Education for sustainable development (ESD) prepares learners for global citizenship. It is considered the great hope through which Anthropogenic destruction can be halted and a sustainable future created. In Ireland, relevant State departments suggest Aistear, The Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, supports ESD in Early Childhood Education and…

This study reports on how one whole-school community in Melbourne, Australia fosters sustainable education (SE). The initiatives and frameworks put in place within one independent school were investigated using an in-depth case study drawing on observations conducted over 12 months. Whole-school events and four focus classes, one from each stage…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to undertake a cross-comparative inquiry into Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) related to governance, initiatives and practices in initial teacher education (ITE) across four countries with very different contexts -- Sweden, Scotland, Canada and Australia. It provides insights into issues arising…

Unsustainable living is a critical challenge for all sectors of society. While many universities promote sustainability by supporting campus resource efficiency and sustainability-focused research, these approaches fail to harness the full power of higher education. We argue that Education for Sustainability (EfS) should be at the heart of higher…

The United Nations has set forth an ambitious vision for education systems around the globe: cultivating life-long learning from early childhood through an individual's civic and work life. Schools must support children and youth in basic learning--including crucial socio-emotional, literacy, and numeracy competencies--to contribute to sustainable…

The Sustainable Development Goals highlight the critical importance of pre-primary education and set the broad ambition that by 2030 all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. Today, the world is facing a learning crisis: While millions of…

Purpose: Starting from the experience of the University of Bologna, this paper provides an innovative framework to analyse how universities are rethinking courses and curricula, teaching, research programmes, campus operation and partnership to address the Agenda 2030. Design/methodology/approach: The paper proposes a methodological approach to…

This report, the sixth in this series, brings together again in partnership the Pell Institute with the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy of the University of Pennsylvania (PennAHEAD). These reports draw from multiple sources of existing data to provide, in one place, indicators that describe trends in equity in postsecondary enrollment,…

This paper explores the use of systems theory to inform the mainstreaming of sustainability in a university's functions as it responds to sustainable development challenges in its local context. Offering a case study of Rhodes University, the paper shows how the use of systems models and concepts, underpinned by a critical realist ontology and an…

The American University of Beirut's Interfaculty Graduate Environmental Sciences Program was launched in 1997 as a means of addressing salient issues on the environment and development in Lebanon and the Arab World using an interdisciplinary approach. The programme adopts a student-centred learning approach and aims to develop critical and systems…

This article discusses the contributions to this special issue of "Teacher Education Quarterly." At the core of all the contributions is the compellingly urgent realization that humanity is facing, and must deal with, enormous ecological and social problems and challenges. This situation has created an urgent and compelling need centered…

This book, prepared in the context of the "UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)", also known as "Rio+20", contains the papers submitted to the "World Symposium on Sustainable Development at Universities (WSSD-U-2012)", which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 5 and 6 June 2012. It pursues the following main aims: to document and…

This paper discusses the conceptual foundations for "Education for Sustainable Patterns of Living," the mission of the Center for Ecoliteracy in California. It offers an operational definition of ecological sustainability, and proposes study of living systems as a framework for understanding ecology. It considers key concepts for…

Education for sustainability has attempted to extend the range of concerns teachers and students are meant to address from the environmental into the social and economic. But this has brought with it aspects of an anti-industrial sentiment and an essentially defensive, issues-focused agenda aimed at the individual. It has weakened the role of…

This paper complements Fritjof Capra's paper in this issue, "Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life." It explores how concepts essential to ecological literacy can also guide strategies for overcoming barriers to introducing integrated, multidisciplinary pedagogy into school curricula. It examines how the crisis…