Studies on a socio‐ecological approach to environmental education: a contribution to a critical position in the education for sustainable development discourse

Abstract

This article outlines a critical position in relation to education for sustainable development referring to a socio‐ecological approach to environmental education. This approach was developed in a cooperative research process with pre‐academic secondary schools over several years in Switzerland. For 13 years our research group has been the one in Switzerland to systematically research curriculum and professional development in environmental education in secondary schools. The group was established at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) supported by funding from the Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research, and from 1998 proceeded with research projects at the Institute for Teacher Education (upper secondary level) at the University of Zurich. Case studies were carried out to explore the potentials and constraints which teachers and students meet when working with environmental issues. Two case studies from different research phases are shown which illustrate how both teachers and learners are challenged to cope with increasingly unstructured and unknown situations, pluralistic and controversial perspectives, and with the critical role of science in society. Outcomes are discussed in the light of the social process of sustainable development.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Swiss National Foundation (SNF) for financial support of various research projects since 1992. This paper is partly based on the National Foundation Project “Naturwissenschaften im sozialen Kontext: Eine Untersuchung zur Re‐Orientierung des naturwissenschaftlichen Unterrichts an Gymnasien am Beispiel des Biologieunterrichts” (2001–2004) at the University of Zurich. Particularly, we cordially thank the teachers who collaborated in the research projects. We would also like to thank Sibylle Locher for valuable comments on drafts of this paper and Andrew Torr for his editorial work.

Notes

The quotations in this article from reference works in German are the translations of the authors of the article and/or the Editors unless otherwise indicated.