Abstract:

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has increasingly taken on importance around the world, in part due to the growing awareness of environmental concerns such as climate change, and in part due to a challenge set forth by the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) to integrate sustainable development into education and learning. There is, as a result, a growing body of ESD literature (e.g., see Chalkey, 2006; De Hann, Bormann, & Leicht, 2010; Eilam & Trop, 2011; Pavlova, 2008; Reunamo & Pipere, 2011; Walshe, 2008), and many places in the developed world have begun to establish policies dealing with ESD. The less-developed world is a different matter, however, and case studies on ESD have rarely been drawn from developing regions (Manteaw, 2012; Nomura, 2009).

Earthducation (www.earthducation.com) is an adventure learning project that is examining intersections between education and sustainability in communities around the world. The overarching goal is to consider how education might influence a healthier future for our planet. The Earthducation team is traveling to climate hotspots on all the continents, documenting local culture, education, and environmental issues, and collecting video narratives from individuals discussing beliefs about how education impacts sustainability in that region of the world. Data are being posted online while the team is in the field, and are housed in a website that includes background information about communities and issues being explored, along with associated educational resources and activities for teachers. At the same time, the general public is discussing these same issues via self-posted videos in an online EnviroNetwork.

To-date the Earthducation team has visited Burkina Faso, Africa; Northern Norway; Australia; and Peru and Chile in South America. We’ve collected almost 150 formal interviews from individuals with diverse backgrounds, ranging from farmers, factory workers, and teachers, to government officials, grassroots organizers, indigenous leaders, and more.

Data analysis of the interviews is ongoing and will continue through the end of the interview collection period in 2014. Therefore, our findings will continue to be refined and expanded over time. However, some early assertions that have been formed from our analysis: (1) Culture and language are closely tied to the natural environment within which they originated; (2) Formal education has increased in perceived importance in many remote communities today due in part to the role technology and legal rules and regulations have come to play in working environments today, and (3) Traditional knowledge is a necessary component to establishing environmental sustainability in a given area.

When taken as a whole, these assertions and others from the interviews lend themselves to the formation of broader assertions about how different types of education might influence sustainability, which are shared in our paper. Data gathered illustrate both how education can influence sustainability in different regions of the world, and the complexities that geographical location and culture bring to this topic. A key outcome of this project upon its conclusion in 2014 will be the creation of a global narrative of collective beliefs on education and the environment that can serve as a foundation for embedding sustainability in learning at all levels in all cultures.

Keywords:

Online learning, education, sustainability, adventure learning.