Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Education Toward Education for Sustainable Development in Chinese Communities

Abstract

Given the rapid deterioration in the contemporary world environment, a global concern for our environment is evolving, the result of which has been the development of environmental education (EE), which is progressively reorienting toward education for sustainable development (ESD) and the emergence of the concept of sustainability since the early 1980s. Given that an understanding of the environment and environmental education is for the most part included in the science curriculum in basic education, this paper traces the development of EE toward ESD and the essence of the new focus. Different communities have had diverse responses to this drive for ESD. The current practices of school EE in the three Chinese communities, namely, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, are illuminated to examine if and how they react to this international movement for sustainability education. The challenges schools in these three places face in addressing sustainability in their teaching are discussed, and implications for teacher education are proposed.