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Educating for a sustainable future
The Sustainable Living Challenge positions sustainability as the context for all learning and one that generates significance and has lifelong relevance.
The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) emphasises the transformative role that education must play in creating the sustainable future. It sees quality education as a process that is lifelong and based in the context of the learner's day to day life. That is, education needs to be relevant to each learner's real life situation whilst facilitating a journey of inquiry and critical reflection that builds their capacity to respond to the challenges of sustainability.
Sustainability is potentially one of the greatest factors shaping education today as it prompts the question 'what are we educating for?'.
The Sustainable Living Challenge seeks to educate for sustainable development. As it sounds, education for sustainable development is about developing the skills and capacities required for the next generation to actively take part in the creation of the sustainable future. Educating for sustainable development rather than just about sustainable development implies an active learning process that encourages students to articulate their vision for a sustainable future and then identify the questions, issues and challenges as a starting point to guide their own learning and future actions. Ultimately, students gain lifelong skills for active citizenship and sustainable living. Education for sustainable development promotes informed action through inquiry and critical reflection.
Quality education is about a learning experience that is situated. It is a process that is based in the day to day reality of students, is considerate of what the student respects and values, is tangible to them and builds on their existing knowledge and understanding. Education for sustainable development is a quality education process that provides significance to learning.
If we are to effectively educate for a sustainable future then this context for learning needs to be authentic and integrated with the real world. The learning experience itself needs to become real, futures-oriented, action-focused and importantly - relevant! It must be oriented to life, not just the economy, and seek to develop capability not just competence. Education for sustainable development is grounded in our present challenges but oriented to the future.
"Education not only provides scientific and technical skills, it also provides the motivation, justification, and social support for pursuing and applying them. The international community now strongly believes that we need to foster - through education - the values, behaviour and lifestyles required for a sustainable future. Education for sustainable development has come to be seen as a process of learning how to make decisions that consider the long term future of the economy, ecology and equity of all generations. Building the capacity for such futures-oriented thinking is a key task of education."
UNESCO (2005) 'Quality education: United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014)' Accessed 28 March 2006 www.unesco.org/education/desd/
