Educating for Sustainability

Educating for Sustainability
Author: Victor Nolet
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2015-08-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317962567

Educating for Sustainability presents fundamental principles, theoretical foundations, and practical suggestions for integrating education for sustainability into existing schoolwide systems and programs, organized in three sections: Principles of Education for Sustainability; Fostering a Sustainability Worldview; Learning and Thinking for Sustainability. Designed for teachers and teachers-to-be at all grade levels and across the content areas, the focus is on professional practices and pedagogical approaches rather than specific topics often associated with sustainability. Each chapter includes a number of supports to help readers monitor and improve their own professional practice and to deepen their own sustainability wordview, including textboxes in most chapters that provide more detailed or specialized information and a range of application exercises. All chapters include several "Consider This" activities and an "Extend Your Professional Knowledge" feature. Directly grounded in K-12 classroom practice, this book presents useful and realistic information for teachers looking to reorient their work toward sustainability and help their students develop new thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Transformative Sustainability Education

Transformative Sustainability Education
Author: Elizabeth A. Lange
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2023-03-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000821439

This book lays out the principles and practices of transformative sustainability education using a relational way of thinking and being. Elizabeth A. Lange advocates for a new approach to environmental and sustainability education, that of rethinking the Western way of knowing and being and engendering a frank discussion about the societal elements that are generating climate, environmental, economic, and social issues. Highlighting the importance of Indigenous and life-giving cultures, the book covers educational theory, transformation stories of adult learners, social and economic critique, and visions of changemakers. Each chapter also has a strong pedagogical element, with entry points for learners and embodied practices and examples of taking action at micro/meso/macro levels woven throughout. Overall, this book enacts a relational approach to transformative sustainability education that draws from post humanist theory, process thought, relational ontology, decolonization theory, Indigenous philosophy, and a spirituality that builds a sense of sacred towards the living world. Written in an imaginative, storytelling manner, this book will be a great resource for formal and nonformal environmental and sustainability educators.

Empowering Teachers through Environmental and Sustainability Education

Empowering Teachers through Environmental and Sustainability Education
Author: Melissa Barnes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2021-05-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000386848

Empowering Teachers through Environmental and Sustainability Education draws inspiration from an empirical study exploring early career teachers’ attempts at enacting Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) in their everyday teaching practices. It showcases how a confluence of personal, professional and environmental identities supports implementation of ESE. Additionally, this book discusses key concepts and issues surrounding ESE and the ways in which teachers may claim agency and power to create change in their classroom practices. Drawing from theoretical perspectives, such as Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ habitus and capital, theories of identity, and Foucault’s concept of power and knowledge relations, this book explores how teachers negotiate policies, curriculum and institutional norms to further theoretical and practical understanding of ESE. The use of personal narratives offers new insights into teachers’ agency in creating localised yet powerful change through small and meaningful actions. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to explore ways in which meaningful change can be made in educational settings through these small agentive and yet empowering steps. This book reveals that teachers can enact agency and navigate the power structures that exist within educational settings in order to make ESE meaningful within their classrooms.

Socially-critical Environmental Education in Primary Classrooms

Socially-critical Environmental Education in Primary Classrooms
Author: Jane Edwards
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2015-10-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319021478

The effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development depends on the ability of schools and teachers to embrace pedagogies that reduce the gap between the rhetoric of education for the environment and the reality of classroom practices. This book responds to the need to better understand the nature of the relationships between agency and structure that contribute to the development of educational rhetoric-reality gaps in order to inform processes that most effectively facilitate pedagogical change. This book explores the issues of pedagogical change through the experiences of Australian primary school teachers faced with the challenge of implementing an environmental education program in which young students were positioned as active participants in the social processes from which environmentally sustainable practices could be developed. These teachers were required to adopt pedagogies that often represented the antithesis of their well-established teacher-directed approaches. Through the use of Anthony Giddens’ Theory of Structuration this book provides unique perspectives of the teacher mediated manner in which certain elements of structure and agency interrelate to enable and constrain classroom practices—essential understandings for school principals and educational policy developers who aim to effectively implement pedagogical change. This book also demonstrates that the Theory of Structuration provides a valuable ontological research framework, and provides social researchers with practical guidance for how to relate this theory to specific research issues.

Sustainable Development Teaching

Sustainable Development Teaching
Author: Katrien Van Poeck
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2019-05-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351124323

The aim of this book is to support and inspire teachers to contribute to much-needed processes of sustainable development and to develop teaching practices and professional identities that allow them to cope with the specificity of sustainability issues and, in particular, with the teaching challenges related to the ethical and political dimension of environmental and sustainability education. Bringing together recent scholarship on the topic, this book translates state-of-the-art academic research into teaching models, methods and tools. Starting with an outline of the challenge of sustainability, it offers insights and models for understanding the interesting yet ambiguous concept of ‘sustainable development’ and the complex process of transforming society in a more sustainable direction (Part I). It then goes on to provide a guide to preparing courses and lessons as well as tools for reflection about teaching practices and the multiplicity of approaches to addressing ethical and political challenges in sustainable development teaching (Part II). Finally, the book offers useful conceptual frameworks, models and typologies about the concrete design and implementation of sustainable development teaching (Part III). This book will be essential reading for students of education, as well as teachers in compulsory and higher education and sustainability education researchers.

Paradigm Shifts in 21st Century Teaching and Learning

Paradigm Shifts in 21st Century Teaching and Learning
Author: Orakc?, ?enol
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020-04-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1799831477

One of the most important transformations in the world today is the adaptation to education and teaching methods that must be made to enhance the learning experience for Millennial and Generation Z students. The system in which the student is passive and the teacher is active is no longer the most effective form of education. Additionally, with the increased availability to information, knowledge transfer is no longer done solely by the teacher. Educators need to become moderators in order to promote effective teaching practices. Paradigm Shifts in 21st Century Teaching and Learning is an essential scholarly publication that examines new approaches to learning and their application in the teaching-learning process. Featuring a wide range of topics such as game-based learning, curriculum design, and sustainability, this book is ideal for teachers, curriculum developers, instructional designers, researchers, education professionals, administrators, academicians, educational policymakers, and students.

Issues in Teaching and Learning of Education for Sustainability

Issues in Teaching and Learning of Education for Sustainability
Author: Chew-Hung Chang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2019-09-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429833695

In a fast-changing, globalising world, the teaching and implementation of a curriculum for Education for Sustainability (EfS) has been a challenge for many teachers. Issues in Teaching and Learning of Education for Sustainability highlights the issues and challenges educators and academics face in implementing EfS and gives examples of what an EfS curriculum may look like and how some institutions translate the theory into practice. Organised into three parts, the volume looks at: the who (EfS for whom), the what (EfS curriculum) and the how (translating from theory to practice). The concluding chapter provides ideas and directions on where the world can proceed regarding sustainability education and how it can help in the teaching and learning of sustainability. Considering social issues such as poverty, education, health, culture and the use of natural resources, this book proposes a different path towards Education for Sustainability. Providing concrete data on the realisation of sustainable development, Issues in Teaching and Learning of Education for Sustainability will be of interest to geographers, geography educators and professionals concerned with Education for Sustainability.

Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future: Innovative Strategies and Best Practices

Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future: Innovative Strategies and Best Practices
Author: Goi, Chai Lee
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2024-01-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 166849860X

Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future: Innovative Strategies and Best Practices delves into the critical global challenges of sustainability and the indispensable role of education in forging a sustainable future for generations to come. This interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral endeavor embraces themes ranging from climate change and biodiversity loss to social justice, poverty reduction, and sustainable development. By integrating environmental, social, and economic dimensions, the book offers a holistic approach to teaching and learning for sustainability, presenting innovative strategies and best practices that can be adapted across diverse disciplines, levels of education, and contexts. Drawing upon a rich tapestry of pedagogical approaches, the book illuminates experiential learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, and project-based learning as powerful tools for addressing sustainability challenges and opportunities. Additionally, it showcases cutting-edge teaching tools and technologies, including online platforms, social media, virtual and augmented reality, and gamification, revolutionizing the dissemination of sustainability education. The book serves as a platform for educators, academics, researchers, policy makers, and students to share experiences, insights, and best practices, propelling the evolution of sustainability education.

Prioritizing Sustainability Education

Prioritizing Sustainability Education
Author: Joan Armon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-12-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0429664249

Prioritizing Sustainability Education presents theory-to-practice essays and case studies by educators from six countries who elucidate dynamic approaches to sustainability education. Too often, students graduate with exploitative, consumer-driven orientations toward ecosystems and are unprepared to confront the urgent challenges presented by environmental degradation. Educators are prioritizing sustainability-oriented courses and programs that cultivate students’ knowledge, skills, and values and contextualize them within relational connections to local and global ecosystems. Little has yet been written, however, about the comprehensive sustainability education that educators are currently designing and implementing, often across or at the edges of disciplinary boundaries. The approaches described in this book expand beyond conventional emphases on developing students’ attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors by thinking and talking about ecosystems to additionally engaging students with ecosystems in sensory, affective, psychological, and cognitive dimensions, as well as imaginative, spiritual, or existential dimensions that guide environmental care and regeneration. This book supports educators and graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in the humanities, social sciences, environmental studies, environmental sciences, and professional programs in considering how to reorient their fields toward relational sustainability perspectives and practices.