Toward Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This chapter presents strategies and approaches that a range of international schools employ in various components of their programs in education for sustainable development (ESD). The schools vary as to method of funding, location, and student pop-ulation. The approaches describe ways of compensating for an international lack of systemic support for ESD, a lack that hinders teachers from becoming agents for sustainability. The chapter presents replicable and adaptable step-by-step, detailed approaches that a school or education program can use to advance and highlight ESD in its curriculum, organizational culture, and physical infrastructure. Specifically, the chapter describes ESD pedagogies; strategies for transdisciplinary integration of sustainability themes into the academic curriculum; and ESD training for in-service teachers. The author writes from the perspective of a founder and principal of a school and an ESD practitioner and trainer. (US), Facing the Future (US), and The Institute for the Built Environment (US) through the document Green Schools in the Tropics: A Toolkit for Schools on a Budget (Pihen González et al., 2018). Currently, The Green Teach Project, led by an international team of doctoral students from the University of California Santa Barbara, is in the initial stages of constructing an international open-source inventory of K–12 integrated lesson plans for all core subjects, cataloged by country and region, language, UNESCO’s SDGs, and sustainability issue.