Evidence to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee
Environmental Education: a follow-up to learning the sustainability lesson
Professor William Scott
Dr Alan Reid
Centre for Research in Education and the Environment: University of Bath
The focus of this submission is the second question set asked by the Committee: More than a year on, can it be said
that that process of change has begun and have there been any immediate achievements? Our comments do bear on other
questions, such as whether ESD has lost its currency, but we retain a primary focus on the first question in
relation to the school sector for the sake of clarity and brevity.
1.
In the foreword to the National Curriculum (2000), the government (DfES) tells us this about the values and
purposes underpinning the school curriculum:
“Foremost is a belief in education, at home and at school, as a route to the spiritual,
moral, social, cultural, physical and mental development, and thus the well-being, of the
individual.”
which, of course, sits alongside a wider set of goals:
“Education is also a route to equality of opportunity for all, a healthy and just
democracy, a productive economy, and sustainable development. Education should
reflect the enduring values that contribute to these ends. These include valuing ourselves,
our families and other relationships, the wider groups to which we belong, the diversity
in our society and the environment in which we live. Education should also reaffirm our
commitment to the virtues of truth, justice, honesty, trust and a sense of duty.”
2.
Specifically in relation to sustainable development, the DfES says:
“The school curriculum should pass on enduring values and help (learners) to be
responsible and caring citizens capable of contributing to a just society. It should develop
their awareness and understanding of, and respect for, the environments in which they
live, and secure their commitment to sustainable development at a personal, local,
national and global level.”
3.
All of the above can only makes sense if attempts to realise such values, and secure such commitment, are played
out in every school in the country:
[1] between teachers and children in ‘teaching & learning’ curriculum contexts, whether through subjects,
PHSE, citizenship, or dedicated ESD provision, through extra-curricular contexts, for example, clubs, or
through learning outwith the school, in the community, through fieldwork, structured visits, etc.,
and
[2] between schools and children in hidden curriculum contexts – how a school conducts (and children
experience) its routine daily business as an institution, for example, in terms of environmental indicators,
how well the school safeguards its environmental assets, encourages biodiversity, minimises waste,
conserves water, resources and energy, etc., and, crucially, how all of these measures become the focus for
engagement and learning by the children.
4.
On the basis of available evidence, eg, articles in research and professional literature (Environmental Education
Research, the Developmental Education Journal, CEEmail, Teaching Geography, etc), project and research reports / case
studies, conferences and seminars, web-based outputs, etc) it would seem reasonable to conclude that at present,
up and down the UK, there are individual teachers and schools, and sometimes school communities, that take
these ideas very seriously, and attempt to put them into practice – and this pattern of limited-engagement is a
familiar one in some, but by no means all, countries in Europe and further afield. Many such teachers / schools
are likely to be those who take development education and / or environmental education seriously. But the DfES
cannot rely for ever on enthusiasm and particular interest – something it has rightly decided not to do, for
example, in relation to numeracy, literacy, citizenship, etc. Its aim clearly has to be that all schools have wellthought through and strategic provision in place to help children develop awareness and understanding of, and
respect for, the environments in which they live, and secure their commitment to sustainable development. Thus,
DfES needs to be to have a policy and strategy to support schools in achieving this, as it has with numeracy,
literacy, citizenship, etc.
5.
As it is unreasonable to expect that activity by the DfES in the year following the publication of the action plan
could have led anywhere near this “all schools” goal, the question must be not, what has the DfES achieved, but
what has the DfES done strategically to prepare the ground for such achievement? This will, of course, be within
tightly defined and deliverable targets that raise standards in this area, and in education more broadly, i.e. a spillover effect should be expected.
6.
Thus, in this case, one needs to ask what would need to be in place to ensure that all schools can work with
children to enable them to develop their awareness and understanding of, and respect for, the environments in
which they live, and secure their commitment to sustainable development.
7.
It seems reasonable to conclude that plans and actions will target the following: headteachers and governors
being supportive and offering a lead; appropriate professional development provision provided across the
country; subject associations supporting their members; TTA enabling pre-service programmes to engage new
teachers; and Ofsted looking for, and encouraging, good practice whenever it inspects.
8.
Thus questions the DfES might be asked are: What have you done in the past year to ensure that:
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headteachers will be fully briefed and trained
governor awareness will be raised
teacher professional development provision will be in place
subject associations are encouraged
TTA engages pre-service providers, and
Ofsted looks for and encourages good practice on a routine basis?
9.
Further questions must be: What timelines are in place to ensure all this is complete; what indicators does DfES
have to measure progress? What evidence do you (DfES) have that that progress has been made? Although we
are aware of activity in relation to a number of these areas, we think that the Committee’s concern at present
ought to be to discover how much progress has been made by DfES towards making progress. We are confident
that you will be asking such questions of the Department. We also hope that the Committee will ask DfES why is
it that it seems to take citizenship education more seriously than ESD, and will this continue to be the case during
the UN’s Decade for ESD, starting January 2005.
10.
As we note in [9], some things have been done. For example, we understand that DfES has endorsed a 10-school
programme supported by WWF(UK) using a framework that WWF has developed. We’d make two points here:
[1] working with only 10 schools seems risible when, according to the Prime Minister, sustainable development is
something to be taken seriously; [2] endorsing only one product / approach would seem risky. At this stage,
doesn’t DfES need to encourage a plurality of approaches; ie, the WWF experiment and others? The impression
at the moment is that DfES has grabbed at the WWF proposal rather than take a strategic view. We attach as an
appendix to this submission a paper which demonstrates the breadth of foci that ESD can have – and ought to be
encouraged to have – if it is to fulfil the goals set by the DfES. We would like to see DfES show an awareness of
such breadth, and an appreciation of its value.
11.
The minimalist approach in relation to schools seems in stark contrast to the HE sector where Hefce has been
proactive and has developed a support strategy (which sets out Hefce’s vision for higher education’s contribution
to sustainable development and in broad terms its approach to pursuing this vision) and an action plan (which
sets out in detail the first round of activity Hefce proposes to undertake according to parameters set by the
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support strategy). During 2005, Hefce intends to consult on both documents and invite everyone involved in
higher education, including heads of institutions, governors, researchers, academics, support staff, students and
external stakeholders, to respond. We would hope that you will call Hefce to give evidence to explain its plans in
detail.
12.
Whether ESD has lost its currency (ie as a means of exchange in relation to engendering public understanding of
sustainable development, and enabling the public’s participation in sustainable development) is perhaps the
wrong question. To extend the metaphor, perhaps the question ought to be whether sufficient coinage has been
minted to enable the exchange of ideas that is now needed. Doubts clearly exist across the sector about whether
the DfES has moved quickly enough to interest people in ESD, or to capitalise on wider trends and interests in
society at large.
13.
As to whether the term ESD has resonance with the general public, recent research for Defra i suggests that only
about one third of people claim to have heard of the term sustainable development. Evidence presented in that
research reveals that behind this headline level of awareness, far fewer people (perhaps one in ten) understood
what the term Sustainable Development means. The principal conclusion presented by the report is that running
a communications campaign explicitly on the concept of Sustainable Development would be unlikely to build
public engagement with the concept, and would be even less likely to result in the public’s changing their
behaviours to fall in line with the goals of sustainability. As ESD cannot have significant meaning other than in
relation to sustainable development, it follows that public understanding of the term ESD will likely be
considerable less than the Defra figures quoted here.
Thank you for reading this submission.
William Scott
Alan Reid
University of Bath
25 November 2004
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Appendix 1 Using the environment as a stimulus to learning: exploring categories of interest
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The field of ESD represents a broad church – a church whose congregation and ministers represent many facets of
what we might call environmental learning which we define purposefully broadly as ‘learning which accrues, or is
derived, from an engagement with the environment or with environmental ideas’. Such learning can be the
outcome from formal or non-formal educational programmes in schools, and/or communities, from designated
environmental education interventions, or from personal or incidental learning where no teacher or instructor
was involved. This table sets out nine categories of interest which capture, in a tentative fashion, a range of foci and
objectives of those who espouse and promote environmental learning.
Categories of Interest …
Focus
Exemplified by …
&
outcomes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
those interested in sharing the joy and
fulfilment derived from nature, in order
to bring about significant life-enhancing
and life-changing experience for learners
those interested in the study of the
processes of nature in order to
understand, or to teach about them
those using nature as an heuristic to
foster the development of knowledge,
understanding, skills and character
which, although situated, are transferable
to other contexts and through time
Nature
values &
feelings
Nature
understanding
Nature
skills
those using the natural and/or built
environments as heuristics to achieve
conservation and/or sustainability
goals
Conservation
those advocating/promoting individual
behaviour changes in order to achieve
conservation/sustainability goals
Conservation
those advocating/promoting particular
modes of social change in order to
achieve environmental/conservation/
sustainability goals
Social Change
those using environmental,
conservation and/or sustainability
issues as contexts for the development of
skills and knowledge related to the
exercise of democratic social change
Social Change
those promoting nature as a metaphor
for a preferred social order – which may
be ‘co-operative’ or ‘competitive’,
according to worldview
Social Change
understanding
behaviours
Social justice
democratic
citizenship
skills
values
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non-formal educators and interpreters
seeking attitudinal and/or value change;
possibly seeking to introduce and extend
particular philosophies of living
teachers of ecology, (physical) geography,
the earth sciences and rural studies;
researchers in these (and other) areas
teachers, environmental interpreters and
field studies officers seeking to develop
students’ cognitive/conative/affective/
psychomotor skills related to
environmental work
conservation/heritage scientists (and
others) working for government or NGOs
bringing communication and education
strategies to bear on conservation and
sustainability issues
environmental activists and teachers who
have clear views on what the problems are,
and on their solutions
environmental activists and teachers with
clear views on the form of social
organisation needed to achieve
sustainability
teachers and others interested in helping
(young) people acquire democratic and
citizenship skills which will enable them to
participate in open-ended social change
relating to human-environment
relationships
sociobiologists, deep-ecologists, social
Darwinists, Gaianists who engage in
communication and informal education in
relation to the relationship between humans
and nature
9.
those interested in the study of
environmental learning (and
environmental education) itself
Learning
learning about
learning
educational researchers interested in
various aspects of learning and teaching
related to environmental and sustainability
issues
What all of these have in common is that the environment is used as a stimulus to learning.
The Table shows how emphasis varies across interests, and sheds light upon the uncertain relationship between
sustainable development and environmental education. Of course, any such categorisation has to be a
simplification as these categories are not necessarily fully discrete, and anyone can be involved in two or more of
them, but it does allow us to consider how those interested in environmental learning can have widely differing
assumptions about both purpose and process. For example:

from #1 to # 8, interest in nature, per se, decreases markedly, along with a shift from
a realist view of nature to a metaphorical one. There is also a shift from an interest
in the individual learner to the social context.

from #3 to #7 the environment (natural or otherwise) is viewed mainly heuristically,
ie, as a means of exploring issues and achieving particular goals.

from #4 to #8, interest in social change increases strongly.

#4, 5 & 6 are marked by an emphasis on activism which can complement (and
sometimes supplant) educational goals.

#8 sees the natural world as providing a coherent and liveable philosophy that
explains our social and ecological obligations. Some of those we have placed in this
category may have very little else in common.

#9 is a mix of those interested primarily in social/environmental issues, and those
whose focus is on educational issues. #9 can usefully be further subdivided along
methodological lines.
It seems to us that all the perspectives represented by such categories are both legitimate and valuable in that they
all have something to contribute to learning about the human condition, and about our relationship with nature.
It follows that, individually, none of them can fully represent ESD and its goals. This insight offers a positive way
forward whereby teachers can select distinctive perspectives in order to pursue a particular line of investigation
(or reasoning) with the full knowledge that doing so does not render illegitimate other perspectives; further, such
activity encourages dialogue and co-operation across perspectives and interests. We have written this to
encourage debate about the categorisation itself, and about the points made concerning legitimation.
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Driving Public Behaviours for Sustainable Lifestyles; Report 2 of Desk Research by Andrew Darnton for DEFRA and the COI, May 2004
Adapted from: Scott WAH & Gough SR (2003) Using the environment as a stimulus to learning: exploring categories of interest;
Environmental Communicator 33(1) 8
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