Sterling & Huckle eds. (1996). #EducationForSustainability #ESD

For better SPSF, a key book summary

Sterling, S. & Huckle, J.eds.(1996=2014).Education for Sustainability, London: Routledge. 

(Note: Ch 16 was added in 2014, others were in 1996)

Education for Sustainability (English Edition)

One point is to do with labels. While the label ‘education for sustainable development’ has gained wide currency since the Decade was first proposed at the Johannesburg Earth Summit in 2002, we still prefer to use education for sustainability (EfS). In our view ESD has become too strongly associated with reformist and often idealist discourse that seeks a greener and fairer version of ‘business of usual’. (Loc:389)

Ch 16: Education for Sustainable Citizenship: An Emerging Focus for Education for Sustainability, John Huckle

In 2014 there is little evidence that British society has developed to become more sustainable or that education is enabling all learners to ‘develop the skills, knowledge and value base to be active citizens in creating a more sustainable society’ (DfES, 2003: 7,DfES (Department for Education and Skills) (2003) ‘Sustainable Development Action Plan for Education and Skills’, DfES, London ). The concept of sustainable development is now more widely recognized and debated; some businesses have turned sustainability to their advantage by ‘greening’ their operations; governments have adopted strategies for sustainable development that involve the ‘greening’ of policy; educational institutions at all levels have ‘greened’ their curricula, campuses and links with the wider community; and numerous civil society organizations continue to advocate sustainability in different forms and to demonstrate what it might look like in practice. Much of this activity is welcome and worthwhile, but it does not amount to a breakthrough to sustainability (pp.228-229). 

Education for Sustainable Citizenship

It requires citizens to exercise responsibilities to distant people and places and past and future generations, and to commit themselves to ecologism to the extent that they are required to exercise care or stewardship for non-human nature (p.232).

Box 16.2: The sustainability (sustainable) citizen:

1. believes that sustainability is a common good that will not be achieved by the pursuit of individual self-interest alone;
2. is moved by other-regarding motivations as well as self-interested ones;
3. believes that ethical and moral knowledge is as important as technoscientific knowledge in the context of pro-sustainability behaviour change;
4. believes that other people’s sustainability rights engender environmental responsibilities which the sustainability citizen should redeem;
5. believes that these responsibilities are due not only to one’s neighbours or fellow nationals but also to strangers distant in space and even in time;
6. has an awareness that private environment-related actions can have public environment-related impacts;
7. believes that market-based solutions alone will not bring about sustainability; the sustainability citizen will therefore recommend social and public action. (Dobson, 2011:10, Dobson, A (2011) Sustainability Citizenship, Greenhouse, London.)

Both Dewey and Freire recognized the central role of such dialogue in education for democracy, with Freire maintaining that it can develop critical consciousness as teachers and students cooperatively reflect on their understandings of the world, recognize ideology and hegemony, and seek ways of validating discourses that appear to offer a more truthful interpretation of reality and the ways in which it might be transformed (Walsh, 2009, Walsh, J. (2009). The Critical Role of Discourse in Education for Democracy’, Journal of Critical Educational Policy Studies, 6 (2) 54–76.).

Critical discourse analysis is a key element of the socially critical pedagogy introduced in Chapter 7 of this text. It has now been combined with a future-orientated ecological politics to create ecopedagogy (Gadotti, 2008; Kahn, 2008, 2010)... Bonnett (2004, Bonnet, M (2004) Retrieving Nature: Education for a Post-Humanist Age, Blackwell, Oxford) argues that such literacy requires a frame of mind that values harmony between society and nature and is open to the aesthetic, spiritual and existence values of nature alongside the economic and scientific. The arts and humanities, together with outdoor education (Moss, 2012; Project Wild Thing, 2013), therefore have key roles in EfS, but it is citizenship education that can encourage reflection and action on those forms of political economy, governance and citizenship that encourage and give expression to sustainability as a frame of mind (pp.233-234).

Table 16.1: Sustainable Citizenship and Its Implications for EfS and Ecopedagogy (p.234)

Future Prospects for ESD & EfS

There is evidence that sustainable schools (Barratt Hacking et al, 2010, Barratt Hacking, E, W Scott and E Lee (2010) Evidence of Impact of Sustainable Schools, Department for Children, Schools and Families, London) and eco-schools (Keep Britain Tidy, 2013) improve the quality of learning and teaching, and a well-developed literature on the stages through which such schools might best develop (Webster and Johnson, 2009, Webster, K and C Johnson (2009) Sense and Sustainability, Terra-Preta, Skipton.) and the role that leadership should play in this process (Scott, 2013, Scott, W (2013) ‘Developing the Sustainable School: Thinking the Issues Through’, The Curriculum Journal, 24 (2) 169–180.)... The potential of school subjects to promote ESD/EfS continues to be explored with texts relating to English, mathematics and geography published in the Teaching Secondary Subjects as if the Planet Matters series (for example Morgan, 2012) and subject associations also offering some support (for example ASE, 2013). There has been much progress since 1996 but, as this chapter has sought to show, too much that passes as ESD lacks political realism and fails to cultivate sustainable citizenship (pp.239-240). 

Ch 1: Realizing Sustainability in Changing Times, John Huckle

...a key function of education for sustainability (EFS) is to help people reflect and act on these meanings and so realize alternative futures in more informed and democratic ways. This chapter promotes such reflection by relating debates about sustainability to the changing nature of modern societies, different political ideologies and utopias, and contemporary environmental politics...Such relations are more or less harmonious and democratic and therefore more or less conducive to ensuring that prevailing forms of political economy (economic production and social reproduction) meet the common interest in human wellbeing and long-term survival. A sustainable political economy will be both ecologically and socially sustainable ... Education for sustainability is one way of encouraging such change (pp.3-4).

The Environment & Development in the Contemporary World

It appeals particularly to a new middle (or service) class that sees its quality of life threatened in an emerging risk society beyond control (Beck, 1992). At the same time the global political order is in flux and the power and legitimacy of the nation state is threatened by growing global integration from above and by pressures for local autonomy from below.

The Ethics & Politics of Sus.

The core contradiction is between sustainable development in its weak and strong modes. In its weak mode it represents an emerging mode of regulation, involving forms of techno-managerialism, via which capital seeks to ensure a continued supply of the means and conditions of production on its own terms while maintaining the support of the majority of voters. In its strong form it represents a revised form of self-reliant community development which sustains people’s livelihoods using appropriate technology. While weak sustainability is supported by liberal and social democratic reformers, green socialist and utopian radicals are more likely to urge stronger interpretations. Both groups draw on appropriate ethics, philosophy and social theory, with the radicals and Utopians employing a range of critical theory provided by green economists, deep, social and socialist ecologists, ecofeminists, spiritual ecologists, postmodern scientists and others. Dobson (1990), Elliott (1993), Jackson (1991), Rees (1990), Martell (1994), Merchant (1992), and Orr (1992) are among those who have explored the contradiction between weak and strong sustainability, which is best understood in terms of contrasting political ideologies. Liberal political ideology supports weak sustainability because it is compatible with free markets, individual property rights and a minimum of state regulation. It gives expression to egocentric values and adopts a consumer-based theory of value in which the value of nature is related to the value people derive from its use. While a minority of liberals suggests that markets alone will correct resource scarcity and respond to demands for a clean environment through such innovations as the greening of consumerism, business and education, the majority regards environmental problems as evidence that consumer values are not adequately expressed in markets (pp. 9-10).

Such holism is likely to involve bioregionalism or the development of societies in harmony with their local habitat or biome. Such societies will be more self- sufficient, cooperative and decentralized, practising direct democracy in ways that allow them to evolve alongside nature (Plant and Plant, 1990) (p.12). 

Ch 2: Education in Change, Stephen Sterling

If it is to fulfill its potential as an agent of change towards a more sustainable society, sufficient attention must be given to education as the subject of change itself. .. A seemingly useful definition like ‘sustainable wellbeing’, which suggests that both the human condition and the condition of the ecosystem are satisfactory and improving, still leaves room for interpretation (p.18).

Towards a Postmodern Education

Fig 2.1: Influences on EfS (p.20)

This raises the enduring question of how far education (particularly formal education which is typically less free to innovate than non-formal) can contribute to radical social change, or whether it is necessarily constrained by an encompassing culture (p. 21). 

Box 2.1: Characteristics of EfS

EfS is:

• Contextual
• Innovative & constructive
• Focused & infusive
• Holistic & human in scale
• Integrative
• Process oriented & empowering rather than product oriented
• Critical
• Balancing
• Systemic & connective
• Ethical
• Purposive
• Inclusive & lifelong

Contemporary Change & Learning

There are encouraging indications that such learning is taking place in many fields, which are reflecting the diversity, integration and holistic approach demanded by sustainability (although the credit for such learning cannot be given to formal education) (p.25). 

Mainstream Ed & Building EfS

Whether the emphasis is on academic or vocational achievement, the current emphasis in the formal sector is on selecting and preparing individuals for an expanding market economy, based on specialization at all levels...The market view of education takes little account of current issues such as endemic unemployment, increasing gaps between rich and poor, population growth, loss of community, impending resource scarcity, the ending of cheap energy and indicators of deteriorating environmental quality, all of which are feeding back into the modernist scenario and making it increasingly unsustainable (pp.26-27). 

Building EFS: Educational Developments & Systemic Theory

Theory and practice in EE has evolved over some 30 years from a rural studies and science base to a complex of emphases that have increasingly stressed aspects of participative, holistic and political education (Sterling, 1992). However, to use Lucas’s (1991) seminal description of forms of environmental education as ‘education in, about and for the environment’, the first two forms still prevail, as they relate to rather than challenge the dominant liberal/progressive and neoclassical education paradigms. Downs (1992) has traced a similar tension between development education ‘about, for and as development’, the latter being the most radical and least practised form. Meanwhile, discussion of EFS has emphasized the meaning and development of education for the environment — corresponding with a reconstructionist and transformative educational paradigm (Fien, 1993, Fien, J. ed. (1993). Environmental Education: A Pathway to Sustainability, Deakin University, Geelong) while Gough (1987) has argued for education with the environment as the key to any ecological educational paradigm (p.28). 

It therefore has links with progressive and learner- centred traditions in education, with holistic views of knowledge and education (Reid, 1986), with global education (Pike and Selby, 1988) and, more recently, with transformative education of the type represented by Joanna Macy (1991) linked with deep ecology. In particular, the systemic ideas of self-organization and balance between... (pp. 31-32).

Towards 'Strong' EfS

Table 2.1: Rough Map of Orientations & Associations (p.33)

Some Suggested Constituents

• Sustainability Values Macleod (1992) lists a number of values associated with ecologically sustainable development that should be reflected in education.

• Personal and Community Values

• Pedagogy The pedagogic approach or strategy should itself be socially sustainable in the sense that it is based on meaningful rather than token empowerment, participation and ownership. Specifically, the action research approach (Elliott, 1991) is the embodiment of both the systemic and socially critical views of pedagogy. The primary aims should be to develop and link systemic and critical thinking and environmental and social action, or in other words, develop ecoliteracy and political literacy for full and active citizenship.

• Curriculum Sustainability suggests that attention should be paid to vertical progression in curriculum and horizontal integration (inter- and trans-disciplinarity). Whereas process is more important than content, and the relation between areas more important than decontextualized studies, sustainability does suggest themes that should be reflected in any general curriculum, whether or not it retains a subject basis. These might include some or all of the following: political education and political ecology; natural history, environmental science, ecology and biodiversity; systems theory and systemic thinking; social relations, conflict resolution, equity and social justice; local and bioregional studies and local distinctiveness; community building and citizenship; global environment and development issues; transpersonal ethics; cultural studies including southern, indigenous, and traditional views; ecological design including aesthetics, perma-culture and sustainable systems; new economics; humanistic psychology and interpersonal relationships; health and the environment; modernity, science and technology; futures studies; and practical capabilities in a number of areas.

• Structures How people, institutions and communities interact — the hidden and operational curriculum — is all important and should engender a sustainability ethos that is both lived and critically reflected upon.

Ch 6: Greening the University, Tany Alabaster & Derek Blair

In old or new universities, however, greening was often heavily dependent on the role of individual champions (p.87). 

Corporate Environmental Responsibility

Figure 6.1: Context of Corporate Environmental Responsibility within the Education Sector.(p.88)

The student declaration recognizes the alarming scale and rate of global environmental degradation and recognizes that students have a vital role to play in four key areas (p.95).:

• as learners, education enables all individuals to make informed decisions about their responsibilities toward their environment and community;
• as consumers, students have significant purchasing power and as such can have a considerable influence on the behaviour of producers and suppliers of both products and of general and financial services;
• as citizens, we will undertake to be proactive in coming together as a responsive global community through common environmental policy initiatives; and
• as members of student organizations, we have power to effect change through our own activities and the activities of those with whom we interact. The student declaration

Greening the Curriculum The critical role of environmental education in producing environmentally responsible students and citizens in the workplace and elsewhere is acknowledged at all levels, and in both formal and non-formal education.

Academic staff are often ideologically resistant to curriculum changes that emanate from outside the bounds of their discipline. Greening is yet another initiative to accommodate in a workplace that has been flooded with others and is subject to major changes in terms of teaching and learning, structures and institutional reforms. Most academics were trained in disciplines before the interdisciplinary environmental agenda assumed such importance. Lack of staff confidence, time and training are real stumbling blocks to greening any curriculum. Perhaps the solutions to these problems can be derived from other initiatives, for example IT...(p.98).

Ch 7: Teacher Education, John Huckle

Top-down, bureaucratic reform threatens to reinforce the irrelevance of schools as ‘modern institutions in a postmodern world’, but there are opportunities to exploit the paradoxes of postmodernity and to develop new kinds of schools, teaching and teachers (Hargreaves, 1994). Here I argue that a new phase of modernization holds both threats and promises for teachers. Though suffering from reduced status, autonomy and reward, they retain their role as potential bearers of critical knowledge and as experts in pedagogy who can help people construct alternative futures (Harris, 1994). Postmodernity offers new technologies for learning and teaching, more flexible and relevant ways of handling the curriculum content, new kinds of theoretical knowledge on which to base their practice, new forms of collaboration and professional development and new ways of remaining responsive in fast-changing times. It offers new structures and cultures of teaching, which lead in empowering and democratic directions and are essential if education for sustainability is to take root and grow (pp.105-106).

Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals

Such teachers will use critical pedagogy (Box 7.1) to work democratically with pupils, colleagues and the local community, and will encourage everyone to see the school as a democratic site where students develop the knowledge, skills and values needed to live more sustainably. 

Box 7.1: Socially critical pedagogy has the following characteristics (p.106):

• learning is active and experiential;
• classroom dialogue introduces elements of critical theory and encourages pupils to think critically;
• pupils begin to see themselves, their histories and futures in new ways. They develop a sense of their own power to shape their lives;
• ‘values’ education develops comprehension of the sources of beliefs and values, how they are transmitted and the interests they support;
• pupils reflect on the structural and ideological forces that influence and restrict their lives and on democratic alternatives; and
• pupils are taught how to act democratically with others to build a new social order.

The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas

... It leads to universal knowledge and values, serves to validate critical theory and may be described as praxis or participative action research. This provides EFS with a process for the development of pedagogy, curricula, teachers as transformative intellectuals and sustainable communities. .. Teaching and teacher education for sustainability should be a process of communicative rather than strategic action. Teachers should learn through critical pedagogy in universities, school classrooms and the community and should thereby develop skills in planning and delivering a wide range of experiential and democratic teaching and learning activities of the type now used in moral, social, developmental and environmental education (Smith, 1991). .. Finally, in his discussion of the colonization of the lifeworld (that set of background assumptions that guides everyday conduct and allows communicative action) Habermas explains that money, political power and ‘expert systems’ have become the main steering mechanisms of late modern societies. 

Habermas and a Critical Teacher Education for Sustainability

Following the application of Habermas’s ideas to a critical theory of education (Carr and Kemmis, 1986; Gibson, 1986; Grundy, 1987; Young, 1989; Ewert, 1991), Australians took the lead in applying them to environmental education. Robottom (1987) suggested that professional development should be based on action research in order to close the gaps between ... A teacher education officer was appointed in 1991 and he invited a team of writers to prepare an in-service education programme Reaching Out: Education for Sustainability which was published in 1995 (Huckle et al, 1995). Like the course developments in Australia, it is strongly based on critical theory and action research. Reaching Out consists of a set of workshop materials in three parts, which make up a comprehensive course in the theory and practice of EFS (p.111). [HM added: UNU-IAS 2014]

Ch 9: Community-Based Learning, Geoff Fagan

Education Beyond Schooling

Education appropriate to Agenda 21 is not neutral. It is steeped in the politics of justice and equality. .. But this approach poses a problem for education. It asks educators to assume a role radically different to that of a teacher. It seeks a new contract with parents and young people; it insists on new definitions of knowledge and links knowledge to application. It accepts that local people, parents and young people are perfectly capable of enabling their own learning given help and support in doing so. It seeks a change in power between the learner and the learned and in the acceptance of what knowledge might be, how it is generated and how it is endorsed. It challenges the notion that knowledge belongs to the intellectually rich, that local people are wrong until proved right and that learning is the domain of an educational hierarchy. This redefinition is at the core of Agenda 21 (pp.136-137). 

Ownership, Empowerment & Action

‘Sustainability’ appeals to basic values of justice, fairness and equality... ‘What they must have in common to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge — a common understanding’ (Dewey, 1916). .. Clearly, education has to address both behaviour and core values. It has to enhance future security. It has to be recognized as a process that helps alleviate community concerns. This means that education has to spring from local people: their values, aspirations and beliefs. It has to be both real and active. And it has to promote ‘ownership’ and ‘empowerment’ (p.138). 

Education for Sustainability

What does this mean, for sustainability? Sustainability education must be linked to the reality of its clients; it must marry action to intellect; it cannot and must not allow any one section of education to invade and persuade local people that to think ‘about’ is a fair exchange for thinking about and taking action  (p.139). 

Ch 13: Developing Strategy, Stephen Sterling

How we get from the periphery to the centre, from a state of poor EFS to universal richness of thinking and practice, is inevitably a question of strategy... this chapter focuses directly on the meaning of strategy... (p.197). 

Instructive & Constructive Strategies

Two different approaches to strategy, which are partly complementary and partly contesting, may be characterized by the following models (pp.199-200):

Strategy I: "instructive" This approach might be termed ‘education about sustainability’. The first approach is essentially technocratic and transmissive, centring on awareness and behavioural change, and is most commonly associated with a top-down process with intended and preconceived outcomes.

Strategy II: "constructive"  The emphasis is on capability and confidence-building, participation, ownership, empowerment and the generation of meaning (such as local sustainability indicators)... The process is inherently flexible and integrative. The role of the centre is facilitation ... This approach is ‘education for sustainability’, or more radically perhaps ‘education as sustainability’. The latter is essentially participative and transformative, centering on capacity building and self-organization and determination, and is most commonly enacted through a bottom-up process. 

However, it should be stressed that these models are not entirely exclusive in practice, that they can be understood as two ends of a spectrum of practice and that elements of both may often be observed in strategies at different levels... Differences between these approaches remind us to use key words such as ‘strategy’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘participation’ with care and to be critical about how language is employed, wittingly or not, for different ends (p.201). 

Strategy Building

Essentially, strategy is about reducing the uncertainty of attaining an agreed goal. Done well, it can(p.202):

• identify needs;
• clarify objectives and build consensus;
• relate educational work to other policy areas; promote communication and cooperation between actors;
• build on existing work, reduce duplication and increase synergy; and
• allow progress to be monitored and evaluated.

One of the myths surrounding strategy theory is that it is abstruse. On the contrary, the principles are simple, and revolve around four key questions:

• Where are we now? (assessment);
• Where do we want to be? (objectives);
• How do we get there? (implementation); and
• How do we know we are getting there? (evaluation).

... ‘The objectives determine the participants and the participants determine the objectives’ (Carew-Reid et al, 1994). The emphasis therefore should be on process, on strategy and capacity building and on gaining a broad mandate, rather than exclusively on a product such as writing a strategy document (p.203).

There are two spectra which define the style of any strategy (see Figure 13.1):    

Heavy — detailed, directive, versus Light — outlined, flexible;

Top-down — written and disseminated by elite group, versus Bottom-up — generated by local groups(pp.203-204).

Conclusion

The problem, as Pretty (1995, Pretty, J (1995) The Many Interpretations of Participation’, Tourism in Focus, 16 (summer issue), Tourism Concern, London) suggests, is that authorities both need and fear people’s participation. Strategy I responses by authorities must increasingly shift towards encouraging and facilitating Strategy II approaches at local levels to allow the growth of deeper, flexible and owned change, to allow real ‘stakeholding’. ..The sustainable society, by definition, will be a learning society (p.210).