Translating sustainability

Abstract

INTRODUCTION In response to concerns about global warming and climate change (Letcher, 2009), the perceived estrangement of humanity from the natural world (Louv, 2008), and fears that the carrying capacity (1) of the earth will soon reach its limits (Orr, 1992), a growing number of educational scholars have proposed a re-orientation of schooling around the concept of sustainability and its themes (Orr, 1992; Bowers, 1995; Gruenewald & Smith, 2007; Jickling & Wals, 2008; Smith, 2002, 2010; Smith & Williams, 1998; Sobel, 2004; Sterling, 2004). Termed sustainability education, (2) this approach to schooling works to help students acquire the knowledge, values, skills, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs they will need to work toward a more just and ecologically sustainable world (Smith, 2010). More than environmental education, which focuses on the study of natural systems (how they function and how to manage them) (Palmer, 1998), sustainability education incorporates topics and themes related to social, political, cultural, and economic systems, in an effort to help students recognize the complex relationship between humanity and the natural world. Sustainability education also works to examine many of the ideological principles and values found in Western society (e.g., the concepts of dualism and anthropocentrism; the equation of progress with unlimited economic growth), so that students may develop new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving (e.g., thinking systematically, and recognizing that economic growth is bounded by ecological limitations) (Coates, 2008). Although numerous efforts to enact sustainability education have been made around the world, a single, replicable model of sustainability education fails to exist. Sterling (2004) attributes this actuality to the emphasis environmental and sustainability education places on diversity. McKeown-Ice (2000) acknowledges that diversity is a key component of environmental and sustainability education and explains that a single, replicable model of sustainability education would be entirely inappropriate [given its highly localized nature] (p. 12). Without a model to follow or adapt, educators looking to enact sustainability education are left to decide for themselves what this orientation towards education and the school curriculum should look like. Such a process is challenging. It calls for--among other things--an examination of the core knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, skills and behaviors that individuals are expected to possess as inhabitants of a sustainable world. It also calls for an assessment of how one's conceptualizations fit within the traditional and contemporary aims of the field. The purpose of this case study was to examine how the founding members of a secondary charter school designed a comprehensive model for schooling around the concept of sustainability. By focusing on how the founding members created their school, I intended to document both the processes and complexities involved. REVIEW OF LITERATURE A majority of the research conducted on environmental and sustainability education has focused on the effectiveness of this approach to schooling (Lieberman & Hoody, 1998; National Environmental Education Training Foundation, 2000; Volk & Cheak, 2003; Athman & Monroe, 2004; American Institutes of Research, 2005; Chawla, 2007; Power, 2004). This makes sense given that the field is working hard to justify itself and its intentions (Gruenewald & Mantaew, 2007, as cited in Stevenson, 2007; Smith, 2010; Sterling, 2004). Another area of inquiry for the field has been on challenges to program implementation. In particular, several studies have documented the challenges involved with implementing environmental education and sustainability-based programming in the public school setting (Cotton, 2006; Paul & Volk, 2002; Plevyak, Bedixen-Noe, Roth, & Wilke, 2001; Stevenson, 2007; Summers & Kruger, 2003). …