Summer 2005

Education for sustainability

Let's rethink curriculum design

Education for sustainability centres the learner in the inquiry process for transformational change — in thinking, learning, action for the environment and sustainability. To develop capacity for Education for Sustainability, schools need to engage in quality learning, teaching and curriculum processes. Josephine Lang demonstrates how.

What is Education for Sustainable Development (which is also known as Education for Sustainability)? Put simply, sustainability or sustainable development is learning, working and living in ways that respect and look after the needs of Earth’s people, plants, animals and the environment now and in the future.

Educating for a Sustainable Future: A National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools provides school communities with opportunities to build their commitment to working towards meeting the challenges of sustainability.

For the purposes of this article, let's have a look at schools as possible communities to transform their learning, working and living while working towards creating sustainable futures.

A whole school approach

My framework for school communities to consider when building capacity for a sustainable future identifies developing three areas of the school’s functions and operations:

1. curriculum and pedagogy
2. school management
3. partnerships.

Within this article, I plan to further unpack and explore what this might mean for a school community wanting to design curriculum for sustainability.

The concept of sustainability is complex. It is about personal life and community choices and actions. The pillars of sustainability incorporate:

• ecological sustainability—the integrity of ecological systems and diversity are sustained
• economic sustainability—people have livelihoods that are underpinned by appropriate and sustainable development and resource use
• socio-cultural sustainability— diversity of social and cultural norms and traditions are respected with harmony
• political sustainability—there are social processes that encourage good governance, social participation, and active citizenship.

If a school makes a commitment to creating a sustainable future, the complexity of sustainability requires the school community to address the challenge in multiple ways. Education for Sustainability is not a mission for one teacher within the school. It is about the need for the whole school to work together to re-vision the learning, thinking and working for creating a sustainable future. Along the way, the school community’s learning and understanding will inform, develop and share sustainable practices and build new knowledge.

Engaging real-life learning

Critical to achieving the goals of sustainability is learning for understanding. This means that a school needs to analyse its curriculum programs and ensure that it is enabling learning that is authentic and deep. Such curriculums give primacy to inquirybased learning, particularly inquiry that is driven and motivated by students and their curiosities about the world they live in. Problem solving, problem-based learning and futures perspectives are examples of inquiry-based curriculum approaches that support Education for Sustainability.

Furthermore, to meet the goals of sustainability, students should have opportunities to develop creativity and imagination. Both are important thinking and learning tools. Curriculum programs that foster creativity and imagination encourage viewing the challenges of sustainability from multiple perspectives. This promotes development of alternative understandings that inform and develop innovative sustainable practices.

Making connections

Education for Sustainability needs to provide opportunities for learning that examines the interdependence of life on Earth. This has major implications for the design and implementation of curriculum programs. The challenge for school curriculums is to deeply examine issues from multiple perspectives and reflect the social, economic, cultural, political and ecological interrelationships. The school community needs to consider when and how it will support opportunities for learning that employ integrated approaches to curriculum.

There is a call for new ways of looking at structuring learning spaces to facilitate interdisciplinary explorations resulting in new understandings that offer new solutions to problems. Teachers will require support for their own interdisciplinary learning as they work in professional learning teams across disciplines and expertise to ensure richness and depth in students’ inquiry-based learning.

Building partnerships for learning and acting

The focus of Education for Sustainability is to build the community’s capacity to work towards creating a sustainable future. Consequently, the curriculum programs of the school need to consider how they engage students in learning within community contexts. The school needs to create spaces for cooperative and collaborative learning. Such curricular experiences develop students’ interpersonal skills and empathy for diversity while encouraging productive peer learning with its significant outcomes.

Collaboration in learning is not restricted to students and teachers. Partnerships for learning may extend both across the school and to broader communities beyond the school yard, reflecting the nature of the learning. Education for Sustainability requires that learning be applied to transform thinking and behaviours for sustainability. Collaboration fosters energetic learning environments that frequently lead to projects that engage in innovation, social changes and practices for sustainability.

Knowledge and sustainability

The exchange between the two fictitious teachers at the opening of this article highlights the need for teachers to engage in learning for sustainability. The exchange reflects a misunderstanding that sustainability is something that can be boxed into one or two disciplines and/or curriculum programs. Sustainability is a worldview or paradigm that often requires rethinking our Westernised lifestyles. It is complex and habitually incorporates a new way of thinking and understanding our world and our place within it. So, as teachers and educators, we also need to reengage in learning for sustainability. This will also guide us on how we might utilise our own experiences and expertise in designing and implementing curriculum for sustainability.

The concepts that underlie sustainability provide many themes that can be explored within curriculum programs. These concepts engage learning and teaching from within and across many disciplines. This necessitates that all teaching and non-teaching staff have a responsibility for the delivery of successful curricula within the school.

The table below provides examples of sustainability concepts that can be undertaken within school curriculums. Although these terms are categorised under the four pillars of sustainability, many sustainability terms can be investigated from more than one perspective. For example: poverty can be explored as the result of political activity (affecting political sustainability) and/or public health issues (affecting socio-cultural sustainability) and/or a livelihood perspective (affecting economic sustainability) with impacts on the environment (affecting ecological sustainability).

Curriculum design grid of sustainability concepts

Think small and big steps

When a school decides to become a learning community for sustainability, there are many things that it needs to consider. A holistic approach to re-visioning its curriculum, learning and teaching for sustainability is a key consideration. It requires the school community to build on its curricular strengths as well as identify areas for improvement and trialling curriculum approaches to support innovative teaching and learning. However, social change is a process rather than a product. So, the school management team needs to show leadership and harness the energy of the school community to implement Education for Sustainability. This requires planning, participation, learning and a reflective practice that informs cycles of implementation. Think small and big steps for generating a school community with a culture of learning, thinking and acting for sustainability.

Josephine Lang lectures in preservice teacher education at RMIT University in Melbourne.

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