Environmental Sustainability in Schools
Despite efforts over the past 40 plus years, environmental sustainability is still on the margins of the curriculum in most countries. While there is much evidence that children enjoy learning about and in the environment, many teachers remain reluctant t
- PDF / 254,538 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 36 Downloads / 261 Views
6. ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN SCHOOLS Tensions around Teaching a Global Imperative
ABSTRACT
Despite efforts over the past 40 plus years, environmental sustainability is still on the margins of the curriculum in most countries. While there is much evidence that children enjoy learning about and in the environment, many teachers remain reluctant to teach environmental sustainability, and governments frequently marginalise the area. This chapter discusses the need for education for sustainability as part of global citizenship and provides a history of the implementation of environmental sustainability education in schools, with a particular emphasis on Australian and English schools, and the tensions that have been encountered. It also gives some examples of instances where environmental sustainability has been successfully implemented in schools, and concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges for the future. A thread throughout these discussions is the relationship between environmental and science education because these fields have long been seen as related in a schooling context. Keywords: environmental education, sustainability, science education, global citizenship INTRODUCTION
Since the late 1960s, there has been a global imperative to educate people to protect and enhance their environment. For example, at a conference held at the University of Keele in 1965, it was agreed that environmental education “should become an essential part of the education of all citizens, not only because of the importance of their understanding something of their environment but because of its immense educational potential in assisting the emergence of a scientifically literate nation” (Wheeler, 1975, p. 8), and the United States Congress passed an Environmental Education Act in 1970 (McCrea, 2006, p. 4). The 1972 United Nations Declaration on the Human Environment reinforced the importance of environmental education in having as one of its principles that:
T. Barkatsas & A. Bertram (Eds.), Global Learning in the 21st Century, 83–101. © 2016 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
A. Gough
Education in environmental matters, for the younger generation as well as adults, giving due consideration to the underprivileged, is essential in order to broaden the basis for an enlightened opinion and responsible conduct by individuals, enterprises and communities in protecting and improving the environment in its full human dimension. (United Nations, 1972, p. 3) More recently, the post-Millennium Development Goals agenda stated that, “Environmental sustainability is a core pillar of the post-2015 agenda and a prerequisite for lasting socioeconomic development and poverty eradication” (United Nations, 2013a, p. 2). Hence, environmental sustainability education continues to be needed as part of the core of global learning for the twenty first century, and this is reflected in the Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2014), although not in the national cur
Data Loading...
