Sustainability education, whole school approaches, and communities of action

Abstract

Despite differences in terminology, environmental education and educations that address sustainability share a common aspiration of changing lifestyles. In this chapter we argue that a situated, whole school action-focused learning rather than behaviourist or cognitive/constructivist approaches to learning offers a better, though not the only, prospect for education to contribute to the development of more sustainable lifestyles/actions. While environmental awareness and values education approaches can generate more sustainable actions, these approaches seem incapable of contributing to sustainable lifestyles at a societal scale. Whole school approaches are not the only approach to sustainability education, but they appear to have significant benefits in promoting sustainable actions congruent with, for example, the UK Government's Every Child Matters Strategy in England, which promotes the principles: be safe, be healthy, achieve and enjoy, make a contribution, and be economically active. These approaches underpinned by the theoretical framework of communities of practice offer a vision for a sustainability education that has this contributory action focus. Keywords sustainability education, whole school approaches, communities of practice, communities of action, participation © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.