Sustainable Education and Perspectives

Overview

The unit provides pre-service teachers with an understanding of the concepts of environmental sustainability and the ability to apply these concepts to teaching and learning in education. An additional aim is to empower pre-service teachers to integrate effective advocacy for sustainability in their professional teaching role. This unit focuses on educating with sustainable futures, questioning the kind of world we want and how teachers influence the futures-oriented understandings of children and young people. Environmental and global complexities are explored through the lens of relatedness and shifting perspectives.

Learning outcomes

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Assessment

Content

• Defining the concepts, themes and terminology
• Articulate the complex issue of sustainability between and within communities, societies and cultures at local and global levels
• Recognise the historically and culturally situated concept of environmental change in the Anthropocene
• Different sustainability philosophies, perspectives and approaches including Indigenous and relational perspectives
• Four pillars of sustainability: social, economic, political and environmental
• Systems of relatedness with self, communities, environment, and Earth species
• The role of education to teach understandings of sustainability for positive change
• Teachers’ roles as advocates for social inclusion, justice and sustainable futures
• Curriculum and government policies
• Eco-biographical narratives
• Ecological literacy and ecologising education
• Designing sustainable and environmental curricula
• Case studies of sustainable practice, pedagogy and initiatives