Critical Inquiry on Sustainability and Education Policy Across Canada

• In Event: 14.044 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.044-23 - Emerging Perspectives on Critical Policy Research in Sustainability Education

Abstract

Objectives
This paper brings together census, content analysis, and survey findings to offer an overview of the relationships between policy and practice in sustainability education at the early childhood-grade 12 (EC-12) and post-secondary education (PSE) levels in Canada. Canada’s decentralized system of education discourages educational research across provincial and community contexts in both EC-12 and PSE, and previously there has been no national scope research on this topic. The Sustainability and Education Policy Network (SEPN) addresses the current lack of coordinated analysis and development of sustainability in education policy and practice in Canada by collecting comparable data across jurisdictions while still capturing site-specific differences.

Theoretical Framework, Methods, & Data
SEPN examines the five domains of i) general governance or institutional management, ii) curriculum, iii) research, iv) outreach or community engagement, and v) facility operations (AASHE, 2013), at both EC-12 and PSE levels of formal education in Canada. SEPN’s core focus is the policy-practice relationship, guided by Ball et al.’s (2012) policy process model of contexts of text production, influences, and practice, and by recent trajectories of work in critical policy scholarship or policy sociology in education (e.g., Ball, 1994, 1997; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Ozga, 2000). This research thoroughly integrates a critical analysis of existing sustainability policy documents with ongoing community engagement, from a national survey to in-depth site analyses, and knowledge mobilization across multiple sectors. A national census of sustainability in policy was conducted at both the EC-12 and post-secondary levels, in order to ascertain levels of sustainability uptake across the provincial Ministries of Education and school divisions, and across all 220 accredited post-secondary institutions in Canada.

Results & Scientific Significance
At the post-secondary level, a census of institutions shows that signing a sustainability declaration do not always translate into institutional commitment to sustainability, and that engagement with sustainability policy is strongly influenced by provincial location. The EC-12 census revealed similarly marked provincial differences in sustainability uptake in policy. The census research is the basis for an in-depth content analysis that focuses on how sustainability is framed within policy ensembles, including both high level general education policy documents (such as strategic plans) and sustainability specific policies, and how policy framings of sustainability variously influence the policy-practice relationship. We draw upon policy mobility studies to describe the articulation of policy ensembles with global trends such as the priorities of economic neoliberalization in education. However, we also interrogate the policy-practice relationship from the perspective of education sustainability practice. Whereas traditional policy analysis traces policy from development to implementation, SEPN uses practice to critically examine policy and to ask how education sustainability policy comes about and might better respond to practice. Towards this end, SEPN is conducting a national survey to examine different groups’ experiences of how sustainability is being taken up in education at the EC-12 and PSE levels across Canada (survey results will be analyzed by April 2015). By interrogating sustainability policy uptake, its uneven geographic development, and institutional and experiential dimensions, we offer a complex and critical picture of the policy-practice relationship in sustainability education in Canada.

Author

• Andrew Bieler, University of Saskatchewan