Utilizing Collaborative Self-Study to Explore Pedagogies for Sustainability

Abstract

Whole school approaches (Wals and Mathie, Whole school approaches to sustainability: Exemplary practices from around the world. Wageningen University, Education and Learning Sciences, 2022) to sustainability where various facets or currents of environmental education (e.g., Sauvé, Can J Environ Educ 10(1): 11–37, 2005) are seamlessly integrated with disciplinary subject matter, leadership practices, and everyday classroom routines remain elusive in many contexts as they serve as counter-narratives to the status quo promoting over-consumption and exploitation of environments and people. We present a case study exploring how a Canadian post-secondary institution, Cape Breton University, has enacted inclusive (e.g., Indigenous perspectives), whole school approaches to sustainability in novel and immersive ways. We present this work as a reflexive, collaborative self-study examining program objectives in teacher education and how these sustainability goals have been interpreted, translated, and implemented at the course level in pre-service teacher education (i.e., science methods courses) and at the graduate level (i.e., an applied research project course for the Master of Education in Sustainability, Creativity, and Innovation).