The concepts of environmental education and education for sustainability have been acknowledged by many tertiary institutions for over a decade. An appreciable number of institutions have signed agreements to educate students in all disciplines about sustainability. Although several Australian institutions of higher education have signed the Talloire Declaration, a recent survey finds little indication that their curricula have been changed to include sustainability education. Despite the apparent widespread support for the concept of student education in sustainability, there is little implementation. The experience of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University suggests that those concerned about education and environment/sustainability need more than conviction and vision. A strategic approach – based on change management and supported by staff development – is needed to implement these sorts of changes. Rather than attempting to outline a grand plan or model for implementation, this paper identifies key issues and looks into the current experience associated with implementation approaches.
In universities, the need for education associated with sustainability is widely accepted and it is increasingly being introduced. However, the associated concepts and terms are contested—education for sustainable development and education for sustainability represent increasing levels of change required in curricula, while achieving sustainable education will require even greater change. A transformative pedagogy underlies and contributes to the extent of the change, as more argue for a range of analytical and context-related skills to be developed in students. To operationalize education associated with sustainability, teaching approaches must focus on elements relating to the processes of learning, rather than the accumulation of knowledge—to develop graduates with capabilities to improvise, adapt, innovate, and be creative. Skills such as interdisciplinary thinking, problem solving, team working, and holistic thinking are often mentioned. These skills are encompassed by the pedagogy of problem-based learning (PBL), which provides students with opportunities to learn to think, specifically ‘‘how to think’’ rather than ‘‘what to think,’’ and potentially within the framework of sustainability. Consequently, it is important to identify the commonalities of transformative learning, sustainable education and PBL. A key link here is critical thinking, and the challenge is to transform our pedagogy across all disciplines to have academics and students thinking critically. This article elaborates on these points and argues that the development of thinking is the critical element in education related to sustainability.
Kids Help Line is a national service providing free telephone counselling and online counselling to young people in Australia. This study used a naturalistic design and standardized measures to compare outcomes, session impact and therapeutic alliance for samples of 100 young people receiving a single session of telephone counselling and 86 young people receiving a single session of online counselling, provided by Kids Help Line. Results suggested that telephone counselling is associated with better counselling outcomes, higher session impact and stronger counselling alliance when compared with online counselling. The limitations imposed by a naturalistic design require caution in interpretation of the results. However, the pattern of results suggests that there are differences in effectiveness between telephone and online counselling. The most likely explanation is the greater communication efficiency of telephone counselling, which enables more counselling work to be undertaken in the time available. Implications for further development of online counselling are discussed.
PurposeThis paper seeks to report research undertaken to assess the extent to which Australian universities were engaged in professional development (PD) activities focusing on the development of education for sustainability for their academics.Design/methodology/approachThis web‐based survey seeks to identify the existence of PD programs and teaching induction programs within universities, or where programs in tertiary teaching that included any sustainability education content were offered.FindingsWhile the vast majority of universities had information about PD available, only one offers a PD course designed to introduce academics to sustainability and teaching sustainability. This is despite the high number of Australian universities that have signed sustainability education declarations, which include commitments to achieving sustainability literacy in staff and students.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey focused only on information contained on web sites, and information that would not have been identified by this methodology such as informal programs, forums and workshops, and anything on secure staff “intranet” sites.Practical implicationsThis research indicates that in Australia there is only very limited PD activity, which provides one explanation for the limited extent to which education for sustainability is evident in universities.Originality/valueThere is little information about PD activity in universities generally, and especially in Australia. This research provides a starting‐point investigation into activity that may have been missed by the research. More importantly, it provides a base for the exploration of PD programs that will be the most effective and efficient in facilitating education for sustainability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.