environment: Functioning in an uncertain world, Praeger, New York.

Sobel, D (1996). Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, The Orion Society and The Myrin Institute, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Weick, K E (1984). ‘Small Wins: Redefining the scale of social problems’, in American Psychologist, 39 (1), pp.40–49.

Martha C. Monroe is an associate professor at the School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, USA.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au