Abstract
Similar to much of the world, the Australian Government has a vision for society to be engaged in and enriched by science which has, as its prime focus, building skills and capabilities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Simultaneously, the Government’s policies and projects, including in education, ignore intergovernmental environmental initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). This article critically analyses the Australian Government’s STEM and climate change education policies and programs, including Citizen Science activities, through an ecological education lens and finds many, and growing, gaps and silences in these areas. It compares the Australian situation with STEM and ecological education-related developments in several other countries. In the context of significant global changes such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this article argues that it is time for the Australian education agenda to take the Government’s international responsibilities seriously, include meaningful engagement with climate change and biodiversity related topics through ecological education in the school curriculum, and discusses what a reimagined school science curriculum could look like.
Highlights
The close relationship between science and technology and responses to global environmental changes has been highlighted since at least the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
That the current Australian government is ignoring its obligations as signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement has significant implications for how environmental and ecological education is being supported in the Australian Curriculum
Beyond the socioeconomic frame of the current response, the role the environment and natural capital will play in the path to recovery is a policy choice that warrants further elaboration, as do good governance, gender equality and empowerment, and the protection and promotion of human rights for all” (p. 39). This foregrounding by the UN of the importance of the environment, through recommending that environmental considerations should be taken on board across all sectors of response and recovery effort rather than seeking technological solutions, provides an ideal opportunity to bring STEM and ecological education together
Summary
The close relationship between science and technology and responses to global environmental changes has been highlighted since at least the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Fast forward around fifty years and the close relationship between science education and environmental education has disappeared, yet an understanding of ecological sustainability is essential if society is to achieve sustainable development This disassociation between the two areas is apparent in the work of UNESCO, as well as Australia and elsewhere. The SDGs prioritize the human condition over that of the environment: with the first goal being to eradicate poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development [15] Many of these goals are very human-centered, with the focus of the first five being human issues: eradicating poverty, removing hunger, human health and well-being, education for all, and achieving gender equality. Though, Australia’s STEM education agenda, environment and climate change policies and the Australian Curriculum are discussed to provide a context for this analysis
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