Curriculum and Environmental Education

Perspectives, Priorities and Challenges

Alan Reid

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367589820
• eBook ISBN: 9781351385312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection traces the development and findings of curriculum studies of environmental education since the mid-1970s. Based on a virtual special issue of the Journal of Curriculum Studies, the volume identifies a series of curriculum challenges for and from environmental education. These include key questions in curriculum politics, planning and implementation, including which educative experiences should a curriculum foster and why; what the scope of a worthwhile curriculum should be and how it should be decided, organised and reworked; why distinctive curricula are provided to different groups of students; and how curriculum should best be enacted and evaluated?

The editor and contributors call for renewed attention to the possibilities for future directions in research, in light of previously published work and innovations in scholarship. They also offer critical commentary on curriculum, critique and crisis in environmental education, through new material and previous studies from the journal, by addressing three key themes: perspectives on curriculum and environment education; accounting for curriculum in environmental education; and changes in curriculum for environmental education.

Curriculum and environmental education

Perspectives, priorities and challenges

ALAN REID

Introduction

To coincide with the 8^th meeting of the World Environmental Education Congress in Göteborg, Sweden (WEEC, 29 June – 2 July, 2015), the Journal of Curriculum Studies created its first Virtual Special Issue on ‘Curriculum Challenges for and from Environmental Education’. Drawing on five decades of studies previously published in the Journal, we wanted the collection to provide both a broad-based and ‘long view’ of curriculum scholarship on these topics, while in so doing, surface longstanding to fresh debates on curriculum and environmental education.

The Virtual Special Issue was made available for two years at http://explore.tandfonline.com/content/ed/jcs-vsi–2015, and the core of that collection is presented here in book form. For the Virtual Special Issue, the themes of articles included were organised in ways that related, first, to Congress themes and deliberations at the event in Sweden, and second, those that would broach wider considerations in the literature, grounded and exemplified through careful selections of high quality scholarship. As with the Journal’s overarching mandate and editorial focus, our continuing hope is that by bringing a wide range of work together online and in book form, the collection can foster further scholarship of various stripes that analyses ‘the ways in which the social and institutional conditions of education and schooling contribute to shaping curriculum, including political, social and cultural studies; education policy; school reform and leadership; teaching; teacher education; curriculum development; and assessment and accountability’.

That the interest in curriculum challenges for and from environmental education has been at such a level to merit a book version of the collection is (to our mind, at least) testament to the ongoing significance of its core themes and concerns about perspectives, accountings and changes in curriculum in for this field. In fact, the ongoing relevance of these matters to scholars, policy makers and practitioners is easily recognised around the world, particularly now that the 9^th Congress has met in Vancouver in September, 2017. Over the last two years, for example, further questions and inquiries have focused on preparations for and the announcement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015 to form the ‘2030 Agenda’ (readers may recall Agenda 21 included Chapter 36 on education and environmental matters), alongside the launch of a UNESCO Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that followed a United Nations Decade on ESD (2005–14) (see http://en.unesco.org/gap). These and other such markers of activity have met with various pragmatic, political and academic responses both within and beyond the pages of the Journal. Most notably, they have focused on various Decade reports and evaluations (Wals, 2012; UNESCO, 2014b) as well as offered critically-informed investigations of the claims and focus of analysis taking place in relation to curriculum initiatives, policy and evaluation (e.g. Gough, 2005; Sauvé et al., 2005; Ferreira, 2009; Wals, 2009; Feinstein et al., 2013; Van Poeck, et al. 2013; Madsen, 2013; Huckle & Wals, 2015; Simovska & Prøsch, 2016; Hillbur et al., 2016; Waldron et al., 2016).

To illustrate some of the most recent foci, we note that the SDGs contain 7 specifc targets on quality education (under Goal 4), as well as emphasise climate change education and educating for sustainable lifestyles (see https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4). As examples of related but additional foci for education using an ‘adjectival’ form (Sterling, 2010, pp. 215–217), we will return to this theme throughout the commentary in this volume, but for now, we note that under the heading, I. Vision, rationale and principles, the United Nations underlines the central role of education in the realisation of all 17 SDGs:

4. Education is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and essential for the success of all SDGs. Recognizing the important role of education, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights education as a stand-alone goal (SDG 4) and also includes targets on education under several other SDGs, notably those on health; growth and employment; sustainable consumption and production; and climate change. In fact, education can accelerate progress towards the achievement of all of the SDGs and therefore should be part of the strategies to achieve each of them. The renewed education agenda encapsulated in Goal 4 is comprehensive, holistic, ambitious, aspirational and universal, and inspired by a vision of education that transforms the lives of individuals, communities and societies, leaving no one behind.

The targets and means of implementation of SDG4 are as follows:

4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes

4.2 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education

4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.6 By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.a Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

4.b By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.c By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing States.

Meanwhile, the Global Action Programme aims ‘to generate and scale up action in all levels and areas of education and learning to accelerate progress towards sustainable development’, while Education for Sustainable Development has been repositioned via the GAP to be the primary mechanism in education that contributes substantially to the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs (see also, UNESCO, 2014a). Pulling this all together, as UNESCO (2017) puts it, ‘Quality education for all at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals’.

These movements of thought and their related foci for action have not gone unnoticed in the field of curriculum studies. Directly and indirectly, they both underscore and implicate a re-visioning and re-purposing of curriculum in environmental education and education more broadly (see, for example, UNESCO, 2012, 2016; McKenzie, 2012; Bengtsson & Östman, 2013; Jickling & Sterling, 2017). The stakes are high too: particularly if the GAP’s twin objectives are to be realised (if not contextualised, contested or critiqued):

•reorienting education and learning so that everyone has the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that empower them to contribute to a sustainable future,

•strengthening education and learning in all agendas, programmes and activities that promote sustainable development.

Turning to the Congress itself, this is a biennial international event that is designed to share and discuss thinking and practice about the world of ‘education for environment and sustainable development’ (http://www.environmental-education.org/). As a glance at the online programmes for any of the Congresses will show, since the early days there have been longstanding interests in debating trends and innovation in core aspects of education, including priorities for curriculum foci and arrangements, and the role of research and evaluation in developing curriculum and pedagogy.

Thus in bringing these congress-related considerations into conversation with specific and wider curriculum developments and thinking, our hope is that the collection helps surface key challenges that may also apply to these and other such initiatives as the SDGs and the GAP, by illustrating a context for and the content of what constitutes the taking of a ‘long view’ on key issues and challenges for curriculum and environmental education.

Minding the gaps

All the contributions to the collection were selected and organised to address the general theme of: ‘curriculum challenges for and from environmental education’, with the assistance of the editorial board and publishers. The subthemes that were used to group the studies persist across the online and hard copy versions, and are as follows:

Part 1. Perspectives on Curriculum and Environment Education

Part 2. Accounting for Curriculum in Environmental Education

Part 3. Changes in Curriculum for Environmental Education

Part 4. Questioning the Curriculum, from the Mainstream to the Margins

Part 5. For Wisdom, Justice and Action in Curriculum?

In preparing a physical version of the collection, we draw on the first three Parts to form the main content of the book, while Parts 4 and 5 have been revised and are available online, via http://explore.tandfonline.com/content/ed/jcs-vsi-ee.

For this general ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Preface
• 1. Curriculum and environmental education: perspectives, priorities and challenges
• 2. A non-technical introduction to curriculum challenges for and from environmental education
• 3. How to understand curriculum challenges for and from environmental education
• 4. Environmental education and the issue of nature
• 5. ‘Littered with literacy’: an ecopedagogical reflection on whole language, pedocentrism and the necessity of refusal
• 6. From epistemology to ecopolitics: renewing a paradigm for curriculum
• 7. Sustainability and the learning virtues
• 8. Ideology, political education and teacher education: matching paradigms and models
• 9. Ecological consciousness and curriculum
• 10. Environmental education and the secondary school curriculum
• 11. Subjects for Study: Aspects of a Social History of Curriculum
• 12. Greening the future for education: changing curriculum content and school organization
• 13. Globalization and environmental education: looking beyond sustainable development
• 14. Environmental Studies Courses in Colleges of Education
• 15. Environment in the curriculum: representation and development in the Scottish physical and social sciences
• 16. Environmental and health education viewed from an action-oriented perspective: a case from Denmark
• 17. Implementing curriculum guidance on environmental education: the importance of teachers’ beliefs
• 18. Curriculum change and climate change: Inside outside pressures in higher education
• 19. Towards a socially critical environmental education: water quality studies in a coastal school
• 20. Teacher receptivity to curriculum change in the implementation stage: the case of environmental education in Hong Kong
• 21. Complementary curriculum: the work of ecologically minded teachers
• Conclusion: Curriculum, critique and crisis in environmental education
• Index