Advancing a Direction for Environmental Education: Assessing and Addressing U.N. Economic Commission for Europe Competences for Teacher Candidates

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

Abstract

This paper builds on research (Authors D) in which the authors begin to understand how the internationally recognized UNECE (2012) competences for education for sustainable development (ESD) present a framework for analysis of environmental sustainability education in teacher education (ESE-TE). From this analysis, we offer critique of this framework as well as suggestions for critically integrating the spirit of the framework with a transformative objective. We consider analysis from post-Anthropocene, place-based and Indigenous perspectives. The key objectives of this paper are to contribute to the symposium in the following ways: juxtapose participant ESE-TE research with national and international trends; and, explore research priorities and agenda consensus.
One of the UNECE (2012) Core Competency areas that stands out as needing greater attention in our ESE-TE programme is Achieving transformation—particularly in relation to the education system. Such competences may be expressed as the educator works in ways to challenge unsustainable practices across educational systems, including at the institutional level. This can start by exploring, analysing, and identifying ways in which learning about ESE-TE is itself constrained by institutional mechanisms that work against many of the ESE outcomes we hope to engender in our students. For example, the typical discourse of assessment, performance, and competency pertaining to student and instructor evaluation can be viewed as fueling the competitive, unsustainable, capitalist systems in the world.
Previously, we discussed how Outdoor and Environmental Education (O/EE) activities aligned with the competences, and here we provoke and problematize further how the competences themselves may be based on anthropocentric ontology and discourse. The language of the competences themselves constitutes a very human-centric discourse, which can be considered antithetical to ideal O/EE experiences. For example, the ‘essential characteristics of ESD’, are described by UNECE (2012) as follows: a) An holistic approach, which seeks integrative thinking and practice; b) Envisioning change, which explores alternative futures, learns from the past and inspires engagement in the present; and c) Achieving transformation, which serves to change in the way people learn and in the systems that support learning. Although these characteristics are laudable, we are critical of this discourse for prioritizing human realities, while remaining silent on the agency and intent of non-humans, the value of which needs to also be prioritized to achieve sustainable environments (Taylor, 2010).
‘Holistic’, in the context of the competences, appears to describe holistic entanglements between people, but, again, does not consider holistic relationships with/in natural ecosystems, of which humans are but a part. Human social systems are prioritized in the characteristic ‘achieving transformation’, but the language remains silent on the role of human/teachers’/students’ engagement with non-humans that are needed to achieve transformation. Contradictions such as these offer problems that students and teachers can grapple with in their attempts to transform environmental learning based on the competences. We expand on these competences to include the non-human in their description, and discuss how this change in onto-epistemology could better orient ESD, and ESE-TE, toward post-anthropocentric ecological realities.

Authors

• Erin Sperling, University of Toronto

• Darren Glen Hoeg, York University

• Douglas David Karrow, Brock University