By Joanna Lau Pui Yung
Green Buildings and Education for Sustainable Development
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Conceptualisation and Challenges of Education for Sustainable Development
3. Green Buildings in Promoting Education for Sustainable Development
3.1. Emergence of Green Schools
3.2. What Green Buildings Offer
3.2.1 Integration of Values, Principles, and Practices
3.2.2 Conducive to Action-learning
3.2.3 Community Engagement
4. Discussion
5. Conclusion
6. References
7. About the Author
1. Introduction
As realities of our global efforts in meeting developmental goals grow darker, how can turning things “green” in education solve environmental challenges? The concepts of sustainability, sustainable development, and environmental education conceived Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in hopes of advancing communities in harmony with the ecosystem. With more integration encouraged, then came the formation of green schools, but whether it is green in terms of curriculum or architecture was also debated. Iwan (2013) summarised interpretations of green schools into two categories: green building and green education. The first is strictly green in the form of architecture by meeting green building certifications like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The second is infusing sustainability into curriculum, like taking a whole school approach to promote sustainable habits in our daily lives and taking interdisciplinary teaching approaches for students to collaborate on solutions for our environmental crises.
Unlike green buildings, green education does not have agreed aims or standards internationally and faces the possibility of being treated as add-ons to the main school curriculum due to ambiguities in fundamental definitions. Since education cannot be easily qualified and quantified like architecture, ESD h very much promoted by policies that are largely viewed as rhetorical (see Bonnet, 1999). Being led by ambiguous policy, ESD efforts may continue to be an ‘empty signifier’ (Bengtsson and Östman, 2013, p. 484) because the implementation and measurement of ESD are not congruent across contexts, and instead are based on individual interests (Wade, 2008). These scholars all criticize the glaring limitation of ESD curriculum in having contrasting priorities in ideology, development aims, and pedagogy.
It is very unfortunate that as humans face pressing environmental issues, the promotion of ESD in schooling is still not seen as a priority. Since green buildings are more regulated and have concrete outcomes of sustainability to immerse its occupants in an environment conducive to ESD, it is believed to be a great first step for schools promoting ESD. This paper attempts to shed light on how green buildings can complement the limitations of green education as a way for schools to promote ESD holistically.
2. Conceptualisation and Challenges of Education for Sustainable Development
Since the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 1948, a number of key global conferences (e.g., Tbilisi Declaration 1977, Brundtland Commission 1986) and the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals have endorsed Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a solution to the growing environmental challenges. ESD was first introduced as environmental education (EE) that had an ecological orientation, and development education (DE) that focused on security, social action, and empowerment by the International Environmental Education Program in 1975. In 1992, Agenda 21 integrated EE and DE. However, this decision did not lead to any significant change (Wade, 2008). Not until the 21st century when the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) led the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development was ESD brought back to the spotlight. ESD was then stressed as a process of lifelong learning that empowers personal responsibility and changes attitudes and behaviours to cultivate a just society (UNESCO, 2005). Teaching and learning must promote skills such as critical thinking (UNESCO, 2009), collaboration (UNESCO, 2011), global citizenship (UNESCO, 2013), and be transdisciplinary (UNESCO, 2014). UNESCO’s recommendations led to sustainability becoming an essential part of curricula in many parts of the world.
Despite the goal – sustainable development – is commonly understood, the ambiguities in ESD as a broad concept still garner a great deal of confusion as to how it should be realised. Bonnet (1999) points out that this lack of clarity in fundamental issues undermines good intentions to the extent that there has been limited progress in making development sustainable or making ESD effective. First, sustainability is treated as self-evident. As there has not been a delineation of what is to be sustained, there have been very different curriculum and policy propositions and implications. Moreover, even if what is to be sustained is indicated, how policies are designed and measured to satisfy human needs and environmental needs are decided by ‘a particular value/cultural position’ (Bonnet, 1999, p. 315). This semantic difficulty is also evident in how development cannot escape the economy of subsistence. Shiva (1992) explains that in the Western mind, economic development is measured by growth and cost-efficiency. If this is applied to sustainable development, Shiva fears conserving nature’s resources would not be prioritised or even considered as such efforts do not maximise profits.
Another problem is policies, as a study of Winter (2007) revealed. Policies have potentially a huge influence on promoting collective responsibility for sustainable development, however, hypocrisy in policies and their partial implementation continue to challenge the success of ESD. For example, in the Winter’s study, school curriculum policies provided seemingly practical advice for teachers to be able to teach environmental issues. However, the curriculum obscured the entrenched issues that must be addressed in order for there to be a meaningful change and a connection between what is taught in school and what goes on in the society. For example, there was no learning about recycling and landfills, the changes people need to take to save resources in their contexts, and the dangers if they do not act urgently. Bonnet (1999) opposes the approach that merely teaches environmentalist attitudes, and, instead, urges schools to nurture in their students emotional involvement with and understanding of their dependence on the nature.
3. Green Buildings in Promoting Education for Sustainable Development
3.1 Emergence of Green Schools
The educational and architectural fields were quick to respond to ESD. The Green School Movement began in 1994 when Eco-Schools were launched by the Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe and the establishment of the Green Building Council’s Center for Green School in the United States in 2000 (Iwan and Rao, 2017).
Like the concept of ESD, the definition of green schools is open to ‘negotiable’ (Iwan, 2013, p. 111) meanings where priorities can change. The pioneer, Center for Green Schools, defined it as a setting favorable to learning that commits to the conservation of energy (Iwan and Rao, 2017). This means that the focus is on meeting architectural standards of sustainability. The engagement with nature and strict building guidelines were believed to provide healthier, safer, and more inspiring surroundings for ESD. Later the definition expanded to identify green schools in terms of curriculum. For example, China’s State Environmental Protection Administration emphasizes the ‘software’ of school management, instead of the ‘hardware’ as a building, where it aims to update teaching tools and lower operating costs (Iwan and Rao, 2017). However, China’s traditional emphasis on knowledge acquisition in pedagogy was critiqued as it means that curriculum is likely to neglect affective learning outcomes of ESD (Lai and Lee, 2009). Varying interpretations reflect how ESD is still evolving as people of different cultures attempt to drive global development. Nonetheless, this flexibility in understanding green schools opens up more possibilities.
This entry defines green schools as the combination of a green building and green curriculum as such interplay complements their limitations and gives rise to a more holistic implementation of ESD. It is believed that green structures and facilities are extensions of the curriculum and can help address the gaps in ESD as part of green education. The physical environment can make a direct impression on students: even if the curriculum may not have the affective touch to transform a person, the immersion into a green building may help enhance learning outcomes of ESD.
3.2. What Green Buildings Offer
3.2.1 Integration of Values, Principles, and Practices
Green buildings allow students to draw links between the curriculum and the physical environment right in their place of learning, becoming the embodiment of the whole-school approach. They ‘allow educators and learners to integrate sustainability principles into their daily practices and facilitate capacity-building and competence development, and value education in a comprehensive manner’ (Rieckman, 2018, p. 46). The school thus becomes an exemplar to students and involves them personally in sustainable living. This way ESD will not be treated as a ‘basic sympathy’ (Bonnet, 1999, p. 321) for the environment, instead ‘our relationship with it is a primal conditioner of our experience as a whole and is constitutive of our own identity, our sense of place and purpose in the greater scheme of things’ (Bonnet, 1999, p. 321). This interaction with the physical representations of the curriculum has high pedagogical value as it helps the curriculum become more experiential and transformative.
3.2.2. Conducive to Learning
To elaborate on educational value, green buildings can engage learners in deeper involvement with sustainable issues in a meaningful way by supporting action-learning principles. Action-learning is akin to problem-based learning where students are given real-life situations to research and formulate solutions for. A green building that models current technology’s capabilities can inspire students to generate ideas that tackle whatever issues they may be facing. Well-designed physical school grounds can thus transport formal learning outside the confines of a traditional classroom to engage students in important lessons of collaboration, ownership, and respect for place (Malone and Tranter, 2003) which all echo the aims of ESD. O’Donoghue and colleagues (2018) as well as the Center for Ecoliteracy (2010) similarly emphasize the need to involve students into open discussions about their own campus. ‘The grounds are symbolic; at a macro level it represents the school and its place in the world’ (Malone and Tranter, 2003, p. 289). Green buildings are ideal for assisting students in making real-life connections and be actively engaged in sustainability, instead of having only scientific, factual understanding of environmental issues that are taught out of context.
3.2.3. Community Engagement
Another key competency of ESD is community partnerships. Green buildings can become a model for sustainable development in a neighbourhood. Japan has a strong ESD implementation on the national level. The country advocates participatory and collaborative learning across communities and groups of stakeholders to enhance intergenerational interaction, stimulate behavioural changes, and achieve sustainability of the environment, economy, and society (Iwamoto, 2014). Everybody in the community can benefit from their environmental initiatives, thus developing harmony by working towards the same goal. A green building can reach its transformative ability to a broader audience unlike a school curriculum.
4. Discussion
As a result of the limitations of the current ESD practices, ‘to date, little is known about the quality of ESD programmes, the extent of their implementation, and their effectiveness in generating the desired changes in learning attainments’ (Rieckman, 2018, p. 51). The Global Action Programme thus advocated the need to ‘scale up action in all levels and areas of education and learning to accelerate progress towards sustainable development’ (UNESCO, 2014, p. 14). Rieckman (2018) calls for a whole-institution approach that requires the streaming of policy, curriculum, school facilities, organizational culture, leadership and management, and community relationships. For schools to become a role model for learners, it should cultivate sustainable attitudes and values ‘in the ethos and daily practices of the school’ (Bonnet, 1999, p. 323). This is the value that green buildings can help ensure, which aligns with the aims of ESD and allows students to have a transformative and empowering learning environment.
Yet, Iwan and Rao’s (2017) study of stakeholders’ preference of green curriculum and green building in instances when resources are limited showed that higher priority was given to the curriculum. One principal, for example, stressed that it is how the ethos stimulates learners’ minds in the curriculum that truly matters. This is in line with Bonnet’s work that argues that ‘central to environmental issues is the manner of our consciousness’ (1999, p. 319). Similarly, Cooper contends that one’s primary understanding of the environment derives from one’s ongoing involvement in their world and emphasizes the need to be in touch with nature to heighten the awareness of humans’ interrelationship with nature (as cited in Bonnet, 1999). While Iwan and Rao’s (2017) research findings contradict the advocacy of whole-school approach, a green building is a means to immerse learners in a place closer to nature. The effectiveness of a green structure in complementing the ESD curriculum is dependent on the location and other social and cultural factors that influence local priorities in ESD development.
5. Conclusion
Definition is a common area of contention between ESD curriculum and green schools, because, as Bonnet (1999) has identified, the conceptualisation of development and sustainability have ambiguities that inherently affect the understanding of what ESD should be. Although variations in interpretation can be detrimental to the overall development of ESD, openness in understanding reflects the many routes to achieving ESD. Since teaching, learning, and ESD initiatives are very much locally dependent, whether green buildings can be a means of closing the gaps in ESD curriculum depends on what is needed in that locale. What can be agreed upon is that no matter what approach a school takes, full commitment from various stakeholders is necessary to empower change in attitudes, values, and behaviour. This includes having an appropriate formal curriculum, but also appropriate settings in which learning takes place to influence learners’ perceptions indirectly.
6. References
Bengtsson, S.L. & Östman, L.O. (2012). Globalisation and Education for Sustainable Development: Emancipation from Context and Meaning. Environmental Education Research, 19(4). doi:10.1080/13504622.2012.709822
Bonnet, M. (1999). Education for Sustainable Development: A Coherent Philosophy for Environmental Education? Cambridge Journal of Education, 29(3). doi:10.1080/0305764990290302
Iwamoto, W. (2014). Governance and Policy on ESD. In Shaw, R. & Oikawa, Y. (Eds.). Education for Sustainable Development and Disaster Reduction (pp. 87-100). Springer Japan.
Iwan, A. (2013). Negotiating the Meaning of Green School. Hong Kong Journal
of Early Childhood, 12(2). Retrieved from http://www.ailiniwan.com/negotiating-the-meaning-of-green-school.html
Iwan, A. & Rao, N. (2017). The Green School Concept: Perspectives of Stakeholders
from Award-Winning Green Preschools in Bali, Berkeley, and Hong Kong. The Journal of Sustainability Education, 16(1). Retrieved from http://www.susted.com/wordpress/content/the-green-school-concept-perspectives-of-stakeholders-from-award-winning-green-preschools-in-bali-berkeley-and-hong-kong_2018_01/
Lai, K.C. & Lee, J.C.K. (2009). Assessment and Evaluation. In Williams, M. & Lee, J.C.K. (Eds.). Schooling for Sustainable Development in Chinese Communities (pp. 53-75). Springer Netherlands.
Leicht, A., Combes, B., Won, J.B. & Agbedahin, A.V. (2018). From Agenda 21 to
Target 4.7: The Development of ESD. In Leicht, A., Heiss, J. & Won, J.B. (Eds.). Issues and Trends in Education for Sustainable Development (pp. 25-38). Paris: UNESCO.
Malone, K. & Tranter, P.J. (2003). School Grounds as Sites for Learning: Making the Most of Environmental Opportunities. Environmental Education Research, 9(3). doi:10.1080/13504620303459
O’Donoghue, R., Taylor, J., & Venter, V. (2018). How are Learning and Training
Environments Transforming with ESD? In Leicht, A., Heiss, J. & Won, J.B. (Eds.). Issues and Trends in Education for Sustainable Development (pp. 111-132). Paris: UNESCO.
Rieckman, M. (2018). Learning to Transform the World: Key Competencies in
Education for Sustainable Development. In Leicht, A., Heiss, J. & Won, J.B. (Eds.). Issues and Trends in Education for Sustainable Development (pp. 39-59). Paris: UNESCO.
Shiva, V. (1992). Recovering the Real Meaning of Sustainability. In Cooper, D. E. & Palmer, J. A. (1992). The Environment in Question: Ethics and Global Issues (pp. 187-193). Routledge.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2005). United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014): International Implementation Scheme. Paris: UNESCO.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2009). Bonn Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development. Bonn: UNESCO.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2011). ESD: Education for Sustainable Development – Building a Better, Fairer World for the 21st century. Paris: UNESCO.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2013). Global Citizenship Education: An Emerging Perspective. Paris: UNESCO.
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). (2014). Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development. Paris: UNESCO.
Wade, R. (2008). Education for Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities. Policy &
Practice: A Development Education Review, 6(2). doi:10.1177/0892020616656292
What is a Green School? (2010). Center for Ecoliteracy. Retrieved from https://www.ecoliteracy.org/sites/default/files/CEL-What-is-a-Green-School.pdf
Winter, C. (2007). Education for Sustainable Development and the Secondary Curriculum in English Schools: Rhetoric or Reality? Cambridge Journal of Education, 37(3). doi:10.1080/03057640701546656
7. About the Author
Joanna Lau Pui Yung
MEd, The University of Hong Kong
Email: joannapylau@gmail.com