Environmental Sustainability in Coursework: Education

"The growing emphasis on sustainability in school curricula in Australia reflects international trends in education. Teacher education is a vital strategy for the incorporation of Education for Sustainability (EfS) in school curricula. Research to identify drivers and barriers to embedding EfS across a primary teacher education program in an Australian university is the focus of this article. Using a mixed methods approach, data were gathered through document and unit outline audits, a self-efficacy pre-service teacher (PST) survey, and staff and PST focus group interviews. The audits identified a foundation of EfS principles and content across units. Lecturers identified societal and personal drivers and blockers to embedding EfS across the course, with lack of time considered the biggest blocker, which is also consistent with existing school-based research on the nature of teachers' work. PST responses described successful learning outcomes; however, confidence towards teaching sustainability varied. PST reported that the incorporation of community networks in their course provided enriching experiences. Embedding EfS involves values, sustainability concerns and appropriate knowledge and skills. Successful implementation will depend on the development of appropriate understandings of teacher educators."

The "Green Classroom" in Ulm is an experiential learning forum outside school. Its educational concept is based on experimental learning and is geared towards expanding biological knowledge and developing environmental attitudes regarding preservation and utilisation of nature. We assessed the environmental attitude of 92 students before and after they visited the "Green Classroom", and compared the answers they gave in their questionnaires with those of 100 students from a control group. Although the students spent only one morning in the "Green Classroom", attitudes towards utilization of nature improved after their visit but not towards preservation of nature. Moreover, students displayed greater intrinsic motivation towards learning about the animals than the control group.

Sustainability is a core 21st-century movement that stresses keeping interrelationships among the environment, human cultures, and economic systems healthy now--and for future generations--across local, regional, national, and global levels. The ideal sustainable community is able to maintain this balance among the social, environmental, and economic pillars locally, without using an abundance of outside resources or disrupting the local ecosystem. Using children's literature that features unique stories of children and families around the globe, classroom teachers can begin discussions about sustainability in their classrooms. This article highlights several works of children's literature that might be appropriate springboards for engaging young learners in such discussions, and then focuses on one particularly engaging children's book in order to illustrate more specifically how educators might present a concrete introduction to these concepts.

This research is concerned with how children’s processes of imagination, situated in cultural and social practices, come into play when they invent, anticipate, and explore a problem that is important to them. To enhance our understanding of young children’s learning and meaning-making related to science and sustainability, research that investigates children’s use of imagination is valuable. The specific aim of this paper is to empirically scrutinize how children’s imaginations emerge, develop, and impact their experiences in science. We approach imagination as a situated, open, and unscripted act that emerges within transactions. This empirical study was conducted in a Swedish pre-school, and the data was collected ‘in between’ a science inquiry activity and lunchtime. We gathered specific video-sequences wherein the children, lived through the process of imagination, invented a problem together and produced something new. Our analysis showed that imagination has a great significance when children provide different solutions which may be useful in the future to sustainability-related problems. If the purpose of an educational experience in some way supports children’s imaginative flow, then practicing an open, listening approach becomes vital. Thus, by encouraging children to explore their concerns and questions related to sustainability issues more thoroughly without incautious recommendations or suggestions from adults, the process of imagination might flourish.

Core Ideas: Environmental education in special education is feasible.Environmental education requires further training of educators.Environmental education is beneficial to children with disabilities.
This investigation, conducted in Greece, inquired 80 special education teachers—via a structured questionnaire—their opinions on whether they feel ready to teach environmental education (EE) to pupils with disabilities, whether instruction of EE is possible in special or in regular education classes, and whether EE is beneficial to people with disabilities. The questionnaire had a unit with closed-type questions on demographic data (sex, age, educational background, further training in special education, years of service, location of school) and the three units corresponding to the above thematic with a total of 15 questions, on EE and pupils with disabilities. The results showed that educators in general do not feel particularly prepared and ready to teach EE to pupils with disabilities, since they do not have the appropriate training nor sufficient knowledge on how to teach EE to children with disabilities, and in order for them to acquire this knowledge, it is necessary to receive further training on activities that provide ideas for planning such a course and on the various disabilities. The majority of them rejected the premise that EE is unfeasible in special education, but they were divided on the feasibility of teaching EE to all pupils in the disabilities spectrum and on the need of individualized instruction for successful participation in EE activities. Finally, there was a high positive agreement on the benefits of EE instruction on knowledge, socialization, and improvement of self-esteem, but there was uncertainty on its possible positive influence on future vocational rehabilitation of students.

Interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability (IES) academic programs have an important and distinctive role in education for sustainability: preparing sustainability-oriented problem solvers who work at the science-policy, science-management, and policy-management interfaces. IES programs are rapidly expanding at college and universities in the USA and exhibit a variety of forms, including interdisciplinary degree programs housed within a traditional department; programs that span departments, a college, multiple colleges, or the entire university; programs that reside in their own IES departments, schools, or colleges; and degree programs located within IES institutes and centers. A very few institutions are addressing IES education in a holistic manner by developing dedicated campuses for sustainability education or reorganizing their entire campus structure to support sustainability science education and research. This paper presents how Unity College, a small environmental college, reorganized its administrative structure, curriculum and pedagogy around a sustainability science framework. It also illustrates the influence that various forms of IES programs have on sustainability education in the USA as revealed by national studies conducted by the Center for Environmental Education Research of the National Council for Science and the Environment.