Sustainability ed in classrooms green teacher article issue 98 copy

Sustainability Education in Classrooms

Photographs: International School of Kuala Lumpur

High school students collaborate and develop solutions to real-life issues in their school community

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By Laurence Myers

ick a class. Any class. The teacher looks around at the students and asks a simple question: “What can we do, right here and now, to make a positive difference in our community as it relates to [insert curricular topic here]?” During a rather intense deliberation in a 10th grade health class studying environmental health at the International School of Kuala Lumpur (ISKL), a student responded with a question of her own, “What about the busses? They just sit there pumping out fumes just so they can be cool when we get on. If you’re outside waiting for your bus to arrive all you get is smoke in your face. Can’t we find out if there is a relationship between the amount of idling and the number of respiratory cases in the health services offices?” Another announced, “Every year we talk about saving energy but use goes up and up. Why don’t we find out how much is used by our school’s servers and see if we can cut down their use at night when no one is using their computers? I don’t think much energy in Malaysia comes from renewable resources and pollution is a problem.”

Back and forth such brainstorming sessions continue until the class agrees on the topic they want to tackle. A flurry of activity ensues: investigation, data collection and analysis, interviews, looking at the issues from environmental, social and economic perspectives, formulating strategies and developing innovations for positive change. The end results are as varied as the creativity of youth. But they all have one thing in common: a chance for students to become empowered in making their own school or community a more sustainable place through the use of what, at ISKL, we call the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework.

The ESD framework is engaging, challenging, authentic and powerful. In classrooms where it is utilized students don’t simply learn about sustainability, they actively recognize the powerful relationship between collaborative planning and sustainable change. For teachers, the ESD framework allows a flexible tool for introducing ESD into any curricular topic at any level. It’s possible to structure an entire unit around it, but it’s also practical for teachers to utilize only the portions of the framework that are useful for their needs.

As is natural in an authentic setting, not all student-initiated change will succeed. But regardless of whether all the goals are fully achieved, the impact of the learning remains: powerful and solution-oriented.

The fundamental benefit of the ESD approach in classrooms is that it is more of a process than an established set of expectations and/or rules. Though it does offer structure, it provides students a more holistic understanding of how sustainability works, how human behavior, economic activity and environmental capacity are related. It also helps them to recognize that solutions, by nature, need to be systemic and encompass all three of the lenses often utilized

by UNESCO: Environment, Society and Economy.1

The ESD Framework In a Nut Shell2:

Introducing the Process Stage 1: Identifying the Problem Stage 2: Using 3 ‘Lenses’ to identify Indicators, Stakeholders, Vision and Goals Stage 3: Bringing Things Together with Systemic Thinking Stage 4: Proposing an Innovation & Indicator Final Product / Engaging the School Community

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Introducing the Process

The overview of the process is shared with students at the beginning, including the products that are expected, the roles the student will take on in dealing with a problem, creating innovations and indicators to determine success.

Students are given the seven norms of collaboration3 that they are expected to follow throughout the process: 1. Promoting a spirit of inquiry 2. Putting ideas on the table 3. Paying attention to self and others 4. Presuming positive intentions 5. Pausing 6. Paraphrasing for clarity 7. Probing The process is important because the teacher needs to set the tone in promoting a spirit of collaboration. It is particularly true in classes where students have different learning styles, or understanding of English (eg. ESL students). These seven norms of collaboration are expectations in all our discussion-based activities.

Stage 1: Identifying the Problem

The first step is to brainstorm issues that we feel relate to our school. In 10th grade health, for example, we focus on healthrelated issues, asking students to identify specific problems that they can see in our school or community. The brainstorming sessions have brought up a number of concerns ranging from toxics to waste, to pollution from our buses and cars, to problems with food quality. Using the above stated norms of collaboration, all ideas are shared openly and written down without prejudice. What follows is a deliberation about the most pressing issues. Note that, in this stage, we are not focusing on solving the issues, but rather on determining which issue is of most concern to our community.

The topic selected will become the topic that the entire class will focus on. In cases of larger class sizes, it is possible to choose two topics instead of one, but the process for each topic is dealt with in the same manner, described below. For the sake of simplicity, the following information is based on just one topic per class.

Stage 2: Using the 3 ‘Lenses’ to identify Indicators, Stakeholders, Vision and Goals

Once a topic is determined, students are divided into smaller groups (ideally two or three per group), each focusing on one lens: economic, social or environmental.

The main function of these smaller groups is to identify, explicitly, the indicators and stakeholders involved in their issue. Students are given some guiding questions to help them identify pertinent stakeholders: • Who are the people that are most impacted by the problem you have identified?

• Who are the people that can most influence any changes relating to this issue?

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Guiding questions to allow them to focus on the indicators that they need to generate would include: • What data (experimental or otherwise) can you look for that might reflect the severity of the current situation?

• How will you use this data to monitor changes in the future?

Using our example of the breathing problems due to pollution from cars, students were asked to define the key indicators and stakeholders for the lens they focused on. Group members stated that cars and buses serve a purpose of bringing people to school and are a necessary part of daily life. Indicators included the number of people being transported to school every day or the number of cars and buses used to do so. The economic group noted that there are costs associated with building parking lots, fuel consumption, etc.

The environmental group noted the environmental costs of the use of fossil fuels, and affects on plant and animal life, such as cutting plants down for roads and parking.

Each group recorded their ideas by using online tools such as Google Docs and Google Sites, with access for each group to add notes and share brainstorming information on their ‘lens’ site, allowing group members to access each other’s information. This is particularly helpful as an in-class resource for students for whom English is not their native language.

Student ‘lens’ groups also develop a ‘vision statement’ for their issue by identifying the ideal situation in their minds as it pertains to their lens. This vision serves as the motivating image for all further deliberation and discussion. For example, the environmental group might identify that their vision is to have no pollution at all from buses and cars on campus, or the economic vision might include a positive economic outlook with minimal waste of fuel. It is important that the vision be somewhat idealistic because it serves as the ‘best possible scenario.’ However, students should also recognize that, when their vision gets added to that of the other groups (in the next stage), compromise will probably be necessary.

The vision statements made by the groups will form the foundation of the next step, goal setting. Still in the small ‘lens’ groups, students identify ways that they can move toward their vision. For example, if the vision of the environmental group is no pollution on campus, perhaps an appropriate goal would be the reduction of exhaust by a certain amount, or a limited amount of idling time.

Stage 3: Bringing Things Together with Systemic Thinking

Stage 3 of the ESD framework is set up to bring the divergent perspectives of Stage 2 together and move toward a more synergistic and holistic (what we refer to as systemic) approach to creating solutions for our identified issues. This stage is where the Google Sites noted above come in handy. Now that the group members of the different ‘lenses’ come together, they use their site to share information that they generated (i.e. their identified stakeholders, indicators, vision and goals).

This stage is largely about identifying common threads between the different ‘lenses,’ and a common understanding of the problems with the inclusion of all three lenses. The three groups share information with each other and attempt to identify vocabulary, concerns, indicators or other information that

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might overlap. Knowing the vision of each ‘lens’ will allow them all to identify what each group views as important. This involves a certain amount of deliberation and constructive collaboration that often benefits from some teacher guidance.

Our example of pollution might result in a common understanding along these lines: “Pollution in the busing area largely comes from the engines running. The fumes reduce air quality that, in turn, cause respiratory problems and make it hard for plants to survive. It also uses up more fuel, increasing the cost of transport.”

Stage 4: The Innovation & Indicator

Once common threads are established and the group/class has determined a holistic manner of looking at the issue, it is important to take the next step: action. Often in classrooms this is the portion that becomes theoretical. In an ideal situation, however, students should be allowed to propose actual changes to the functioning of their community, and to recognize that they have the power to make a difference.

With this in mind, students can develop an innovation and an indicator (data) which will allow the class or the school (or both) to recognize potential benefits from taking action. The innovation can be as simple as a new policy or expectation in the school or community. For example, in our pollution in the school scenario, students might determine that they want a bus-idling policy that would limit or eliminate bus and/or car idling.

A relevant indicator might therefore be air quality or the amount of time that buses idle on average. In our classes we ask that students collect data in order to generate a baseline for future reference. The data needs to be authentic, which means that students likely need to take several measurements before and after school (when students were being dropped off and picked up) and time the average amount of idling for cars and busses.

It is important that both the innovation and the indicator are feasible and appropriate, and that the indicator is measurable. Data will provide valuable and necessary feedback in determining whether or not the innovation has been successful. The indicators often mean that students need to gather that data from a variety of sources.

Our students visited the bussing office and our school’s Director of Operations to determine what the current regulations were regarding idling. They also observed the number of cars arriving in the morning and how long they idled.

From a health standpoint they determined the indicator to be the number of breathing-related incidents that were brought to the attention of the school nurse. The experience of going out into the school community and gathering data was hugely beneficial aspect of the process.

Final Product / Engaging the School Community

The final product is a letter or proposal of the innovation written to the appropriate decision-maker(s) on the issue of choice. The letter should incorporate aspects of all three lenses, and also provide data to support the position of the letter. It is important that the letter identifies the issue, incorporates indicators and provides an on-going, sustainable manner by which the innovation can be put into effect.

In our class, we assess the letters for understanding of the issue and recognition of the systemic aspects of the different ‘lenses.’ More importantly, however, we invite the stakeholder who has received the letter to respond to the class either through a letter or by visiting the students. Conversations during this session are very powerful, and bring together members of our community who rarely interact.

Adjustments and Assessments

The ESD framework can, of course, be adjusted for a variety of circumstances in the classroom. If a class size is larger than a teacher is comfortable with, then two issues can be covered simultaneously. Rather than asking students to brainstorm the appropriate stakeholders, indicators and vision statements through their respective lens (ie. environment, society, economy), some teachers find it preferable to complete the brainstorming of those items with the whole class instead of small groups. Teachers may also decide discuss the importance of data without actually asking the students to gather it.

In its current format the ESD unit includes a summative assessment relating to habits and attitudes. Students are assessed on their engagement and participation, their ability to follow through on their respective collaborative tasks as well as their input in the entire process. The second assessment focuses on the evidence of understanding gained from going through the framework. We ask that each student write a letter to the stakeholder that they feel is appropriate (depending on the topic chosen). The letter is intended to show a high level of understanding of the issue with particular emphasis placed on the three lenses and their inter-relationship in systemic thinking. Once all students complete their individual letters (assessed independently) there is an additional whole-group assessment consisting of a compilation of the letters written, edited and formally presented to the appropriate stakeholder as determined by the whole class. In this way, students are individually accountable and assessed, yet the collaborative elements are still present in an authentic setting.

Conclusion

At ISKL we view the ESD framework as a stepping stone toward higher level thinking. Engaging in the process students are able to engage in authentic evaluation of their

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community and become involved in advocacy for making positive change. Inherent in the framework, of course, if the fact that collaboration is essential and consensus-based decision-making is important. Long term, we hope that students become more fully involved in action-based learning.

The ESD framework allows students to delve into important issues by looking at them from different vantage points, and giving them purpose in their learning. It can be used equally well in any discipline and, appropriately adjusted, any level. It continues to develop as we refine the process using student and teacher feedback to generate a better understanding of the its potential, address concerns and make it a better, more inclusive framework.

Laurence Myers is the Sustainability & Service Learning Coordinator at the International School of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. He welcomes your feedback or questions at lmyers@iskl.edu.my.

Notes 1. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Teaching for Sustainability.â&#x20AC;? University of Southern Maine. Web. 07 Mar. 2011. <http://usm.maine.edu/teachsustain/pages/resources.html>.

2. Carmichael, Angus. ISKL Environmental Coordinator. Green Pages. Web. 07 Mar. 2011. <https://sites.google.com/a/iskl.edu.my/green-iskl/educationalresources-1/isklesd>.

3. Garmston, R & Wellman, B (2009). Adaptive Schools. Web. 15, Sep. 2012). <www.adaptiveschools.com/inventories.htm>.

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