Infusing Sustainability into the Curriculum
The teaching
mission of Education for Sustainability is to help students become lifelong contributors to society moving towards sustainability, equity, and engagement.
Curricula should seek to develop students' ability to:
• appreciate and monitor the state of the environment, social structure, human health —to become "environmentally literate";
• understand and analyze the complexities of phenomena that link economics, politics, culture, history, biology, geology, and physical processes;
• be involved in dynamic, vigorous exchange across the traditional disciplinary boundaries within and between natural and social/human sciences; and
• work within specific communities to facilitate self-conscious, reflective engagement with linked socio-environmental processes.
In short, infusing sustainability into the curriculum involves:
• content (in natural, social, and health sciences, ethics, and humanities);
• conceptual change;
• interdisciplinary exchange; and
• civic responsibility (through service learning and participatory action research).
Education for Sustainability Sub-Committee on Infusing Sustainability into the Curriculum , 10/02