Neus Evans

Barriers, Successes and Enabling Practices of Education for Sustainability in Far North Queensland Schools: A Case Study

There are many documented barriers to implementing school-based sustainability. This article examines a) the barriers faced by principals and staff in two regional primary schools in Far North Queensland, Australia, well known for their exemplary practice, and b) ways the barriers were overcome. Through interviews conducted with principals and key staff, the authors found lack of time, direct funding for innovation, teacher conceptual understanding, resistance from some fellow staff to sustainability education, and being positioned as a “greenie” were presented as barriers to effective practice. The research reveals how innovation, determination, trust, and active principal support enabled the teachers to push ahead. Other educators experiencing difficulties with implementing sustainability education will likely find the discussion useful.

The Distinctive Characteristics of Environmental Education Research in Australia: An Historical and Comparative Analysis

This paper addresses the question of how Australian environmental education (EE) research was conceptualised and contextualised in the decade of the 1990s. Sixty seven articles published by Australian authors in this journal from 1990-2000 were analysed to examine the conceptualisation of this research using an inductive emergent categorisation approach and a five frames model (Reid, in press) of key arguments and debates in the field. Contextualisation was explored in relation to specialist areas, scale and environmental dimensions of focus. A search for a coherent and distinct meaning of of this research was explored by making comparisons with international environmental education research during a similar time period that was the subject of two reviews. These analyses revealed that Australian environmental education research can be characterised as questioning and challenging prevailing (at the time) environmental education orthodoxies by critiquing and theorising the conceptual and curriculum framing of environmental education, most commonly from a socially critical and global perspective. Specialist areas and educational sectors that received little attention are also discussed.

Beyond science education: embedding sustainability in teacher education systems

This chapter reports on a study that sought to develop a system-wide approach to embedding education for sustainability (EfS) (the preferred term in Australia) in teacher education. The strategy for a coordinated and coherent systemic approach involved identifying and eliciting the participation of key agents of change within the ‘teacher education system’ in one state in Australia, Queensland. This consisted of one representative from each of the eight Queensland universities offering pre-service teacher education, as well as the teacher registration authority, the key State Government agency responsible for public schools, and two national professional organisations. Part of the approach involved teacher educators at different universities developing an institutional specific approach to embedding sustainability education within their teacher preparation programs. Project participants worked collaboratively to facilitate policy and curriculum change while the project leaders used an action research approach to inform and monitor actions taken and to provide guidance for subsequent actions to effect change simultaneously at the state, institutional and course levels. The state-wide multi-site case study, we argue, has broader applications to state and national systems in other countries.

A Systematic Review of Rural Development Research: Characteristics, Design Quality and Engagement with Sustainability

Rapid urbanisation, inequalities in income and service levels within and between communities, and population and economic decline are challenging the viability of rural communities worldwide. Achieving healthy and viable rural communities in the face of rapidly changing social, ecological and economic conditions is a declared global priority. As a result, governments all over the world, in both developed and developing countries, are now prioritizing rural and regional development through policies and programs aimed at enhancing the livelihoods of people living in rural regions. In recognition of the important roles that research can play in rural development, a range of systematic literature reviews have rightly examined key priorities in rural development including education, gender, economic development (especially agriculture), and health and nutrition (see Department for International Development [DFID], 2011). However, none of these works has systematically examined the extent to which rural development as a field of research is progressing towards facilitating sustainable change. This book evaluates trends in rural development research across the five continental regions of the world. Specifically, it assesses the total publication output relating to rural development, the types of publications, their quality and impact over the last three decades. Additionally, it evaluates the continental origins of the publications as well as the extent to which such publications engage with issues of sustainability. The aim is to determine whether the rural development field is growing in a manner that reflects research and policy priorities and broader social trends such as sustainability. Development policy makers, practitioners, those teaching research methods and systematic literature reviews to undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers in general will find the book both topical and highly relevant.

A Case Study of an Australian University Embedding EfS in a Pre-service Teaching Program

As part of a whole-of-program approach to embedding sustainability in a pre-service, 4-year Bachelor of Education program, academic staff at an Australian university engaged in collaborative projects to design dedicated sustainability subjects and embed science and sustainability principles, concepts, and issues across early childhood and primary subjects. This chapter examines aspects of learning, teaching, and assessment in a first-year core sustainability and science education subject, Foundations of Sustainability in Education; an embedded component in a third-year core professional studies subject, Early Childhood Education and Care; and a final-year elective, Environmental and Climate Change Education for the Tropics. The intent of these subjects is for pre-service teachers to develop understanding of the underlying science and complexity of key socio-ecological challenges, as well as the capacity to plan and implement sustainability and climate change learning experiences and actions in diverse school and community contexts. In order to promote pre-service teacher engagement and learning across multiple cohorts—including community-based Indigenous students and early childhood majors in online modes—the focus is on active and collaborative inquiry-based, technology-enabled, and praxis-oriented learning and assessment experiences.

Impact of Sustainability Pedagogies on Pre-Service Teachers' Self-Efficacy.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) espouses student-centred, transformative pedagogies that promote learning through active, participatory and experiential learning. Yet, traditional lectures provide limited opportunities for engaging students in such pedagogies. This article reports on the inclusion of sustainability pedagogies within the constraints of a traditional lecture to investigate the effect on pre-service teachers’ self-reported ESD self-efficacy. A quasi-experimental, pre–post test design with a non-randomized control group was applied whereby lectures in the treatment group adopted sustainability pedagogies, in addition to the more traditional teaching methods employed in both groups. While a significant improvement was observed in pre-service teachers’ ESD self-efficacy in both groups, there is no evidence to suggest that the inclusion of sustainability pedagogies is more effective for enhancing pre-service teachers’ ESD self-efficacy than traditional, teacher-centred pedagogies alone. Participants reported that an increase in their knowledge and understanding of sustainability concepts most strongly influenced their ESD self-efficacy.

Children caring for the Australian wet tropics as a response to the anthropocene

The Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in far north eastern Australia is a unique place where tropical rainforests are internationally recognized for both biodiversity and cultural values. The chapter explores how children, advised and supported by their teachers and parents, in regional and rural schools intimately connected to these rainforests and associated aquatic ecosystems, are doing works of conservation and restoration, both as a response to the novel landscapes created by the rapidly changing environmental conditions of the Anthropocene, and as a personal contribution to caring for the Wet Tropics. Caring for country is an old discourse in Australia with its origins in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Contemporary environmental education practice in Wet Tropics schools draws on these older concepts and those of ecological and social science to create a hybrid of understandings to promote practical means for caring for rainforest country. Interview data from children are presented in the chapter to illuminate in their own words their senses of care and connection to the Wet Tropics. Barriers and enablers to restorative practice are discussed in relation to dominant schooling practices, which continue to marginalize the work of caring, even though caring is a logical and necessary response to the Anthropocene. Children wish to actively care and are supported by adults to do so; however, many aspects of the formal, public school system in Queensland are not yet fully enabling of caring practice.

Childhoodnature Pedagogies and Place: An Overview and Analysis

Nature-based experiences have gained increasing attention for their capacity to foster children’s connectedness with nature, referred to here as childhoodnature. This chapter explores childhoodnature from a pedagogical perspective of place, beginning with an overview of the conceptual foundations of and distinctions between place-based education and place-responsive and place-conscious pedagogy. We then examine recently emergent post-human and new materialist R. B. Stevenson (*) The Cairns Institute and College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: bob.stevenson@jcu.edu.au G. Mannion School of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, UK e-mail: greg.mannion@stir.ac.uk N. S. Evans College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia e-mail: neus.evans@jcu.edu.au # Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 A. Cutter-Mackenzie et al. (eds.), Research Handbook on Childhoodnature, Springer International Handbooks of Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_76-1 1 ontologies and pedagogies for their contributions to new understandings of and approaches to childhoodnature connections. Besides providing a map of the childhoodnature pedagogies and place section of this handbook, we assess the extent to which the theoretical and empirical contributions of the section chapters lay the groundwork for developing the pedagogies of place literature. Despite marked differences in cultural contexts, a number of common themes emerged across the chapters, particularly in relation to the intent and focus of the pedagogies of place. All chapters expand and/or challenge current understandings and/or preconceptions of place, nature, childhoodnature relationships, and pedagogy. A number of chapters highlight the role of agency, embodied learning, and place relations in enabling children to build connectedness with nature. Finally, in considering the chapters as a whole, some implications are offered for future research.

Introducing our special issues

Two years ago, the editorial team after much online discussion decided to introduce Special Issues (SIs) of The Journal of Environmental Education (JEE). Last year, we published our first SI, The Politics of Policy in Education for Sustainable Development, which was guest edited by Phillip Payne from Monash University in Australia. The metrics on the downloading and readings of this publication, as well as the feedback received informally at conferences and online, indicates that both this particular issue and the idea of SIs are being very well received. We are pleased that this first issue of 2017 is our second SI, Gender and Environmental Education, edited by Annette Gough, Connie Russell, and Hilary Whitehouse. As the guest editors describe, the articles in this issue resulted from a call for contributors that was widely disseminated, including in the JEE. This SI, along with the first, focuses on an issue that has been marginalized in environmental education research. Our third SI, Political Ecology of Education, guest edited by David Meek and Teresa LloroBidart, which is in an advanced stage of preparation, will introduce invited contributors from outside the field of environmental education who offer different perspectives on education and environment. Accompanying this development of SIs is the news that we will be increasing the number of issues published from four to five per year from this year. This will allow for the publication of at least one SI per year as well as up to four regular issues. As Phil Payne did such an outstanding job in putting together the first SI, we appointed him to a new position we created of Associate Editor (Special Issues). He has energetically tackled his new role of seeking proposals for future SIs, working with guest editors and promoting published SIs. Phil initiated the development of workshops held at the conferences last year of the Australian and North American Associations of Environmental Education, which led to the writing of the editorial invitation below. The invitation describes suggested themes for SIs that emerged from these workshops, and situates issues and trends in environmental education research in a global sociocultural and political context in order to argue for the kinds and qualities of SIs we are seeking. We commend this invitation to our readers interested in guest editing or contributing to our new program of SIs. Robert (Bob) Stevenson Editor-in-Chief