Environmental Sustainability in Practice

Framework for Sustainability Education

Just as with the definitions, there is no overarching model or framework of sustainability education, nor are there established principles of how it is to be implemented. The UN defines this type of education for a sustainable future “not as a particular program or project, but rather as an umbrella for many forms of education that already exist and new ones that remain to be created” (UNESCO, 2014). In sustainability education, we focus on the goals we want to achieve in educating for sustainability and the core competences that we want students/learners to develop.

Therefore, sustainability education is focused on making curriculum and educational programs locally relevant and culturally appropriate, based on local needs, perceptions, and conditions. This allows educational institutions and programs to explore sustainability issues in a very flexible and practical sense, and to more effectively engage learners.

On the other hand, as critics have pointed out, the many variations of sustainability education make it difficult to assess its success and effectiveness. Nevertheless, competences have emerged in education literature to help with its characterization.

What is a competency? Why is it used?

A learning competency is a general statement that describes the desired knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable people to successfully perform in educational and other settings. This contrasts with an objective which is a very specific statement that is easily measurable. Many objectives can make up a competency.​

Identifying the competences we want people to develop helps guide development of education programs and shift the focus of education to the student as active learners instead of the teacher as the dispenser of knowledge. According to Sleurs (2008), a competence approach asks not what should be taught, but what should be learned, what abilities are needed to act, which concepts and problem-solving strategies should be acquired as a result of the learning process.

In 2012, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) developed a strategy for learning about sustainability and sustainable development in formal and informal educational settings. They arrived at a set of competences for ‘educators.’  While not aimed directly at learners but at educators, the competences are intricately connected so that they act as an adaptable framework that helps to integrate key sustainability learning goals for formal and informal programs in all educational contexts.

Note that while the UNECE's set of competences was developed for education for sustainable development specifically, many of the competences overlap with competences identified in other expressions of sustainability education. Therefore, we will use these as an introduction to the discussion on the theory of sustainability education.

The UN's competences are based on the following principles:
  • Use "a holistic approach - which seeks integrative thinking and practice;
  • [Envision] change - which explores alternative futures, learns from the past and inspires engagement in the present; and
  • [Achieve] transformation - which serves to change the way people learn and in the systems that support learning" (UNECE, 2012, p. 13)
Based on the four pillars of education described in UNESCO's (1996) report, Learning: The Treasure Within, the competences for education for sustainable development are further organized into the following framework: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be. 



 

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