Telling Reflections: Teaching Sustainably in a Complex Learning Environment

Abstract

This article examines learning design in a postgraduate preservice teacher setting. The overarching aim was to embed environmentally responsive approaches throughout two companion units for diverse student cohorts. This article reports on a teacher educator self-study in a regional university with extensive online delivery for large units (300-800 students) in a 1-year course. The author examines how assessment tasks in literacy-and numeracy-oriented units are designed to meaningfully integrate environmental sustainability using contextual cues, collaborative learning, complex tasks, and reflexivity. The author argues for the use of these four key guidelines of environmentally responsive pedagogies alongside environmental education programs to emphasise messages of sustainability even in units that are not traditionally environmentally oriented. Challenges include problematising the nature of effective teaching and dealing with the complexities of purposeful learning. Innovative unit learning design alone, however, is inadequate if the surrounding systems are fragmented and seen as separate to learning about sustainability.The purpose of this article is to argue that effective learning design -in any context -attends integrally to four key guidelines: contextual development, purposeful collaboration, foregrounding complexity, and reflexive practice. These guidelines should underpin all learning and teaching in order that environmental sustainability messages are conveyed through the learning processes and experiences of students as well as the content.Community-based, 'grass-roots' environmental education (EE) programs exhibit these four characteristics, but I argue in this self-study that EE should not be the only programs where contextualisation, collaboration, complexity, and reflexivity are applied.If teacher educators widely account for these four characteristics of effective learning design, there is a greater likelihood that deep learning -even in areas not traditionally associated with EE -will be underpinned by messages of environmental stewardship. Further, if preservice teachers apply these four guidelines to learning design for their

What does the research evidence base tell us about the use and impact of sustainability pedagogies in initial teacher education?

“…Third-order learning is what is commonly defined as transformative and as learning for sustainability. Unsurprisingly, all of the ten publications reported learning of the first order such as raised student awareness about consumption, waste and recycling (America 2014), enhanced knowledge about local species (Jagger, Sperling, and Inwood 2016) and understanding about teaching principles (Prescott 2016), ecoliteracy and experiential learning (Burke and Cutter-Mackenzie 2010). Four studies (America 2014;Preston 2011;Burke and Cutter-Mackenzie 2010;Collins-Figueroa 2012;Preston and Griffiths 2004) additionally reported second order learning.…”

Students’ perceptions of the natural world and their attitudes toward ecological issues: What is the relationship between them?

“…The above results can also be attributed to various other reasons. For example, curricula are characterized by a lack of interdependence and coherence, as many scientific concepts are very general and unrelated to environmental phenomena (Prescott, 2016). As a result, students do not acquire functional knowledge in school, i.e., knowledge that helps them understand the problems of daily life (Littledyke, 2004; Perkins & Salomon, 1992).…”

“…However, a study of more than 25,000 citizens from 27 countries concluded that despite coordinated awareness programs directed at citizens of these countries over the past 30 years to protect biodiversity, 65% of respondents did not know what was meant (Navarro-Perrez & Titball, 2012). In addition, research (Prescott, 2016) shows that school curricula are characterized by the organization of school knowledge into individual school subjects. This traditional approach leads to fragmented and abstract school knowledge that makes it difficult for children to perceive the world as a system in order to develop a more ecologically sustainable worldview.…”