Life-long and life-wide education for our sustainable future

Children born in some countries today will live through the twenty-second century given the high average life expectancies exceeding 80 years in these places. Naturally, we wonder what twenty-second century skills and competencies our children will need to contribute to and create their sustainable future actively. While we cannot predict accurately what those skills and competencies will be, we can examine what children learn today. Indeed, this is aligned to the aspirations of sustaining sustainability through quality education for future generations. However, learning for our current and future generations is not limited to formal education but cuts across the individual’s entire lifespan and contexts. The notion of life-long learning has been discussed even before the report by Banks et al. (2007) titled “Learning in and out of school in diverse environments - Life-long, Life-wide, Life Deep” was published. The concept of life-long learning refers to “learning that occurs across one’s lifespan, from infancy to adulthood. It is about what is retained, why such knowledge, skills and dispositions are usefully kept” (Kwek, Hung, Koh, & Tan, 2017 p. 8) and “most of the “learning that occurs across the life span takes places in informal environments” (Banks et al., 2007 p. 9). Life-wide learning refers to learning that does not just occur “within the boundaries of the school, but outside of school, in informal learning environments” (Kwek et al., 2017 p. 8). In considering what needs to be learnt in the context of life-long and life-wide learning for sustainability education, we need to examine a combination of knowledge, skills, behaviours and beliefs. Indeed, Chang, Kidman, and Wi (2020) argued that sustainability education can be framed around the Delors report’s ideas of ‘learning to know’, ‘learning to do’, ‘learning to be’ and ‘learning to live together’ (Chang et al., 2020). As we examine learning across the learner’s lifespan and within formal and informal contexts, we should also be examining the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours that are the intended or unintended outcomes of the learning. We feature a range of articles that cuts across these dimensions in this issue. Admittedly, these articles do not represent the potential range of contexts that we have outlined above. Still, it serves as a start point from which we can describe what other types of research we can encourage for submission to the journal to frame the discussion around the issue of life-long and life-wide education for our sustainable future.

While we can argue for more research on the learning of sustainability knowledge, skills and attitudes in the pre-primary years, we do not have an article in this issue to illustrate what has already been done and what more can be done. Nevertheless, we can look to the issues in primary education as a start, bearing in mind that we can also develop the knowledge and understanding about sustainability in the early childhood years. The article on “The Challenge of Measuring Children’s Attitudes Toward Wildlife in Rural India” (Salazar et al., 2021) in this issue proposes considerations for assessing children’s attitudes toward wildlife and the environment. The argument is that the attitudes toward wildlife and the environment affect how people interact with the environment and how people may support conservation. While having accurate tools to assess these attitudes is an important first step, the authors were faced with the challenges of adopting existing tools in different geographical contexts. Consequently, the discussion provides recommendations for assessing children’s attitudes in contexts to that described in the article. This article takes on the primary formal education years and the “learning to be” and “learning to do” dimensions. There is undoubtedly scope for other works to tackle the issues of learning to know and learning to live together for education in the earlier years (e.g., primary education).

A content analysis of the Philippines’ junior high school geography curriculum is featured in this issue. The article examines the learning of geography in the post-primary and pre-university phase of a person’s development. The article features a predominance of learning to know in Grades 7 and 8 with a “domination of anthropocentric, factual, and determinist approaches” in the curriculum, while the focus is “dominated by the issues-based approach” for Grades 9 and 10 (Dizon, 2021, p. 152). The article argues further that this approach in the curriculum makes students ill-prepared to appreciate the “complex concepts in political ecology when they proceed to Grade 9 and 10” (Dizon, 2021, p. 152), for example. The authors posit that just focusing on ‘learning to know’ and the lack of training in thinking skills in Grades 7 and 8 will likely result in students developing “negative attitudes toward human, physical, and environmental geography” (Dizon, 2021, p. 152) - not very helpful in the context of ‘learning to be’ and ‘learning to live together. Subsequently, the article calls for a standalone geography subject in the Junior High School that uses an issues-based approach to provide the learners with sufficient knowledge and critical understanding on the dynamics of human–environment relations. Suárez-López and Eugenio-Gozalbo (2021) analysed primary and secondary education curricula to examine how sustainability is addressed across compulsory education in Spain and Portugal. The study showed limited coverage of the substantive content in sustainability. Further, there seems to be inconsistent coverage of conceptions of sustainability and “a questionable technological optimism as the solution to sustainability problems” (Suárez-López & Eugenio-Gozalbo, 2021). While the examples in the articles focus on the knowledge about sustainability, they highlight the importance of having the ‘right’ knowledge in how education for sustainability across the span of both primary and secondary education. While the study focuses on the knowledge domain, there is certainly a need for other research works to contribute further to how education, both formally and informally, can help develop skills and attributes that are important for the sustainability topic in primary and secondary education.

As learners progress into tertiary education, there are different opportunities for education for sustainability, and the learning can be both through formal and informal curricula. In this issue, we feature Larsen, Solem, Zadrozny, and Boehm (2021) on “Contextualizing Powerful Geographic Knowledge in Higher Education: Data-Driven Curriculum Design to Interweave Student Aspirations with Workforce Applications”. The title suggests that the article describes “a data-driven approach to contextualising geography subject matter using student aspirations and workforce data” (Larsen et al., 2021) through two formal courses of study. The findings from the study described in the article show “positive gains in student attitudes but suggest additional culturally relevant pedagogical enhancements are needed” that could be more inclusive and cuts across different context. In fact, the authors argue for learning that should also the learning needs of “women and minorities in the discipline and workforce”. In this context, the article focuses on the knowledge that needs to be accessible and contextualised to a more diverse audience and be more inclusive. While it is a useful reminder for curriculum developers to be mindful of the audience for whom we are designing formal learning, there are certainly more opportunities for other research works to tackle issues of skills and attitudes for sustainability that can be learnt in a formal or informal context.

Beyond the professional preparation of learners for the workforce, continuing education or professional development is an important area where education for sustainability can take place among the many purposes of tertiary education. If we argue for geography as a subject that potentially encompasses the skills needed in education for sustainability, then the article on “Design, Implementation, and Outcomes of an In-service Program with Photovoice as a Pedagogical Tool for Geography Teachers” addresses these in the context of teacher professional development. The article describes the training for in-service teachers on the use of photovoice as a pedagogical tool to capture their geography learning in the field. Although the argument can be made that the tool is more geographic in nature, the authors posit that the use also develops critical thinking and fosters active citizenship (Cho, Kim & Stoltman, 2021), which are essential skills and competencies for sustainability education. While this programme is carried out through a formal in-service course, there is scope for more discussion through other works on how other non- or informal education for sustainability knowledge, skills and attitude can be used for continuing education.

What is not featured in this issue and perhaps for consideration of future submissions to the journal will be teaching and learning issues for sustainability across the life-span contexts of mid-career adults, homemakers, the general public, and those of the silver generation, for example. There is also a predominant focus on formal education in the articles featured in this issue. Much of education for sustainability can be through informal learning, across the different stages in life. We encourage submissions in these areas so that there is a more holistic representation of the issues, and a more varied discussion on the possible solutions to advance the work of educating for our sustainable future through life-long and life-wide learning.

Chew-Hung Chang
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
[email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1301-2735
Gillian Kidman
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5306-4284

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.