Exploring How Curriculum Policy May Enhance Preservice Environmental Sustainability Education Globally: Emphasizing International Research Collaborations

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

Abstract

As unrelenting environmental degradation continues globally, school systems around the world are struggling to find effective strategies for providing high quality Environmental Sustainability Education (ESE). UNESCO’s declaration of 2005-2014 as the “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development” provided a stimulus in helping school systems reorient their curriculum priorities in the direction of ESE. In Canada, for example, a number of environmental education organizations and provincial ministries of education [education is a provincial concern in Canada] enacted policies mandating ESE within K-12 curricula (Alberta Council for Environmental Education, 2012; Education Manitoba, 2014; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2009). Additionally, these and other policy instruments recommended that Preservice Teacher Education (PTE) programs provide adequate ESE programming for their aspiring teachers.

In the 2016 “Otonabee Declaration,” a diverse group of Canadian educators, including preservice instructors, government policy experts, and non-governmental organization representatives urged education system leaders at every level to “make Environmental and Sustainability Education a mandatory component of initial teacher education” (Authors B).

It has been acknowledged in Canada and around the world that teachers play a critical role in preparing students to understand and address environmental concerns. However, over the past five decades, studies have invariably shown that, in general, PTE programs in Canada have not addressed ESE in ways that adequately prepare future teachers for addressing ESE in their classrooms (CMEC, 2012; Lin, 2002; Towler, 1981).

Needless to say, education systems in Canada and around the world face many curricular challenges, including the need to enhance learning in a variety of disciplinary domains, including language, mathematics, technology, humanities, and the arts. However, it is our contention (and the view of many sustainability educators) that ESE must become a “mainstream” subject like these, at all levels of the education system, including PTE.

At the international level, there is consensus that PTE programs are not adequately addressing ESE, and aspiring teachers are not developing the requisite knowledge and skills for adequately preparing their students for the serious environmental challenges they will face in their lifetimes (Evans, Stevenson, Lasen, & Ferreira, 2017; Gough, 2016). Further, a number of researchers have emphasized that in “policy documents EE tends to be recommended, not mandated,” and that “teacher education institutions lack the institutional climate … and risk-taking necessary to support transformative efforts to re-orient education to address sustainability (CMEC, 2015, p. 23).

The present need to enhance ESE in PTE programs internationally has been demonstrated repeatedly. It is now time to consider ways in which this may be accomplished effectively and efficiently. In a number of jurisdictions in Canada and around the world, curriculum policy is being used to more forcefully and comprehensively reorient PTE programs toward ESE. In this presentation, we will explore the extent to which some PTE programs around the world have endeavoured to employ curriculum policy in an effort to enhance ESE-PTE outcomes—and in our presentation—extend an invitation to the broader international research community to join us in this worthy cause.

Authors

• Maurice Digiuseppe, University of Ontario Institute of Technology

• Douglas David Karrow, Brock University