Summer 2005

Education for sustainability

Not an optional extra!

A series of essential questions underpins the way St Leonard’s College has designed its sustainable education curriculum write Kerry Bolger and Marcia Behrenbruch.

We are all increasingly aware of the fragility of our planet. Every day we see images of the effects of drought, global warming, pollution and the disparity of wealth. Globalisation and internationalism are facts of life that are challenging our vision of the social community in which we live. With this in mind, St Leonard’s College has developed a vision of school reform based on sustainable education.

To the young people at St Leonard’s College, it is about plain common sense; it is about knowing and caring about oneself; it is about understanding and respecting others; and it is about being good stewards of the world.

In working with students to determine what is relevant and what is not, we validate experiences in terms of four domains of sustainability that provide the basis for sustainable living. They are:

1. Personal—to provide young people with the tools to understand themselves and their world. This is where literacy and numeracy come in to play. As young people come to understand themselves, they are in a much better position to understand the way other people live.
2. Cultural—to encourage young people to consider the economic and political dimensions of other cultures as well as their social aspects. Such considerations can only occur when young people have a firm grasp on the values that underpin their own culture.
3. Natural—to lead students to understand and value biodiversity. We need to define our impact and our responsibility towards the natural environment.
4. Urban—to aid students to understand the way we design and live in our cities.

Experiences that do not add to the ability to live sustainably are considered to be irrelevant to the 21st century student. Clearly, in an already crowded curriculum, this provides staff with valid criteria for inclusion and exclusion.

The ability to question and inquire is fundamental to the development of a sustainable way of life. Young people need to see the bigger picture and make connections in learning across disciplines. They need to think critically and creatively in order to face challenges in their future. We need a learning society. ‘Education for sustainable development’ and ‘environmental education’ should be replaced by the term, ‘sustainable education’. This implies the right and responsibility to use methodologies that support the real future learning options of our students.

Staff at the Cornish Campus start with an image of their students as being ‘rich and powerful’. Students have a natural curiosity that is best exploited in an environment where they are involved in the design of their own learning experiences and their own learning environment.

In developing this constructionist approach throughout the campus the curriculum is fundamentally influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach to Early Learning, the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme and the ten principles underpinning the Coalition of Essential Schools which has been developed in the United States. These approaches are not confined to any particular age group but are woven together from ELC to year 10. They incorporate the educational philosophies of Dewey and Vygotsky, with the emphasis on the importance of developing an understanding of the learning process rather than learning content. All influences have strong global focuses and encourage the development of an international perspective.

Essential questions form the guide to our curriculum development. In year 7, the essential question is: What is truth and evidence? In year 8 the essential question is: What lifetime, what learning? What change, what contribution? From a small number of entry point questions posed by teachers, students are free to explore ideas and issues providing they are related back to their essential question. Years 7 and 8 students are also involved in real data collection through a wetlands research project.

Years 9 and 10 students work under the question: Are we sustainable? The problem-solving paradigms of different disciplines are maintained. Students are empowered to ask questions and teachers act as co-learners to help develop deep knowledge. The classrooms are colourful; students’ work is displayed everywhere, reinforcing the belief that the students’ environment is also a teaching resource.

In year 9, students spend three weeks on community service projects in Vietnam, Fiji or rural Australia. To support this, all students at year 9 and 10 participate in a core subject called Global Sustainability to develop a deeper understanding of issues they will experience on their trips. Year 10 students act as mentors to the year 9 students and also research and reflect on their own community service experiences. Closer to home, they are involved in developing a permaculture plan for the whole campus, as well as developing connections with the local indigenous community.

Once students have structured their questions, they identify disciplines that will help them find the answers. They use a variety of transdisciplinary skills such as thinking, communication and ICT to research and present their information. They discuss their attitudes and values and how these change through their investigation. The domains of sustainability are most effectively addressed through multi-disciplinary teaching. However, where schools are tightly organised into disciplines, these may form an initial starting point. The Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) with its redefined strands of discipline-based learning offers many powerful starting points for generating interesting questions. The important point here is that sustainability becomes the common language of our schools and the ultimate purpose of our teaching and learning.

The final part of our model for sustainable education identifies the structures that support inquiry-learning based on the domains of sustainability. We need to provide long uninterrupted periods of time and space where students can work in groups or individually, where they can move and converse easily, where they can leave their work to return to at a later time. Teachers need to work in teams to support the interdisciplinary nature of inquiry learning and to personalise the pastoral care for each student. Resources need to include the wider community and the international experiences of the students.

In developing this model of teaching and learning, staff recognise the importance of going back to the basics, of asking the question: Education for what? Clearly, we all want our children to experience a quality of life at least equal to what we have experienced, without negatively impacting on the chances for our grandchildren and beyond to experience the same. This is, in essence, what sustainable living is all about.

Sustainable education is no longer an optional extra!

Kerry Bolger is head of campus at St Leonard’s College, Cornish Campus, Patterson Lakes. Marcia Behrenbruch is deputy head of campus at St Leonard’s College, Cornish Campus, Patterson Lakes.

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