Action Research and Education for Sustainable Futures

• In Event: Canadian Perspectives on Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education: Establishing a Research Community

Abstract

The United Nations announced the 2005 to 2014 as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Central to this declaration was the idea that the goal of attaining a sustainable future can never be achieved without education and learning for sustainable development. This idea has been widely accepted and supported by governments worldwide. To this date, most of the United Nations member states have national plans for integrating the framework of ESD into their education and sustainability policies.

Across Canada, most provincial and territorial departments and ministries of education have also developed strategies and supporting programmes to foster the implementation of ESD at local educational institutions, including elementary and secondary education, higher education, and teacher education (CMEC 2014). In particular, a transformative pedagogical approach to teaching and learning is widely recommended: that is, educators and teachers are now expected to use “participatory teaching and learning methods that motivate and empower learners to change their behaviour and take action for sustainable development” (Learning for a Sustainable Future n.d., para. 2).

However, how such transformative learning pedagogy might be grounded in existing educational structures remains unexplored. To address this challenge, a student-led project was carried out to offer professional development opportunities for Education students (pre-service and in-service teachers) interested in integrating sustainability-related knowledge and concepts into their teaching between 2015 and 2016. Our chapter presents this project which sought to mainstream ESD into teacher education in Canada. Participatory video research methods were used to document Education students’ professional transformation through their involvement in various project activities, and their emerging understandings of ESD. The findings of this study showed that teacher education programmes need to offer creative opportunities and spaces to support effective professional development of prospective teachers. Such spaces stimulate teachers’ innovative thinking, encourage them to question the assumptions underpinning unsustainable actions, promote collaborative leadership work, foster interdisciplinary connections, and inspire problem-based learning approaches. This professional development approach motivates teachers to develop productive learning relationships to advance their learning and growth as ESD leaders.

Building on the work presented in our chapter, we thus call for rethinking the role of the universities and schools in transforming society towards a sustainable future. In particular, we argue that an ESE-TE research community should explore ways to move current approaches to environmental and sustainability education beyond a “business as usual” agenda (Huckle and Wals 2015), towards a more deeply transformative effort that engages universities and schools in a collective re-imaging of a just and sustainable society. For the purpose of this symposium, we thus propose bringing Vervoort’s (2015) concept of “worldmaking as a framework for pluralistic, imaginative scenario development” into ESD as a way to co-construct socially just pathways for change, with the school community as its point of departure. (p.62). This discussion will be of relevance for anyone interested in education and collective learning for sustainable futures.

Authors

• Emily Sprowls, McGill University

• Blane Harvey, McGill University