BIG IDEAS (continued from page 13)


This includes the opportunity for students to evolve their own thinking rather than being asked to merely accept the idea that a certain set of actions will “save the earth” and relying on fear to motive them toward action. Interdisciplinary education results in an increase in higher level thinking skills which impact the development of personal ethics. But, we argue, the environment is the best integrator, not the abstract concept of sustainability.


Big Idea 3: Constancy and changes


Our children must also come to understand ideas associated with constancy, specifically conservation and equilibrium, as well as ideas about change (AAAS, 2007). We must help our children develop adaptability and resilience to the accelerated biological and social changes that are produced by a warming planet (Smith, 2010). We must also help them develop the ability to see the changes taking place in the landscape around them. Their resilience can be supported by the development of a sense of global interdependence based on their study of social decision- making, social conflict and political and economic systems (AAAS, 1994; Wheeler, Wheeler, & Church, 2005). Since much of technology centers on creating and controlling change, it is critical for children to study the designed world including agriculture, communication technologies and computers (AAAS, 2007).


Big Idea 4: Sustainability education is not possible without social cohesion (race, gender, ethnic, religious, political and wealth)


Shared experience creates cohesion and is the foundation for community. Our educational focus must include issues of access to the natural world and experiences that engender empathy, tolerance and constructive social interaction. Spending time together in nature is a great equalizer, providing opportunities for teachers to see students, and students to see each other, in a different light. Walls and Jinkling (2002) promote the merits of taking a more participatory, democratic, pluralistic, and emancipatory approach to education and sustainability, particularly in higher education. Access to nature should be a part of these educational efforts.


Big Idea 5: Sustainability is not a destination (but rather an aspiration) based on precedent (we create it)


Without an endless supply of energy to support our cultural needs we will be forever aspiring toward sustainability. As environmental education practitioners, we have always believed that the most important thing we can instill in our students is the ability to envision a future that is different from the one that they see laid out before them. Time and time again we have heard students describe the future as overbuilt, crowded and polluted. Our task, then, is to involve them in a personal and ecological healing that opens up the possibility of something other – a future born of love rather than fear. Can a curriculum based solely on the study of the definition and/or principals of sustainability and lacking opportunities to form a relationship with nature engender this love?


CLEARING Spring 2018


Conclusion: It doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s how you do it


With the growing anthropogenic pressures on the earth’s biotic communities and our increasing concern over children’s diminishing affiliation with nature (Louv, 2005), it is now essential to embrace a comprehensive educational transformation that is attentive to an ecological and practical wisdom of place. If education for sustainability embraces the best qualities of good environmental education (experiential, place-based, interdisciplinary and nature-centered) and embraces the big ideas that the two disciplines share, then as naturalist educators we are eager to participate and have much to offer. But if the field continues to differentiate itself by what it does not include, intentionally excluding the importance of connecting students to nature in deep and meaningful ways, we feel it represents a step backwards. A larger umbrella is needed, not a smaller one, and developing scope and sequence based on a foundation of hope and love is where the real work of education for sustainability lies.


As emissaries of the natural world, we see sustainability education as heightening environmental literacy with the goal of creating a sustainable relationship between people and the environment. Inherent in this view is the assumption that environmental education is education for social and environmental change through a process of collective action (Elder, 2007). We assume that environmental education can improve relationships among humans and between humans and their environment (Wals, 1994). We also view environmental education as a potent means for educational reform rather than as a tool to modify children’s behavior with a predetermined endpoint in mind (Elder, 2007; Orr, 1991; Wals, 1994). Only by giving children the resources (i.e., environmental knowledge, experiences in nature and time to reflect), can they begin to engage in a wider participatory process of societal and environmental change.


References for this article can be found on the web version at http://www.clearingmagazine.org/archives/2418


Donald J. Burgess is assistant professor in the Secondary Education Department and the Science Education Group at Western Washington University. His research interests are science education, college readiness and children’s perceptions of nature.


Tracie Johannessen has worked in the field of environmental education for over 20 years. She was education director at North Cascades Institute (www.ncascades.org) for 10 years and currently works as an independent consultant on


environmental education program design and evaluation.


This article was reprinted from the Journal of Sustainability Education http://www.journalofsustainabilityeducation.org/


www.clearingmagazine.org Page 57


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