Mapping Sustainability Initiatives Across a Region: An Innovative Survey Approach

Somerville, Margaret; Green, Monica

doi:10.1017/aee.2013.1

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In contrast to earlier research that identified Gippsland schools as deficient in EfS compared to the Victorian metropolitan areas (DEECD, 2007), the SSE validated EfS as a popular endeavour that is commonly integrated through science, the arts, maths, geography and history disciplines. Subseqent research that mapped the pedagogical approaches to sustainability in the region highlights sustainability as practiced through school–community partnerships involving local shires, volunteers and council-based sustainability officers that are integral to the longevity and effectiveness of EfS in primary schools (Green and Somerville, 2015; Somerville and Green, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘If there’s no sustainability our future will get wrecked’: Exploring children’s perspectives of sustainability

Green

2016

Childhood

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Education for Sustainability is an internationally recognised field of learning that is currently mandated as a cross-curriculum priority in the Australian curriculum. Empirical research into children’s views about sustainability, and how they develop sustainability knowledge, however, remains limited. This article focuses on research that investigated children’s perspectives of sustainability in Victoria, Australia. The children were recruited through the Sustainable School Expo where they delivered keynote presentations about their school’s respective Education for Sustainability initiatives. Data were generated from interviews with 16 children aged from 9 to 13 years and included a set of self-created and designed sustainability artefacts. The article contends that children have strongly conceptualised ideas about sustainability that are developed through interactions with material entities (human/more than human) in diverse environments. A key finding suggests that children become vital stakeholders in Education for Sustainability through experiential, investigative, sensorial and place-oriented ways of learning, which informs how they build sustainability knowledge.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘If there’s no sustainability our future will get wrecked’: Exploring children’s perspectives of sustainability

Green

2016

Childhood

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“…The schools selected for Year 3 were self-identified in a previous research study 'Mapping sustainability initiatives in the Gippsland region' (Somerville and Green 2013). The aim of the parallel mapping study was to understand how to connect individual local sustainability initiatives to each other across a region in order to gain greater momentum for transformational change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability education: researching practice in primary schools

Green

Somerville

2014

Environmental Education Research

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Many teachers are keen to implement sustainability education in primary schools but are lacking the confidence, skills and knowledge to do so. Teachers report that they do not understand the concept and cannot integrate sustainability into an already overcrowded curriculum. Identifying how teachers successfully integrate sustainability education into their teaching practice can offer important insights into how these perceived problems can be overcome. The paper is based on data from the third year of a longitudinal study about teacher education and teacher professional learning for sustainability in primary education. The third year of the study investigated teachers' understandings of sustainability and how sustainability education is manifested in eight rural and regional primary schools in Victoria, Australia. Data included photographs of school grounds and sustainability projects, audio recordings of focus groups with teachers and principals, and field notes of meetings with school staff. Sustainability education was found to be an emergent practice necessarily constituted in the relation between teachers, students and community members and the materialities of local places. Partnerships were found to be an essential part of integrated sustainability programmes which extended into communities and places beyond the schools. The processes of learning involved pedagogies of creative problem-solving and inquiry learning that enabled children to lead the way. BackgroundThis paper analyses data from the third year of a longitudinal participatory action research study designed to investigate teacher professional learning and teacher education for sustainability in Victorian primary schools. In the first year of the study, two teacher educators researched the practice of integrating sustainability into teacher education (Power and Green, forthcoming). In the second year, the two authors partnered with the deputy principal, a lead teacher and two Grade 3/4 teachers from an exemplary school in the Latrobe Valley region of Victoria, to trial a process for the integration of sustainability into teacher education and teacher professional learning (Somerville and Green 2012). In the second year of the study, we had observed that the pre-service teachers often experienced resistance to their new learning during placement, reinforcing their own anxieties in relation to sustainability education. In response to this observation, we sought schools that were practising sustainability education for the placement of teacher education students in the third year of the project.

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“…This project builds upon a number of Australian studies in rural education and sustainability that use the concepts of space and place to arrive at new understandings of existence and educational, social, cultural and environmental concerns which are often intractable (Cormack, Green, & Reid, 2006;Green, 2012;Somerville & Green, 2012;Vanclay, Higgins, & Blackshaw, 2008). This education research literature shares links with recent policy and governance studies on the idea of localism.…”

Section: The Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community perspectives and the politics of water in rural Australia: Rural-regional sustainability education in the Murray Darling Basin

McPherson¹,

Roberts²,

Downes³

2017

AIJRE

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Sustainability is a central challenge facing the future viability of Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) communities in rural Australia.Â Faced with environmental uncertainty and its associated community impacts, sustainability has at once been positioned as the path to a prosperous future and a flash point of community conflict. Key to these tensions has been different perspectives on sustainability adopted by various community members and the difficulty of working towards a shared understanding of the term. Drawing upon the first phase of a two-year project exploring education and sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, the paper examines different community understandings of sustainability. The differences observed reflect debates about community in rural areas, as well as sustainability in the research literature. We then consider the role of education in collaborative community dialogue about rural-regional sustainability in contexts where sustainability education plays out against broader conflicts over the natural resource of water and its pivotal role in Australiaâ€™s economic wealth and social wellbeing.

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Mapping Sustainability Initiatives Across a Region: An Innovative Survey Approach

Cited by 6 publications

References 26 publications

‘If there’s no sustainability our future will get wrecked’: Exploring children’s perspectives of sustainability

‘If there’s no sustainability our future will get wrecked’: Exploring children’s perspectives of sustainability

Sustainability education: researching practice in primary schools

Community perspectives and the politics of water in rural Australia: Rural-regional sustainability education in the Murray Darling Basin

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