EDU20005: Sustainable Education and Perspectives
EDU20005: Sustainable Education and Perspectives
Assignment 1: EcobiographyThis assignment is designed to enable you to reflect on your understandings and attitudes about environmental sustainability. You'll also consider how these experiences position you as a teacher and/or practitioner (in your chosen profession). Reflection is a vital skill in knowing and understanding who you are in order to better position yourself within the context of teaching and working within educational settings
This assignment has three parts:
Part A: Educating for sustainability
Discuss the scope and purpose for educating for a sustainable future. You'll need to:
include a definition of sustainability
summarise key reasons sustainability has become a focus point in recent years and key principles of Educating for Sustainability (EfS)
Note: Use your readings from weeks one to five to support your discussion.
Part B: Reflection
In this section, you're asked to critically reflect on your attitudes toward sustainable perspectives and articulate what your core values are. You might consider the following areas:
Your ecological footprint from week one.
What you feel to be the most important issues around environmental sustainability.
What you find challenging.
Your doubts, concerns and questions.
Part C: Teaching/practice position
After reflecting on your personal beliefs and values, and the rationale behind educating for a sustainable future, you need to consider how your understandings impact your role as a teacher.
How do your personal values conflict or align with principles of EfS?
How and why do sustainable education perspectives impact upon the professional responsibilities of teachers?
How could you prepare children and young people to think and act for sustainable futures?
Information about Modules 4
In todays rapidly changing and hyper-connected world we live in, our children and young people, and indeed our community as a whole, arguably need more than ever to learn to view the world holistically.
Understanding the natural environment and developing insight into how the social constructs of society, economics and governance inhibit our ability to act with meaning to environmental issues is essential. EfS has a crucial role to play in developing new ways of thinking, changing attitudes and promoting skills to create a fair and sustainable future for the world.
Education for Sustainable Development is a lifelong process from early childhood to higher and adult education and goes beyond formal education.
European Panel on Sustainable Development (2010
Education will play an important part in the changes that are needed as we adapt to environmental changes, not only through the dissemination of information and adaptation skills but also through the challenging of ideas and values that transform thinking.
The UNESCO Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005) outlines the following pedagogical drivers as the determinants of transformative learning. These are:
values driven
interdisciplinary and holistic outcomes
critical, problem solving thinking
multi-methodological, participatory decision making with local relevance.
EfS is a movement and process which promotes thinking systematically about sustainability in order to develop an understanding and recognition of the contexts and interconnections involved in the challenges of meeting the future. Through this society will evolve an empowered citizenry equipped to make effective decisions to improve the state of ecosystems, and ensure economic and social health and well-being.
In schools, sustainability education is intended to involve every subject. Many schools already have green initiatives like recycling, school gardens or working teams. Typically, these can be described as tokenistic, involving a small number of people. In contrast, EfS aims to promote truly sustainable schools and early childhood settings which will, in time, have environmental literacy at the centre of their institutional processes, as a guiding motif in the fabric of their cultures.
The concept of citizenship, as it applies in the context of sustainable thinking, is a significant theme in this unit which you need to address in your assessment responses.
Citizens of tomorrow need to be prepared for a world which will be significantly different from the world of the 1990's: a world characterised by rapid technological change, major environmental challenges, globalism and expanding information networks. This syllabus provides the opportunity for students to develop the skills that will enable them to develop leadership in shaping their own future and Australia's.
Board of Senior Secondary School Studies (1998
4.3 Educational perspectives
Early childhood education is often marginalised from other education programs, resources and funding in relation to EfS. There's a perception that young children should not learn about environmental issues and concerns because they are too young.
Catherine Hydon (2007), an Early Childhood Australia member working on a revision of the organisations Code of Ethics, was challenged by a friend who had enrolled his baby at a nearby child care centre: 'Whats this thing about teaching children about the environment? Theyre only babiessurely theyre too young to have to worry about recycling and all that?' (p. 43).
In response, Hydon, in common with the aims of this unit, advocates a pedagogy that encourages children to be given opportunities to become active and informed environmental citizens where young children are included in discussion about their community, including environmental discourse. She writes, "might it actually be considered irresponsible not to show children that the ways in which they behave towards the environment will impact the rest of their lives and future generations?" and that if we "see children as more than just biological beingsas co-constructors with agency and power then we need to invite them into a collaboration of learning and teaching that includes tacking issues that our society faces" (citing Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999, p. 7).
This aim is tempered by considerations about how to sensitively do this with very young children without causing alarm or despair or burdening young people with an overwhelming sense of responsibility. It does not mean that we scare children or present negative scenarios but rather involve children in deconstructing some of the issues with supportive pedagogy.
Principles of EfSIn Australia, Education for Sustainability has been driven by the following three government publications:
Educating for a Sustainable Future: A National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools (2005).
Living Sustainably: The Australian Governments National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability (2009).
Sustainability Curriculum Framework: A guide for curriculum developers and policy makers (2010).
We'll explore the first two of these this week and the final document in Week 9.
The table from page 17 of Educating for a Sustainable Future: A National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools (Department of Environment and Heritage [DEH], 2005) outlines some of the key concepts and themes of Education for Sustainability defined within the categories of ecological, social, economic and political sustainability.
Key concepts and themes of education for sustainability: Ecological sustainability (biodiversity, habitat, carrying capacity, conservation, ecological footprint, ecology, ecospace, ecosystems, interspecies equity, natural cycles and systems); Social sustainability (basic human needs, cultural diversity, cultural heritage, human rights, intergenerational equity, participation, peace, risk management, social justice); Economic sustainability (cost-benefit analysis, economic development, eco-efficiency, life-cycle analysis, natural capital, natural resource accounting, steady-state economy, sustainable consumption, sustainable production, triple bottom line); Political sustainability (citizenship, democracy, decision making, tolerance, power, respect, conflict resolution).
Examples of autobiographical writing
Select the arrows to see examples of of autobiographical writing.
Mateja Telich is an early childhood educator who was a participant in a two-year research study (Young, 2010) that adapted the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative for early childhood education.
Its time to change, time to understand, time to teach and time to reflect on ones commitment to sustainability. Many thoughts have come into my mind about sustainability and what it REALLY means to me. After attending the ECA conference in Canberra and hearing all the guest speakers on sustainability, I really believe that this has had a huge impact on me.
While sitting there and listening to one of the speakers, a light turned on in my brain. After all this time, I never really looked at me and reflected on what I was doing to ensure I was doing the right thing. That night I reflected and reflected and could not sleep. I wrote a list, I dont compost, I rarely use my own shopping bags, I over consume, I purchase non-environmental friendly products, I have two large televisions, I drive a four wheel drive car and more. I am disappointed that someone like me who is very much into nature and its sustenance, really was not.
I then began to ponder my upbringing. I loved nature, we had large vegetable gardens, we composted, we had animals and we bought only what we needed. Now instead of all those vegetable gardens we have concrete and a pool. We have a pretty garden that is nether drought tolerant or friendly to native animals. WHAT HAS GONE WRONG!
It has taken this long for me to realise I am doing nothing, but yet I am educating young children to preserve what we have left of this wonderful world. I feel like I have let the children down and I really want to change this situation. The time is NOW. I am going to start with my own habits. I will lead for change. The children in my care are the most important advocates. I will continue to support these children in understanding the importance of sustainability and why it is important, not only for the environment, but also for everyone around them. There is hope In examining the lives of hundreds of creative thinkers from around the world, it was evident during early childhood, that each of them had undergone an acute sensory response to the natural world a sudden awareness that being and becoming are part of the flow of life, and a sense of their oneness with it and each reported that the experience had been life-changing for them.
(Cobb, 1959 p. 539)
