Curriculum development for student agency on sustainability issues: An exploratory study (original) (raw)
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Sustainability, 2023
The “Green Nudges” program, developed within the framework of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is based on behavioral science and nudge theory. Aimed primarily at universities, it explores ways to adopt a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. Studies show that many young people recognize climate change as a major problem but that it leaves them feeling helpless and anxious—something that our teaching practice confirms. As we had had no success teaching sustainability using conventional approaches, we used the pedagogical design capacity (PDC) principle to develop a novel workshop format and implement it in a pilot series of three repeated workshops. The workshop concept is based on empowering educators and students to tackle emerging global issues while also boosting critical thinking, field research, and teamwork skills. An important part of the integration of different tools was based on supporting students’ self-direction and knowledge- and evidence-based decision making. The results demonstrate that the proposed pedagogical framework resonates with and empowers students. At the same time, the workshop empowers educators to competently navigate complex and sustainability-oriented topics within the field of education for sustainable development (ESD).
Sustainability, 2021
The crises societies face today contribute to a rather challenging life setting that demands in-depth reflection, daring new thinking, and change urgently. Transformative education for a sustainable future is needed today more than ever before; the aim of this paper is an exploration of its goal and pedagogy. By drawing on diverse bodies of knowledge, including the structure-agency debate and the theory of critical pedagogy, this paper critically discusses Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and its goal of sustainable development. It identifies areas where ESD needs enhancement given the present socio-economic and cultural context and ultimately proposes the transformation of ESD to Education for Eco-communities—which highlights the need for community-centered approaches, knowledge, and observation of natural laws, sociological imagination, and political acumen—to render it better suited for the challenges of the 21st century.
Raising Environmental Consciousness: Instilling Sustainability into the Educational Curriculum
BHARATI INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (BIJMRD), 2024
In the face of escalating environmental challenges, equipping future generations with a profound understanding and appreciation for sustainable practices has become a pressing need. Uniting concepts of sustainability throughout educational programs at all levels nurtures an environmentally-aware generation prepared to tackle ecological challenges, ultimately fostering a more resilient and sustainable society.This study explores innovative and holistic approaches to infusing sustainability concepts into diverse subject areas, fostering interdisciplinary connections, and promoting experiential learning experiences. It delves into strategies for curriculum redesign, educator training programs, and the development of practical implementations that seamlessly integrate sustainability principles into educational frameworks. Furthermore, the research examines the role of community engagement, fostering partnerships between educational institutions, local communities, and relevant stakeholders to raise awareness and encourage collective action towards sustainable practices. It also investigates the impact of educational policies, institutional frameworks, and resource allocation in supporting and incentivizing the integration of sustainability goals within educational settings. By delving into these various facets, the research endeavors to spark thought-provoking dialogues, exchange exemplary approaches, and recommend tangible initiatives to develop a cohort of people armed with the understanding, abilities, and dedication to propel constructive transformations leading to a more sustainable tomorrow.Ultimately, the infusion of sustainability into educational curricula has the potential to empower learners to become catalysts for environmental stewardship and contribute to the creation of a more sustainable and resilient world.
Educating as if Sustainability Mattered
ICERI 2018 Proceedings, 2018
Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour and discourse indicate that education has largely failed to prepare the necessary groundwork to make a ‘Great Transition’ possible, to give humanity a chance to achieve a sustainable future of acceptable quality [1]. The consequences of this failure in terms of human and non-human costs seldom inform actual policy making or official curriculum development. Beyond the shortcomings in curricula themselves, a multiplicity of causes for this failure include structural constraints and perceptual blind spots in the political, social, economic and cultural realms as well as certain intrinsic impediments in the learner that have been connected to ‘human nature’. Because those causes are so deep-seated, an effective reform of education that could address the failure seems both daunting as an undertaking and more urgently needed than ever. This paper outlines the major agenda points that such a reform effort will need to engage with at the levels of curriculum and educational practice. The first part deals with educational failure by commission and how it could be mitigated. The second part focuses on failure by omission and underlying socio-cultural contingencies, which leads into a discussion of new educational aims that would enable learners to actively contribute toward the Transition. This includes broad requirements for curriculum reform, for socio-cultural empowerment, and for the praxis of teaching and learning. Some pioneering efforts that have been made by avant-garde educators in those directions indicate that such educational achievements are realistically possible. The goal is to provide a blueprint for transformative education in the context of the sustainability imperative, beyond the inadequacies of ‘education as usual’. I shall argue that the following special focus areas deserve particular attention in the design of an effective curriculum for sustainability: human security, ecocentrist ethics, specific cognitive and affective skills, visioning change at the global and local levels, and empowerment.
Going Deeply into Education for Sustainability
The extraordinary ‘coming-together’ of Education for Sustainability (EfS) has brought about new relations between education and environment. The United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD 2005-214) has highlighted the importance of education in a sustainable future and the central role of young people in this work. As educators, we see multiple and indistinct programs and pedagogies of EfS emerge. We are equally inspired, activated, overworked and confused. How can we provide our young people with empowering experiences of being valued and encourage them to inquire, discuss and creatively problem solve...as well as to switch off lights and put out the bins? In this essay I will outline some examples of work that can re-connect the essential elements of EfS and the ways in which this work can be done in primary and secondary educational settings.
Raising sustainability awareness in university curricula and pedagogy
This paper reports on a study entitled Reorienting University Curricula to Address Sustainability (RUCAS), carried out in collaboration with a Tempus-European Commission funded project on the issue of raising sustainability awareness in university students. RUCAS aims at involving university students in sustainability issues through introducing such issues into regular course curricula. The study presented in this paper is the final product of one of the work packages required by RUCAS. It involved second-year university students taking a course in rhetoric and argumentation as a general education requirement over a period of one semester. The first part of the paper analyzes students’ background, interests, linguistic proficiency, and major. Secondly, it describes a specific group “good practice” assignment on a sustainability issue of the students’ own choosing, to address Grade 6 children. This is followed by reflections from the 6th graders, their teachers, the school administrators and the university students themselves. Finally, the paper concludes with the implications of carrying out such activities and recommendations for further applications of good practice in raising awareness of sustainability in university students and their commitment to the community around them. Keywords: Curriculum, Pedagogy, Community Service, Sustainability
Sustainability, 2019
The shape of tomorrow’s world will depend on ways in which young people engage with decisions that are being made today. In 2016, the United Nations (UN) launched the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework ‘to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all’[1]. This was a major step forward for sustainable development, and provides the action plan for a sustainable future. However, the global challenge has been to engage, connect and empower communities to both understand and deliver the 17 SDGs. In this study we show the benefit of a strategic planning-based experiential learning tool, the Young Persons’ Plan for the Planet (YPPP) Program, to improve the underlying competencies of Australian and Mauritian adolescents in increasing understanding and delivering the SDGs. The study was conducted with 300 middle to senior high school students, in 25 schools throughout Australia and Mauritius, over an 18-month period. The intervention included the development of research, strategic planning, management, STEM and global competency skills in the students, to enable them to build and deliver regional and national SDG plans. Our results, from both qualitative and quantitative evidence, demonstrate significant improvements in these adolescents’ appreciation of, and attitudes towards, the SDGs and sustainable outcomes, across a range of key parameters. The results from the 76 students who attended the International Conference in Mauritius in December 2018 demonstrate significant improvements in mean levels of understanding, and attitudes of the students towards the SDGs awareness (+85%), understanding / engagement (+75%), motivation (+57%), and action orientation/empowerment (+66%). These changes were tested across a range of socio-demographic, geographic and cultural parameters, with consistent results. These findings have significant implications for the challenge of sustainable education and achieving community engagement and action towards the SDGs in Australia and Mauritius, particularly for young people. As the intervention can be replicated and scaled, the findings also highlight the opportunity to extend both the research and this type of experiential learning intervention [2] across both broader geographies and other generation and community segments.
Our World, Our Futures: Transforming Education Through Environmental and Sustainability Education
Deleted Journal, 2023
Environmental and sustainability education is critical to the world we live in today. Our World, Our Futures, a small-scale, cross-cultural participatory study, explored what transformative environmental and global citizenship education might look like in primary schools across two contexts. The study aimed to explore how teachers innovate curriculum through a flexible, cross-curricular approach within the constraints of the existing formal school curriculum. Informed by a culturally situated, responsive approach to researching with students and teachers, the research team supported the teachers in developing learning activities that forefronted the students' situated knowledge, ideas and concerns about the environment. The students were invited to create and share art and other texts reflecting their perspectives on local environmental issues, their aspirations for their future spaces and their active roles as global citizens. Teachers were invited to reflect on how, and the extent to which, ideas of global citizenship, environmental and sustainability education can be incorporated into the curriculum, exploring how the project supported teachers' pedagogical praxis, autonomy and professional learning. Through these activities, data such as teacher interviews, classroom observations and artefacts of student work were gathered. The data were analysed to identify ways in which students' cross-cultural dialogue developed along with teachers' pedagogical development in integrating transformative and contextually relevant pedagogical approaches for delivery of environmental and sustainability education. The findings demonstrate the complexities and challenges of collaborating across distances, cultures and time zones, and of using virtual platforms. Finally, the findings present curriculum development as a lived, dynamic and experimental process that develops teacher autonomy and professional learning.
Education to Face the Wicked Challenges of Sustainability
Journal of Social Sciences, 2011
Problem statement: The nature of sustainable development requires new paradigms for education. Issues of sustainability are 'wicked problems' that do not lend themselves to conventional didactic approaches. The challenge for higher education is to examine interdisciplinary approaches to global societal responsibility and, within this, issues of education for sustainable development. Approach: A project, sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering, developed a course unit in sustainable development across several disciplines. The approach was initially pedagogic in nature, with a strong evaluative theme. At the same time, a Delphi study was undertaken by the same team and this interrelates with the main project. The focus of the action research was a series of 'wicked' problems that would provide real-world challenges with no simple answers. Results: The project was evaluated in a number of ways, not least the pre-and post-testing of students' attitudes and approaches, but also using nominal group techniques. The project demonstrated that an interdisciplinary PBL approach succeeded in deepening the learning of the students as well as developing key skills. Conclusion: The use of collaborative, group-based approaches, notably PBL, offers a key way of approaching the design of curricula for sustainable development and other areas of global societal responsibility that hinge on 'wicked problems'.
Sustainability : perspectives of students as stakeholders in the curriculum
2012
Institutions of higher education are increasingly engaged in sustainability efforts, both in classrooms and on the campus. Yet, little is known about what students really know and believe about sustainability issues. Using Lattuca and Stark's (2009) curricular frame and a single case study approach, this research explored student and non-student stakeholder perspectives on sustainability in a community college setting in Hawai'i. Students were interviewed using a focus group methodology to discern group norms around sustainability. Research questions focused on student attitudes and habits, as well as what they knew about sustainability and where they had learned it. Emphasis was on the perspectives of local public high school graduates in their first and second year of college; nonresident students from foreign countries and the continental U.S. were also included. Focus groups of non-student stakeholders (administrators and faculty) were also conducted around the question, "what should students be learning about sustainability?" These participants discussed the most effective areas in which to concentrate sustainability efforts, such as curriculum, operations, research, vision, and faculty development. Faculty and administrators had differing perspectives; faculty were most interested in teaching values and behavior change, while administrators expressed interest in a more holistic curriculum. Student data was analyzed across two spectrums, from low to high engagement and from weak to strong sustainability practices, creating four categories: cultural habits, sustainability habitus, karmic retribution, and dissonance. The study's central findings are that students have greater knowledge but less interest in sustainability than generally v perceived. First year students had experienced sustainability curricula in high school, but home and culturally based practices appeared to have greater impact. Second year students experienced sustainability content in a wide range of college courses, but expressed more confusion than first year students. All resident student groups expressed overall feelings of disempowerment and hopelessness. Implications from this work include: the use of an affective, multisensory curriculum; more coherent sequencing of sustainability experiences in academic curriculum; cooperation of classroom and campus to reinforce learning; and a shift away from problem-oriented curricula toward a leadership development model that instills entrepreneurial attitudes of resilience, optimism, and self-efficacy. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS