Sustainability in schools

Learning for sustainability

There is an urgent need for us to learn to live in sustainable ways.

Learning for Sustainability develops a ‘frame of mind’ that requires educators and learners to be open to and engage with the complexity of environmental issues. Learning for Sustainability essentially differs from Environmental Education in that it seeks to address the systemic causes of environmental problems through holistic and integrated means.This means that issues are understood in their totality: not just as environmental issues but also as economic, social and political issues. In addition, Learning for Sustainability sees people as agents of change, with the capacity and ability to bring about change themselves, rather than have it imposed on them.

According to the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES), “In the last ten years, a whole-of-school approach to sustainability, which targets all aspects of the school, not just the curriculum, has been advocated as the most effective approach to Learning for Sustainability.” In other words, schools that practice what they teach lead to values being reinforced by action, and in this way, values are caught as well as being taught.

However, according to Shallcross & Robinson (1999): “Inconsistencies between a school’s day to day practice and its operational curriculum are worse than oversights. There is evidence that such inconsistencies are counter productive…. (R)esearch has shown that the failure of practice, in a school’s grounds, to reflect the environmental concerns expressed in its classrooms results in children calling into question the integrity of their teachers…(and may lead to) feelings of both guilt and apathy among young people about the environment…This evidence raises the prospect that inconsistencies between what schools teach and what they do may be socializing young people to accept these inconsistencies as cultural and social norms.”

There is a wide range of information on how to incorporate sustainability in school curriculum. These are separated into two sections:

• Australia
• International