In this new century, opportunities exist to help advance America's greatness in the midst of many challenges. Energy, water, food, environment, health, economic productivity, global competitiveness, and the quality of the living environments are all paramount to the future. Extension is, as a part of higher education, prepared to create new…

The introduction to this paper gives a short overview of the Environment and Schools Initiatives (ENSI) perspective on teaching competences. We argue that as change is one of the key elements of sustainable development, reflection that helps to adapt educational practice to a continuously developing world should be a starting point for every…

Whether we view sustainable development as our greatest challenge or a subversive litany, every phase of education is now being urged to declare its support for education for sustainable development (ESD). In this paper, we explore the ideas behind ESD and, building on work by Foster and by Scott and Gough, we argue that it is necessary now to…

This article presents the development process of a consumer-oriented, illustrative benchmarking tool enabling consumers to use the results of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to make informed decisions. LCA provides a wealth of information on the environmental impacts of products, but its results are very difficult to present concisely…

To encourage efforts for furthering the UN DESD agenda in Latin America, a meeting titled "Building Education for Sustainable Development" was held in Costa Rica from 31 October to 2 November 2006. Plenary sessions were interspersed with working groups to look at how ESD can be integrated in formal and non-formal education systems, and…

This article discusses findings from a tri-country study of student teachers' understandings of the purposes of education, their conceptions of sustainable development and the task of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). At its heart are case studies of 30 student teachers from Initial Teacher Education Programmes in England, Denmark and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the hypothesis that it is fruitful to study new areas within research for sustainability, through experimental education courses, that are based on international and multilateral (transcultural) learning processes. Design/methodology/approach: This way of introducing education into open research…

The driving premise of this paper is that students should be schooled in built and natural environments that afford them ways of understanding of how their daily physical actions and social choices affect the earth. Views of prominent philosophers and scholars in support of this premise are described. Next, four cases illustrate how schools can…

A closed-form questionnaire was used to explore the ideas of school students about the composition of air, the causes and consequences of air pollution and the extent to which the students would accept various courses of action to reduce air pollution. Items for the questionnaire were derived from the results of interviews and an earlier open-form…

Considerable activity has occurred in the recent past regarding policy-making around Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the school curriculum. Teaching about sustainable development involves complex and contested ethical and political issues. This case study research investigates how four student teachers taking part in a one-year…

The impetus for this article was research I conducted while living with children on the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, during the culmination of decades of blatant disregard for the marine ecosystem. At the heart of the social and ecological devastation happening in Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador communities are matters of environmental…

This guide provides an overview of the steps involved in creating an environmentally sustainable college. In drawing together reports from members of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC) which have taken various initiatives to "green" their campuses, it focuses on the principles, strategies, and goals which underlie the…

This book was designed with activities for children in kindergarten through sixth grade. The activities are designed to increase student awareness about the environment and its protection. The book presents basic concepts and several perspectives on environmental issues. Each section contains numerous activities. Section titles include: (1)…

This booklet is one in a series of publications designed to support the efforts of community sustainability advocates. It describes five activities through which community members can work together to apply sustainability principles to community development initiatives. Guidelines are provided for organizing and conducting a 6-hour workshop for…

In October 2005, Keep Scotland Beautiful commissioned the SCRE Centre at the University of Glasgow to undertake an evaluation of the Eco Schools Programme in Scotland. Eco Schools is a programme for environmental management, certification and sustainable development education. It is an international programme that was developed in 1994 in response…