ARIES. Completed Projects. Sustainable Schools

1
EfS in Australia Reviewing the state of play

• Annette Gough
• RMIT University
• and
• Noel Gough
• University of Canberra

2
Outline

• EfS in formal school education
• EfS research

3
The Decade in Australia

• Department of the Environment and Heritage as
  host
• Slow beginning
• Confusion between ESD and EfS and EE
• Generally still seen as Education for
  Environmental Sustainability with silences
  around the (UN DESD) social and economic pillars
  of ESD

4
Australian Government Implementation Strategy for
the Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development

• A primary aim of the Decade of Education for
  Sustainable Development (DESD) is to build an
  awareness and understanding of the principles and
  goals of education for sustainable development.
• At a national level there will be opportunities
  for partnerships and the sharing of information.
  To ensure any national initiatives are responsive
  to community needs it is not intended that a full
  list of activities for the ten-year period be
  developed at the commencement of the DESD.
  Instead involvement is more likely to entail a
  rolling program of activities with projects
  considered on an annual basis, in line with
  continuing evaluation and opportunity
  identification, thus building on the initiatives
  of each year.
• Some longer-term goal setting may also be
  possible. An example being the Australian
  Sustainable Schools Initiative, where the aim
  might be to implement the Initiative in a
  significant proportion of Australian schools.

5
continued

• In line with the UNESCO Implementation Scheme,
  the Australian Government will be looking to
  opportunities for building capacity and the
  mainstreaming of Education for Sustainability
  considerations through strategies such as
• developing and expanding existing Australian
  Government policies and programs in education for
  sustainability
• promoting and sharing successful Australian
  initiatives and expertise in education for
  sustainability
• inviting national and international partnerships
  to strengthen and re-orientate policies and
  programs and
• undertaking a gap analysis and evaluation of work
  to date.
• Activities will be developed in conjunction with
  the National Environmental Education Council and
  other stakeholders as the DESD progresses. Beyond
  the activities of the Australian Government,
  stakeholders from across business, government and
  the community are encouraged to work towards a
  common vision of a sustainable Australia.

6
National Action Plan a review

• National Environmental Education Council
• National Environmental Education Network
• Australian Environmental Education Foundation
  funded as Australian Research Institute in
  Education for Sustainability (ARIES) at Macquarie
  University
• Environmental Education Grants program

7
ARIES

• Completed Projects
• Sustainable Schools - International Perspective
• Education for and about Sustainability within
  Australian Business Schools
• Industry Sustainability
• Research Program Development Forums
• Current Projects
• A National Review of Environmental Education and
  its Contribution to Sustainability in Australia
• Education for and about Sustainability within
  Australian Business Schools - Stage 2
• Industry Sustainability - Stage 2
• Reef Water Quality Protection Plan - Scoping of
  Issues Associated with Industry Practices
• Air Quality Education - Effective Programs
• Development of a Tool for Assessing Provision and
  Effectiveness of Coastal Management Education
• Building Government Capacity Towards
  Sustainability
• A Review of models for professional development
  in pre-service teacher education

8
Education for a sustainable future

• A national statement on environmental education
  for schools
• Published in July 2005
• Distributed to all schools with letter from state
  Departments of Education
• Attributed to DEH but not DEST
• No mention of NEEC except as Committee chair
• Tensions and issues
• Politics

9
Issues

• Implementing ESD in schools involves approaches
  to teaching and learning that integrate goals for
  conservation, social justice, appropriate
  development and democracy into a vision and a
  mission of personal and social change. It also
  involves developing the kinds of civic virtues
  and skills that can empower all citizens and,
  through them, our social institutions, to play
  leading roles in the transition to a sustainable
  future.
• These are the challenges for implementing ESD in
  schools, curriculum and instruction. Much work is
  need in pre-service and in-service teacher
  education, in institutional reform and in
  curriculum materials to build an understanding of
  ESD in its breadth, which takes it beyond current
  conceptions of EE.

10
Sustainable Schools

• Sustainable Schools in Victoria, Australia, is
  designed to provide an holistic education program
  for schools on sustainability.
• The program is a framework or guided process for
  facilitating cultural and behavioural change
  towards sustainability in schools.
• Sustainable schools has gone national in 2005.
• Won national Eureka Prize in 2005.

11
Ten step plan

• 1. Make a commitment, form a committee/ working
  group
• 2. Adopt a whole school approach, involving
  students
• 3. Conduct an audit
• 4. Write a policy
• 5. Set targets

12
continued

• 6. Prepare an action plan
• Operations
• Curriculum
• Whole school involvement
• 7. Write curriculum plan, integrating operations
• 8. Implement the program
• 9. Monitor, evaluate and provide feedback
• 10. Achieve goals and targets, continuous
  improve program.

13
The Sustainable Schools Process
14
A whole school approach

• Whole school characteristics that promote ESD
  are
• policies
• coherence
• transparency
• practice
• continuing professional development
• evaluation

15
School achievements

• Economic outcomes
• Educational outcomes
• Environmental outcomes
• Social outcomes

16
Economic outcomes

• Savings from reduced water consumption (by having
  gardens rather than lawns and through using
  stored water for garden use).
• Savings from reduced amount of waste sent to
  landfill (using fewer commercial skips).
• Savings from reduced power consumption (through a
  lights off competition).
• Potential income from running excursions into the
  school for other schools to learn about the
  wetlands.
• The chickens pay for themselves through egg
  sales.
• The school sells the vegetables produced in the
  vegetable garden.

17
Educational outcomes

• Students are actively involved in learning about
  the environment.
• Students learning has been enhanced through an
  action based cross curricula project.
• There is a richer curriculum with hands on
  activities across all Key Learning Areas.
• Students have been involved in data collection,
  mapping and tabulation, as well as refining of
  scientific analysis, evaluation and testing
  techniques.
• Students have opportunities to become aware,
  passionate and enthusiastic about the
  environment.
• Improved student presentation skills.
• Improved student leadership skills.
• School has a community education role home
  management plans help parents be more
  environmentally friendly.
• Modelling water conservation principles to the
  community.
• Wetlands are used as a teaching resource with
  integrated units from P-6.

18
Educational outcomes

• The children are excited and motivated by the
  program.
• The children have a more positive attitude to
  schooling.
• The environment has been used to link and drive
  literacy, numeracy and boys issues.
• There has been skills development in literacy for
  boys.
• Environmental education has been incorporated
  across the curriculum and across age groups
• Increased student interest in schooling.
• Problem children can be diverted to hands on
  garden activities.
• Students have learned the skills to plant plants
  properly and have engaged in community plantings.
• The rice paddy will support the Indonesian
  language program.
• The animals and vegetable patch programs have
  provided an additional site for the integration
  program.
• The local nature reserves are incorporated into
  school programs.

19
Environmental outcomes

• Enhanced biodiversity on the school site.
• Extensive waste recycling in the school paper,
  plastic, food scraps, garden waste.
• School grounds development.
• Monitoring and management of immediate coastal
  environment.
• Reduction of school water consumption.
• The school has environmentally minded gardeners
  who work in with the worm farms and composting.
• Propagation of local indigenous plants for local
  needs.
• There is an indigenous plant nursery on site
  which has increased its partnerships with the
  community and government groups.
• Water quality improvement of Jawbone Marine
  Sanctuary.

20
Environmental outcomes

• Through the Growling Grassfrog program students
  are contributing to a national database on this
  species.
• The aesthetics of the school grounds.
• Stormwater collected by rainwater tank and used
  in wetlands and/or vegetable gardens and/or
  toilets.
• Re-establishment of the vegetable gardens.
• Student write water saving hints for the school
  newsletter.
• Students have produced a drain stencilling
  brochure.
• The frog ponds are fed by stormwater and thus
  prevent loss to the system.
• There are indigenous plants and a bush tucker
  garden.
• Food scraps are used in the worm farm and the
  compost is used on the gardens.
• 50 reduction in landfill waste much of which
  is providing food for hens and worms.

21
Social outcomes

• Students, staff, community and experts have been
  involved in the program and have ownership of it.
• Partnerships have been developed with the
  community, such as links with local environmental
  and community groups, parents and projects.
• Increased student leadership and social
  responsibility, self esteem, a sense of belonging
  and ownership.
• Modelling of stormwater practices to the
  community through the visibility of the large
  water tank and rainwater fed toilet system.
• Community involvement in planning and creation of
  the wetlands.
• Student involvement in the community such as
  revegetating sand dunes.
• Students are more confident and enjoy group work
  in the garden (building social capital).
• Students have positions of responsibility and
  have become community environmental watchdogs
  (e.g. monitoring household garden watering
  against restrictions)

22
Social outcomes

• Parents are taking on sustainability practices at
  home (e.g. waste free lunches) and are involved
  in many aspects of the schools sustainability
  program.
• Students work as Stormwater Ambassadors working
  with the local council Stormwater Officer.
• Mentoring of young students.
• Access to the oval for disabled students
  following stormwater retention work has been
  greatly appreciated.
• Student absences have declined, and behaviour has
  improved.
• The whole school community has pride in the
  school.
• There is not a lot of vandalism and very little
  garden damage.
• The animals program has provided an additional
  venue for student activities at lunch time.

23
Other outcomes include

• School infrastructure is used as an on-going
  educational tool and resource for the teaching of
  sustainable principles, water consumption and
  management, and ecological interrelationships
• Sustainable Schools initiative is embedded in
  their school operations and curriculum across all
  Key Learning Areas
• Teachers have developed new pedagogical skills
  and knowledge
• The whole school community has developed new ways
  of working together
• engaging student learning
• involving students in working towards a
  sustainable future
• developing extensive links with their local (and
  often broader) communities
• high staff and student morale in the school
• establishing a basis for future development as a
  Sustainable School and model for others.

24
Success factors

• Broad ownership of and engagement with
  Sustainable Schools across the school.
• Teachers, students and parents share the vision
  of the environment having a high profile in the
  school.
• Support of the school leadership team.
• Enthusiastic and committed staff.
• Immersion of all staff in the Core unit.
• The structure of Sustainable Schools made it easy
  to implement.

25
More success factors

• Integrating sustainability into school operations
  and across the curriculum.
• Student involvement in the day to day
  sustainability operations in the school.
• The availability of funds to enable the
  development of visible sustainability
  infrastructure (such as rainwater tanks).
• There is a school grounds master plan that helps
  bring together all aspects of achieving a
  Sustainable School.

26
Limiting factors (schools perspective)

• Time
• Money
• The pressures of being at the front
• Lack of models
• Lack of resources and contacts

27
Limiting factors (researcher perspective)

• Over confidence of process developers
• Teacher understanding of education for
  sustainability
• Systemic support
• Cost initially
• Competition from other initiatives in schools
• Sustainability

28
The rest of the scene in Victoria a work in
progress

• Education and Behaviour Change Strategy Learning
  to Live Sustainably
• Within the context of the Victorian Governments
  Environmental Sustainability Framework
• Facilitation of links between schools, home and
  communities
• Developing support networks and structures
• Developing a communication strategy for community
  education
• Audit of the wide range of resources and support
  programs currently funded by DSE

29
Education Dept initiatives

• DET's Environmental Sustainability Strategy The
  Way Forward
• The key objectives of the strategy to meet
  government targets include
• strengthening governance and leadership for
  environmental sustainability
• implementing and learning from Quick Wins
• integrating environmental sustainability into
  existing systems and policies
• increasing participation, engagement and
  achievement
• enhancing peoples knowledge and skills in
  environmental sustainability and
• achieving sustainable financing and resourcing
  for environmental sustainability actions.

30
Education Dept initiatives

• The Office of Learning and Teaching's Sustainable
  Schools Strategy 2005
• The key components of the Sustainable Schools
  Strategy 2005 are based on Pilot Program
  Evaluation Report and include
• Incorporating sustainability and
  sustainability education as significant overall
  criteria in the Strategic Partnership Programs
  next three year funding round
• Developing a training program for stakeholder
  agencies
• Developing a resource for use with pre-service
  teachers
• Support for the Depts Environmental
  Sustainability Strategy to incorporate
  Administrative Guidelines.
• Support for development of school program
  indicators with the Dept of the Environment and
  Heritage.
• Developing an evaluation and monitoring tool for
  schools to use independently or as part of the
  review of their 4 year strategy plan.

31
Conclusion

• To date, much of the responsibility for EE has
  been in science education and social studies
• ESD requires whole school, whole curriculum
  transformation and different pedagogies
• ESD necessitates different ways of teaching,
  different content and different school management
  skills for different learning
• We need to start from what we are doing well and
  expand that base to take into account the other
  strategic perspectives of ESD

32
But do we know how to do this?
33
Informing education and learning UNESCO DESD
perspectives

• Socio-cultural perspectives
• Human Rights
• Peace and human security
• Gender Equality
• Cultural Diversity and intercultural
  understanding
• Health
• HIV/AIDS
• Governance
• Environmental perspectives
• Natural resources (water, energy, agriculture,
  biodiversity)
• Climate change
• Rural transformation
• Sustainable urbanization
• Disaster prevention and mitigation
• Economic perspectives
• Poverty reduction
• Corporate responsibility and accountability
• Market economy

34
Developing the global dimension in the school
curriculum (DfES 2005)

• Global citizenship Knowledge, skills and
  understanding of concepts and institutions
  necessary to become informed, active citizens.
• Conflict resolution The nature of conflicts,
  their impact and the need for their resolution
  and the promotion of harmony.
• Diversity Understanding and respecting
  differences and relating these to our common
  humanity.
• Human rights Knowing about human rights
  including the UN Convention on the Rights of the
  Child.
• Interdependence How people, places, economies
  and environments are all inextricably
  interrelated.
• Social justice The importance of social justice
  as an element in sustainable development and the
  improved welfare of all.
• Sustainable development The need to maintain and
  improve the quality of life now without damaging
  the planet for future generations.
• Values and perceptions Critical evaluation of
  representations of global issues and the effect
  these have on peoples attitudes and values.

35
Re-orienting education for ESD perennial problems

• Programs about, in and for ESD for
• Pre-service teacher education
• In-service teacher education
• Training courses for Ministry of Education
  managers
• Training courses for school principals
• New curriculum resources
• Support for school initiatives so they can become
  Sustainable Schools and models for their
  communities

36
The challenges

• Are the exhortations of the Decade any different
  from those from earlier UNESCO-UNEP declarations
  and reports?
• Will the outcomes be different this time?
• What will be different this time?
• Why?

37
For more information

• Department of the Environment and Heritage
  Environmental Education (including national
  statement)
• www.deh.gov.au/education
• Sustainable schools documents www.gould.vic.edu.a
  u and www.gould.org.au
• Victorias Environmental Sustainability
  Framework www.dse.vic.gov.au

38
EE/Esf/ESD research in Australia (not a playful
state)

• Descriptive (scoping) studies and exhortations
• Technical/practical action research aimed at
  producing practitioner fidelity with
  predetermined (and taken-for-granted)
  understandings of EE/EfS/ESD

39
For example (from a recent manuscript on
strategies for sustainability at Australian
universities submitted to AJEE)

• EfS is still an evolving concept (p. 2)
• it is not obvious that any of the institutions
  surveyed has a definite understanding of EfS
  (p. 6)
• EfS continues not to be well understood or
  fully implemented (p. 8)
• authors implicitly position themselves on a moral
  high ground in pointing to deficits in others
  understandings
• cliches such as understanding the holistic
  nature of EfS dont help who does
  understand this and how would they/we know?

40
Much EE/EfS/ESD research is directed towards an
instrumental interest in the effectiveness of
interventions. Many interpretive/critical/deconstr
uctive research questions are not being asked,
e.g.

• How are the desirable, undesirable and unintended
  effects of EfS distributed (in terms of class,
  gender, race, ethnicity, location urban/rural,
  North/South)?
• How is EfS implicated in new forms of empire
  not only US economic/military imperialism (even
  the US has ever-diminishing powers to regulate
  the flows of capital, technologies and people
  across national boundaries) but also the
  sovereignty constituted by the many and various
  amorphous series of regulations and shared
  processes that exceed the mandates of
  nation-states and determine the rules for
  incorporating numerous institutions and peoples
  into empires of the mind?

41

• Ecopolitics and empire
• Environmentalists have long bemoaned the damage
  done by what is frequently termed the domination
  of nature. Once one asks the simple geographical
  question what is the geography of the domination
  of nature? the answer fairly quickly reveals
  itself as the history of colonization and
  imperialism. Ironically environmentalists who
  wish to ease the burden of that domination have
  frequently promoted the establishment of
  protected spaces, parks and the control of
  populations in manners that nonetheless replicate
  the practices of empire (Simon Dalby 2004).

42

• The consumption of exotic landscapes
• Safaris and game reserves, hunting trophy animals
  in exotic environments were all part of the
  imperial experience for colonial administrators.
• Conservation has its roots in imperial
  administration of resource production and in
  debates over botanical gardens, zoos, game
  reserves etc.
• An imperial mentality manages the rural according
  to urban and metropolitan criteria.
• Environmentalism is often an aesthetic politics
  that emphasizes the visual appeal for visitors
  rather than the practicalities of earning a
  livelihood for local inhabitants, who have often
  been forcibly removed from parks and reserves to
  preserve them (Matthew, Halle and Switzer 2002).

43

• Meteorology and empire
• In providing preliminary evidence of what was
  only much later understood to be the El Nino
  Southern Oscillation phenomenon, 19th century
  meteorological science charted a picture of a
  cruel and unpredictable nature that could easily
  be blamed for famine in various parts of the
  world. Nature as precarious and fickle let
  European imperial grain merchants off the hook
  for the disruptions to the global patterns of
  food production that were a major contributing
  cause to the famines (Mike Davis 2001).

44

• Deregulating EE/EfS/EE research
• John Law on methodology and mess
• Deleuze and Guattaris geophilosophy
• An example of work in progress
• Gough, Noel. (in press). Geophilosophy and
  methodology science education research in a
  rhizomatic space. In Vithal, Renuka, Setati,
  Mamokgethi and Malcolm, Cliff (eds) Title tba
  (UNESCO-SAARMSTE book project on methodologies
  for researching mathematics, science and
  technological education in societies in
  transition)

45

• Figure 1 If this is an awful mess then would
  something less messy make a mess of describing
  it?
• (illustration inspired by and caption quoted
  from John Law, 2003, pp. 2-3)

46
Methodology and mess

• When I thought about what the editors of the
  UNESCO-SAARMSTE book invited authors to do to
  focus on the challenges for developing research
  methodologies that are appropriate and relevant
  to societies undergoing major changes, especially
  characteristic of the developing world I
  imagined a mess (Figure 1 is my attempt to
  represent this mess).
• Developing a scholarship in research that is
  responsive and relevant to rapidly changing
  educational environments that are fraught with
  deep inequalities, diversity, conflict and
  instability means developing methodologies for
  knowing mess that helps us to understand the
  politics of mess and messiness.
• My mess is made from samples of texts (in the
  broadest sense of the term) that represent some
  of my understandings of the inequalities,
  diversities, conflicts and instabilities that
  constitute science education and research in
  regions such as southern Africa.

47
Methodology and mess

• Law (2003) asserts that
• the world is largely messy
• contemporary social science methods are
  hopelessly bad at knowing that mess
• dominant approaches to method work with some
  success to repress the very possibility of mess
• Law invites us to imagine method more
  imaginatively, to imagine what method might be
  if it were not caught in an obsession with
  clarity, with specificity, and with the definite
  
• Law argues that social science inquiry is mostly
  a form of hygiene

48
Methodological hygeine

• Do your methods properly. Eat your
  epistemological greens. Wash your hands after
  mixing with the real world. Then you will lead
  the good research life. Your data will be clean.
  Your findings warrantable. The product you will
  produce will be pure. Guaranteed to have a long
  shelf-life. So there are lots of books about
  intellectual hygiene. Methodological cleanliness.
  Books which offer access to the methodological
  uplands of social science research
• In practice research needs to be messy and
  heterogeneous. It needs to be messy and
  heterogeneous, because that is the way it,
  research, actually is. And also, and more
  importantly, it needs to be messy because that is
  the way the largest part of the world is. Messy,
  unknowable in a regular and routinised way.
  Unknowable, therefore, in ways that are definite
  or coherent Clarity doesnt help. Disciplined
  lack of clarity, that may be what we need (Law
  2003).

49
Methodology and mess

• In After Method Mess in Social Science Research,
  Law (2004) elaborates upon this argument at much
  greater length.
• Law does so in his own way, drawing on his
  immersion in the discourses of actor-network
  theory (ANT) and its successor projects.
• I also find ANT to be very generative in thinking
  about methodology but my current preference is to
  engage messy and heterogeneous objects of inquiry
  through the frames and figurations provided by
  Deleuze and Guattaris geophilosophy,
  especially their concepts of rhizome, nomad and
  mots dordre.

50
Why geophilosophy?

• In What is Philosophy? Gilles Deleuze and Félix
  Guattari (1994) map the geography of reason
  from pre-Socratic times to the present, a
  geophilosophy describing relations between
  particular spatial configurations and locations
  and the philosophical formations that arise
  therein.
• They characterise philosophy as the creation of
  concepts through which knowledge can be
  generated.
• This is very different from the approaches taken
  by many analytic and linguistic philosophers who
  are more concerned with the clarification of
  concepts.

51

• Deleuze and Guattari created a new critical
  language for analysing thinking as flows or
  movements across space.
• Concepts such as assemblage, deterritorialisation,
  lines of flight, nomadology, rhizome/rhizomatics
  and mots dordre (order-words) refer to spatial
  relationships and to ways of conceiving ourselves
  and other objects moving in space.
• They distinguish rhizomatic thinking from
  arborescent conceptions of knowledge as
  hierarchically articulated branches of a central
  stem or trunk rooted in firm foundations.
• the rhizome is so constructed that every path
  can be connected with every other one. It has no
  center, no periphery, no exit, because it is
  potentially infinite. The space of conjecture is
  a rhizome space (Umberto Eco 1984)

52
Rhizomes and research

• The space of educational research can be
  understood as a rhizome space.
• Rhizome is to a tree as the Internet is to a
  letter networking that echoes the
  hyper-connectivity of the Internet.
• The material and informational structure of a
  tree and a letter is relatively simple a trunk
  connecting two points through or over a mapped
  surface.
• But rhizomes and the Internet (see figs. 2 and 3)
  are infinitely and continually complicating. They
  are irreducibly messy.

53
(No Transcript)
54
Losing the way becoming nomadic in research

• History is always written from the sedentary
  point of view and in the name of a unitary State
  apparatus, at least a possible one, even when the
  topic is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology,
  the opposite of a history.
• nomads have no history they only have a
  geography (Deleuze Guattari 1987)
• I imagine nomadic wandering in the discursive
  fields of environmental education research as
  losing the way as losing any sense that just
  one way could ever be prefixed and privileged
  by the definite article. Like rhizomes, nomads
  have no desire to follow one path.

55

• In Geophilosophy and methodology I demonstrate
  how thinking rhizomatically and nomadically
  destabilises arborescent and sedentary
  conceptions of knowledge as hierarchically
  articulated branches of a central stem or trunk
  rooted in firm and fixed foundations.
• I make a mosquito-led rhizome from my readings
  of a Time magazine cover story about, and a
  school textbook account of, malaria both of
  which occlude the complex, messy heterogeneity of
  the assemblage of parasites, mosquitoes, humans,
  technologies and socio-technical relations that
  malaria signifies.
• I make multiple, hybrid connections between these
  texts and others drawn from social/historical
  studies of science, SF (Amitav Ghoshs The
  Calcutta Chromosome A Novel of Fevers, Delirium,
  and Discovery, a mystery thriller in the SF
  sub-genre of alternative history) and SF
  criticism.
• Ghoshs novel offers a speculative counterscience
  of malaria that connects with (but does not
  replicate) the real history of Western
  medicines explorations of the disease and thus
  invites readers to think beyond the sign regimes
  of Western laboratory science.

56
What does education for sustainable development
do? A geophilosophical analysis of
sustainability discourses in international
contextsIn preparation for Fields of Green
Philosophies of Educational Praxis (McKenzie,
Bai, Hart, Jickling, Eds.)

• explores some ways in which Deleuze and
  Guattaris geophilosophy might be used to analyse
  ESD in contemporary contexts of globalisation,
  multiculturalism and international communication
  networks, with particular reference to
  translating and/or interpreting ESD across
  national, linguistic and cultural borders
• uses their concept of mots dordre (order-words)
  to analyse selected examples of sustainability
  discourses in different nations
• analytic focus is not on what ESD means but on
  how it works and what it does or produces in
  specific locations