The project of mapping sustainability initiatives across a region is part of a larger program of research about place and sustainability education for the Anthropocene, the new geological age of human-induced planetary changes (Zalasiewicz, Williams, Steffen, & Crutzen, 2010). The study investigated the location, nature and type of sustainability initiatives in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia. The purpose of the study was to trial the development of a place-based survey questionnaire to map initiatives in education for sustainability across a region in order to understand how they emerge in local places. The data from the survey was interpreted using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. This article focuses on the qualitative thematic analysis across all survey responses and assesses the findings in order to determine the usefulness of the approach. The study found that a regional place-based approach enables a different conceptualisation of the possibilities of a cross-sectoral interconnected system of sustainability education. The nonformal and informal sectors are important sites of innovation and have great potential to enrich the pedagogies of education for sustainability in the formal sector.

At the heart of Issue 1 Volume 28 is pedagogy and hope. It is a reminder of Paulo Freire's ‘Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed’. As Freire eloquently articulates:

The author's experience of the day-to-day issues faced as an educator in an Aboriginal school are recounted, along with perspectives gained as part of a research project. The proposition is argued that an Education for Sustainability approach, where learning is structured around a negotiated environmental issue within local community, represents a cultural accommodation or halfway point between mainstream formal schooling and the needs of Indigenous learners. This article contends that such an educative approach meets Indigenous learners ‘halfway’, through compatibility with Indigenous values frameworks and employing culturally appropriate pedagogical methods. The argument is made that by demonstrating a willingness to negotiate worthwhile environmentally based projects that address community ecological concerns, EfS may be able to improve community support and mitigate impediments to the engagement of Indigenous learners with formal education. A critical pedagogy of place (Grunewald, 2003) is discussed as a theoretical framework that combines place-based pedagogy with empowering educational theory. Indigenous learners’ connection with place is recognised in this approach and ascribed a positive rather than negative value.

This study explores the observations and perceptions of environmental education centre officers and teachers regarding children's experiences with nature. The study also explores the officers' and teachers' perceptions of the potential of using nature experiences in environmental education. A thematic analysis of data from interviews with 13 officers and 8 high school teachers in Sydney, Australia, revealed a widely held perception that children and young people have limited experience with natural settings in nature reserves and national parks. The interviewees suggested that although their students were interested in learning in natural settings, many were uncomfortable, afraid, and only had a vicarious understanding of Australian ecology, flora and fauna. The participants' view of the potential of nature experiences was twofold: nature experiences were fundamental for developing a connection with nature and establishing environmental concern, and experiences in nature facilitated ecological knowledge, which was considered to be a component of understanding and developing place identity in the Australian environment.

Following evolutionary theory and an agriculture model, ecosystem research has stressed bottom-up dynamics, implying that top wild predators are epiphenomenal effects of more basic causes. As such, they are assumed expendable. A more modern co-evolutionary and wilderness approach — trophic cascades — instead suggests that top predators, whose effects flow down to fundamental biological processes, are co-equal causes of ecosystem health. Their survival, then, should be supported. This article, based on extensive research including the author's participation in a major field project, provides informational resources for teaching trophic cascades, using wolves as a case study. As charismatic, iconic, thriving but still endangered, well-studied, and terrestrial carnivores, wolves are ideal for enlightening students about what otherwise might be dry abstractions about crucial ecosystem processes. The article ends with student exercises and broader lessons for environmental education.

This article describes an interpretive study that evaluated a new subject in teacher education called ‘Education for Sustainable Development’. The study evaluated the subject for its ability to prepare pre-service teachers for their roles as environmental educators. We used perspectives in place-based pedagogy and critical thinking to underpin the subject design and our analysis. Data sources include instructor journals, planning documents, interviews with students and student thinking books. Interpretive analysis of the data corpus was a collaborative process that involved both subject instructors and students who took the subject. Themes that emerged from the research were centred around: (1) how the students built connections between primary school education and environmental education; (2) how students developed action competence through the activities in the subject; (3) how students were challenged to think differently about themselves as educators; and, (4) how the subject design presented its own challenges for both instructors and students.

Operation Magpie was a citizen science project that involved the community in collecting data about magpies. This article describes one aspect of the project from an education perspective. The study began with a collaboration of teacher educators, environmental scientists and a local radio station. After an initial workshop with 75 teachers, three teacher educators met regularly with 13 primary teachers who each volunteered to plan and teach a unit of work on birds. Meeting regularly in focus groups, the teachers shared their pedagogical strategies that supported students to connect with their local environment. Findings include the importance of focused professional learning for teachers through ongoing, needs-based support during the planning and teaching of the unit, and the innovative ways that teachers approached the unit. One unexpected finding was that teachers tended to identify student learning in terms of the English curriculum rather than the science curriculum.

Sustainability education competes for curricular space, both in schools and in teacher education. Opportunities and barriers for the inclusion of sustainability education in an Australian university primary teacher education program are examined in this article. The study focused on the roles, practices and perceptions of teacher educators in promoting sustainability education. Three focus groups were conducted with members of faculty staff from each of the K–6 Key Learning Areas to gather data, which were analysed according to three frameworks: espoused/aspirational and actual practices of staff members; barriers to and affordances for teaching sustainability education; and the nature of initiatives, in terms of teaching/learning activities, assessment tasks, and resources. Beyond the Social Sciences, and Science and Technology, we found that inclusion of sustainability education is somewhat sporadic. The article proposes some ways forward to promote and abet sustainability education in a tertiary context.

The growing emphasis on sustainability in school curricula in Australia reflects international trends in education. Teacher education is a vital strategy for the incorporation of Education for Sustainability (EfS) in school curricula. Research to identify drivers and barriers to embedding EfS across a primary teacher education program in an Australian university is the focus of this article. Using a mixed methods approach, data were gathered through document and unit outline audits, a self-efficacy pre-service teacher (PST) survey, and staff and PST focus group interviews. The audits identified a foundation of EfS principles and content across units. Lecturers identified societal and personal drivers and blockers to embedding EfS across the course, with lack of time considered the biggest blocker, which is also consistent with existing school-based research on the nature of teachers' work. PST responses described successful learning outcomes; however, confidence towards teaching sustainability varied. PST reported that the incorporation of community networks in their course provided enriching experiences. Embedding EfS involves values, sustainability concerns and appropriate knowledge and skills. Successful implementation will depend on the development of appropriate understandings of teacher educators.

The rapid development of renewable energy technologies has a number of implications for environmental educators and educators more generally. The costs of a number of renewable energy technologies are expected to be competitive with fossil fuels within 10–15 years and some installations are competitive already. From 2006–2011 global installations increased an average of 26% per annum for wind power and 58% per annum for solar photovoltaics (REN21, 2012). Investment in renewables (excluding hydropower) has increased by 20–30% per annum, reaching $US260 billion (AUD 245 billion) in 2011. The credibility of proposals for economies based largely on renewables is gaining recognition. These developments suggest that a satisfactory response to the dire projections around climate change can be implemented. To do so, understanding of the potential and status of renewables needs to be more widespread and accelerated on formal, informal and policy-making levels. Environmental educators within formal and informal settings can promote understanding and action so that the potential of such renewable energies is realised.

Aspects of environment are common topics in Australian primary schools. However Education for Sustainability (EfS), where students actively investigate the underlying causes of unsustainable practices and actively plan for and instigate change, is less well understood and less commonly practised. It cannot be assumed that pre-service teachers have the knowledge, skills and desire to incorporate EfS, as advocated in Australian policies, into their repertoires of practice, or, that they will acquire those skills as they gain teaching experience. Therefore for EfS to become an integral component of the primary school experience, carefully planned rather than ad hoc preparation for EfS is necessary in pre-service teacher education.

This essentially qualitative study describes how a one-semester, final year pre-service primary teacher unit in EfS was shaped, and reports on how a cohort of pre-service teachers responded, particularly in terms of how well prepared they felt to engage with EfS in future teaching. Although motivation and confidence to engage with EfS varied across the cohort, pre-service teacher education appeared to make a positive contribution to both. In a longitudinal design, five teachers who had participated in the EfS unit became the focus of individual case studies early in their teaching careers. Each case study investigated ways in which the beginning teacher engaged with EfS, linking teaching decisions to pre-service teacher education. The constructivist approach adopted by the tutors was particularly valued by the early career teachers. They appreciated various modes of experiential learning including engagement with the kinds of teaching strategies advocated in EfS and a strong orientation to the curriculum requirements of primary school.

However, the extent to which each early career teacher implemented EfS was tempered not only by personal skill and motivation, but also by work situations which did not necessarily support EfS endeavours. While pre-service teacher education has a vital role in the promulgation of EfS in schools, and this study shows that it can be effective in advancing the desires of beginning teachers to do something for the environment, there are broad implications for the institutions that so heavily impact on the capacity of school systems and university systems to act in EfS.

This thesis investigated learning and other outcomes in participants, particularly students (9–11 years), as a result of their involvement in an education for sustainability (EfS) co-design and build project at their primary school in New Zealand, within the Enviroschools Programme. The research focused on four areas that distinguished the project: sustainability learning as the issue, participatory practice as the method, design as the process, and community partnerships as the sphere of involvement. Each of these was considered in terms of its influence on learning that was either cognitively based (knowledge), psychomotor (skills) or affective (attitudes and values). This led to the set-up of a matrix to collect qualitative data that was gathered using a narrative inquiry method around participants’ stories. This included focus groups with students who were part of the Eco-building Working Party, interviews with key adults from the school and the wider community, survey questionnaires to parents of the focus group students, plus classroom observations and analysis of visual diaries made by the teacher.

Findings revealed student learning occurred in all three learning domains. This included EfS learning (particularly related to architecture and the built environment), understanding a design and build process, and cross-disciplinary learning that included skills such as leadership, teamwork and public speaking. Adult participants also gained from their involvement in the project. A correlation was made between the set-up and execution of the eco-classroom project and the Danish concept of Action Competence. This was indicated through the authentic, relevant and democratic action-taking focus of the eco-classroom project, which is linked to learning transformations. Also in agreement with an action competence approach was the strong focus in the project on both individual and collective learning. This was due to the process-focused nature of the project, itself related to the learning mandate and commitment to a democratic process with students. The project ran for a number of years with annually changing groups of students, who all had different experiences. The teacher used ‘peer education’ and reflective tools to manage the changeover of students positively. This gave depth and breadth to learning and ensured the project was truly collaborative. The embedding of learning in the project within the New Zealand Curriculum provided evidence of the flexible and multidisciplinary nature of EfS. Finally, a number of key management aspects were identified by the findings as contributing significantly to learning in the project and these are discussed.

This research investigated Education for Sustainability (EfS) at an independent Montessori primary school, located in the Perth metropolitan area of Western Australia. A longitudinal case study involving analysis of data from a 20-year period was conducted to determine the effectiveness of EfS. Historical information about EfS at the school from 1990 to 2005 was examined, with the main focus of the study being on the impact of the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI) between 2005 and 2009. AuSSI promotes a whole school, whole systems thinking approach to EfS.Three school-based issues in EfS were studied. First, the research aimed to determine what elements of EfS were in operation in the school prior to involvement in AuSSI. Second, student outcomes including engagement with whole systems thinking, attitudes and values, knowledge and understandings, and skills and behaviours related to EfS, were investigated during the first 5 years of participation in AuSSI. Third, teacher perceptions of the EfS program, including engagement with whole systems thinking, were examined during this same time period.

A case study approach was employed to enable in-depth investigation of EfS in the life of the school prior to, during and post implementation of AuSSI. This approach facilitated revelation of participants’ lived experiences, their perceptions and understandings of EfS, as well as detailed information about student outcomes in EfS. Case study methodology was also compatible with the culture and processes of the participating school and provided an opportunity for utilising a whole systems thinking approach. Data was gathered from a range of sources, through surveys, interviews, observation and document analysis over a 5-year period. The total participants included 11 teachers and 75 students.

The research identified particular antecedents of EfS in the Montessori method of education that existed in the school prior to AuSSI, including the whole child approach, together with the Montessori learning environment, curriculum and values. Following participation in AuSSI, student attitudes and values, knowledge and understandings, and skills and behaviours related to EfS were enhanced for all year levels. However, after 3 years, when specific EfS actions and projects ceased, student EfS outcomes were limited. Furthermore, students’ thinking and behaviour indicated a ‘silo’, rather than whole systems thinking approach to EfS. Teachers perceived the EfS program as highly effective in the initial 3 years after joining AuSSI. Key elements that enhanced EfS included EfS staff champions who had access to EfS networks, leadership support, and active school community involvement in all EfS processes. However, after 3 years of being an AuSSI school, the culmination of reduced leadership support for EfS, lack of staff training, vague designation of staff with EfS responsibilities and inadequate community involvement, resulted in cessation of the EfS program. Teacher perceptions on whole systems thinking revealed alignment between Montessori philosophy, EfS and whole system thinking was more in theory than in practice.

Through an in-depth longitudinal case study of a school this research highlighted the importance of whole school EfS professional learning, embedding EfS and whole systems thinking across the curriculum at all year levels, whole school support, and the usefulness of a sustainability continuum that recognises the complex, dynamic interplay of issues involved in a school's EfS journey. It is strongly recommended that improvements to pre-service teacher education in EfS are implemented, and a review of the AuSSI toolkit is conducted to refine EfS evaluation processes and to target the specific EfS needs of teachers at different stages of schooling, as well as to enhance understanding and implementation of the whole systems thinking approach. Finally, EfS professional learning for all school staff in all schools is warranted to enhance depth of EfS engagement.