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A Systemic Approach to SustainableEnvironmental EducationFaye Benedict aa Telemark College, B⊘ , NorwayPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.
To cite this article: Faye Benedict (1999) A Systemic Approach to Sustainable EnvironmentalEducation, Cambridge Journal of Education, 29:3, 433-446, DOI: 10.1080/0305764990290311
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Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1999 433
A Systemic Approach toSustainable EnvironmentalEducationFAYE BENEDICTTelemark College, Bø, Norway
ABSTRACT Efforts to introduce environmental education can be viewed as a process ofeducational change. This paper questions whether efforts to introduce environmental educationin the last 10-20 years have given lasting and widespread results (are sustainable) and suggeststhat this work could be made more sustainable by following a systemic approach to changingthe institutional framework for environmental education. Such an approach would focus onplacing responsibility for environmental education with the educational authorities; curriculumrevision; competence; building and development of networks of intersectoral cooperation withinstitutions outside the school. The environmental education strategy developed by the Nor-wegian Education Ministry is presented and discussed as an example of a systemic approach.
INTRODUCTION
Can we develop a common understanding of what is meant by environmentaleducation that is sustainable? By this I mean that innovations made to introducehigh quality environmental education practice into the school system result inwidespread and permanent changes. They may be called systemic changes andwill persist even if pressure for change is removed.
The characteristics of good environmental education practice have beendescribed and discussed at length in many forums with a wealth of examples.Similarly, the concept of sustainable development has been thoroughly analysedin the wake of the Rio process. Environmental education and sustainability arethus familiar concepts and introducing environmental education is often viewedas a key step toward sustainable development. But are the environmentaleducation innovations themselves sustainable or will they die out as soon asenvironment goes out of fashion? Environmental education as a process ofsystemic change and the sustainability of these changes are issues that do notseem to have been clearly addressed in the environmental education literatureand research.
One can look to the field of international development aid work forexamples of unsustainable efforts for change. After decades of trial and error indevelopment aid to third world countries, many donor nations have now
0305-764X/99/030433-14 © 1999 University of Cambridge School of Education
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realised that the primary goal should not necessarily be to achieve immediateand concrete results. Rather, one should focus on achieving change which willsustain itself into the future and which doesn't rely on continuing inputs andpressure. All too often in the case of development aid, the situation reverts to thestarting point again when the experts leave and project money is withdrawn.The development was not sustainable.
Is this also the case with environmental education? Are the achievements ofthe last 10-20 years in introducing environmental education sustainable? or dothe well-meaning idealists who work for environmental education tend to goaround the system and try to produce good results in the classroom, rather thanaddressing the more difficult issue of changing the system? If environmentaleducation efforts have indeed focused too strongly on classroom practice andtoo little on changing framework factors in the education system, this will haveimportant implications for environmental education policy.
To achieve systemic change for environmental education, energy andresources should be directed toward making the educational system itself workfor change in a committed manner. This requires developing effective policy forchanging structures of competencies, curriculum and cooperation throughoutthe educational hierarchy. A systemic approach giving more lasting results maybe slower than efforts aimed at the classroom, but should make much moreeffective use of the limited public funding currently available for environmentaleducation development.
Many countries have given relatively little weight to central policy issues inenvironmental education such as curriculum revision and wide competencebuilding. Instead, they have put most of their resources into implementinghighly visible environmental education projects in schools (pilot projects andprogrammes, model schools, green schools and the like). There are manyexamples of excellent projects of this kind. Unfortunately, there is little evidencethat such a 'lighthouse' approach actually does lead to changes in classroompractice that are sustainable over time without additional inputs or more deepgoing systemic changes spreading to a large number of schools and pupils.
SIGNS OF UNSUSTAINABILITY
There are many signs that while much good work is being done in environmen-tal education, it is still far from being institutionalised as a fundamental,mandated and sustained part of the education system. In the majority ofcountries it is still an optional, extra activity and has not yet 'come into themainstream'.
Most environmental educators have experienced the ups and downs ofgood environmental education programmes, courses and projects. One yearenvironment is popular and attracts both funding and press coverage, while thenext year the opposite is true. In a given school, a handful of teachers will beenthusiastic and support the idea of education that is action-oriented and
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Sustainable Environmental Education 435
focuses on culturally sensitive questions such as values, behaviour and econom-ics. The majority, however, will probably not.
Good environmental education directly challenges deep-seated concepts ofknowledge, learning and the disciplines. Most teachers are therefore wary ofinterdisciplinary, critical and experience-based teaching and prefer to stay at theblackboard and within their safe area of competence. These traditional teacherswill typically tolerate a few teachers at the school creating an interdisciplinaryenvironment project, provided it doesn't directly compete with other subjects.They would probably be against revising the curriculum and school plans to givethis kind of instruction a major and permanent place, though. The main linesof education are still disciplinary lines and each discipline has its ownparadigms, quality standards and vocabulary.
How can environmental educators and policy makers change this situation?How can environmental educators work for sustainable change from within aneducation system which is not conducive to environmental education? How canpolicy makers avoid investing developmental effort on superficial and unsustain-able projects and instead invest their resources in widespread and permanentchange at the systemic level?
One rule of thumb for young and environmentally idealistic teachers mightbe: don't try to do it alone! Trying to bring about systemic educational changesingle-handedly is apt to be a frustrating experience. There are countlessexamples of innovative teachers who have done a superb job in classroom workwith their pupils, but who failed see the importance of getting the system ofwhich they are unavoidably a part to support and participate in the changeprocess.
If the project or programme in question lacks political support and good-will, the teacher heading the initiative may be well advised to abandon the idea,proceed more slowly, or work to build a broader base of support and legitimacyfor the idea before continuing. Otherwise, the teacher risks burning him/herselfout and creating change which is short lived, rather than contributing toenvironmental education becoming part of the routine, mainstream work ofschools.
A Multi-level System
Teachers may fail to put their efforts into a wide enough perspective. Their workis part of a complex and multi-level system, in which teachers naturallyconcentrate on the teacher-pupil learning relationship level. This is the centre of thesystem from the teacher's world view. Outside this are several layers of addi-tional systems and factors that directly and indirectly impact upon the learningsituation. At the classroom level, the social environment and curriculum contentsare important. At the school level some of the most important factors would beleadership and steering, organisation, plans and planning methods, cooperationand the social environment among teachers, the school culture, competence,budgets, priorities and the physical environment.
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TABLE I. Systemic challenges in environmental education: symptoms, diagnosis and cure.
Systemic challenge Symptom Systems diagnosis Systems cure
1. COMMITMENT to provideroom for EE in the educationsystem
2. CURRICULUM mandatingEE in the education system
3. COMPETENCE toimplement high quality EE inschools
National efforts in EE are ledby organisations outside theschool rather than the Ministryof Education, 'by-passing'those who are actuallyresponsible.Responsibility for EE falls on afew teachers rather than theprincipal and school as awhole. Individual teachersbecome burned out.
Claims that there is 'no room'for EE in local curriculumplans and that the curriculum isalready full of necessaryknowledge.Teachers interested in EEstruggle to make room for EEin school teaching plans.
Teachers feel that EE fallsoutside their area ofcompetency
Teachers don't understand thenature of EE and areunmotivated.
School leadership at national,regional, local and school levellacks the commitment neededto take responsibility for theeducational change process.
Curriculum guidelines don'tgive a clear enough mandatefor EE.
Teachers and schools lackcompetence to implementexisting curriculum guidelines.
Basic and in-service teachertraining gives insufficientcompetence in EE contents andmethods.
Ministry of Education takes thelead by developing clear policy,strategies and action plans forEE, linked to other priority areaswhen possible.
Ministry of Educationcommunicates/clarifies prioritiesto schools and follows up. Forexample, schools mustdemonstrate that teaching plansreflect the principles, contentsand methods of EE.Adapt processes of planning atschool level to allow forinterdisciplinary, action-oriented EE.Revise the curriculumguidelines: to clarify that EE is ahigh priority and mandated area;to clarify the goals, contents andmethods of EE; to clarify howEE can give effective learning ofknowledge and skills inlanguage, mathematics, socialsciences, etc.EE and sustainable developmentshould be integrated into basic andin-service teacher training.School-level planning processesneed revision and improvementMore teachers should becomeinvolved.
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4. COOPERATION betweenschools and actors outside theschool
EE is assigned tobiology/natural scienceteachers and classes.
Teachers don't understand themethodology of EE, includingnew methods such as projectwork, problem solving,interdisciplinarity, fieldmethods, action orientation,experience-based learning
EE does not produce theintended changes in pupilattitudes and behaviour.
EE is not action-oriented.
Environmental studiesmethodology is unclear and thequality variable.
Schools are isolated from thereal world.
Results from schools are notused by society.
Teachers have too narrowdisciplinary competence andare not good at cooperatingwith each another.
Older teachers cannot adapt toshould be integrated into basicinterdisciplinarity, field work,project work, communitywork.
Teachers lack good models andexamples of EE.
Schools lack cooperativepartners (in the localcommunity, nationally andinternationally) who can givepupils meaningful tasks, ensurehigh quality methods and whowill use the results.
Local Agenda 21 work mustinclude schools
A good social atmosphere needsto be created for cooperationamong teachers.
Better support services areneeded, such as national andinternational EE programmesproviding access to topcompetence.
A new generation of teacherswho understand the contentsand methods of EE.
Networks for cooperation withbusinesses, governmentdepartments, researchinstitutions at several levels.
School support and qualitycontrol through EE programmesoffered by various ministries andresearch/managementinstitutions
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Factors at the school system level would include, for example, the curriculum,statutes, policies, degree of decentralisation, administrative structures, teachertraining, research and development work, evaluation, school leadership training,budgets, priorities, programmes, support services and networks of cooperation.The school system is impacted by the political level, which responds to externaland internal pressures (such as environmental groups, international trendsand agreements and economics). The political system sets priorities, passesjudgment, legitimates, supports and represents.
All of these levels are impacted by what can be called the 'outside world'level: partners in the real world with whom the school cooperates and commu-nicates. These partners include everything from family and local community toresearch and management institutions, business, non-governmental organisa-tions and the media.
THE CHALLENGE OF SYSTEMIC CHANGE
The systemic barriers to environmental education are many and strong. A wholerange of 'symptoms' that something is wrong may appear, when efforts atchange are directed primarily at teachers and activities in the classroom ratherthan at creating a favourable environment for environmental education in theeducation system as a whole.
Policy makers and practitioners alike should view these barriers as develop-mental challenges that are of critical importance for sustainable environmentaleducation. They can be summed up as 'the four Cs': commitment, curriculum,competence and cooperation. Table I gives an overview of these issues and thesymptoms they cause. Further, a diagnosis and possible kinds of cures aresuggested. The table is intended to be thought provoking rather than providinga complete analysis of these issues.
In summary, for efforts in environmental education to be widespread andsustainable, the following systemic conditions are required.
• A clear policy mandate for environmental education should be given toschools by the Ministry of Education and this should be followed up withother needed measures and controls.
• The education ministry itself takes the lead role and develops strategiesand action plans to achieve the policy goals. Strategies developed byenvironmental organisations and others cannot replace strategies gener-ated by the Ministry itself. 'By-pass' solutions must not be accepted as asubstitute for commitment on the part of the educational authorities.
• The curriculum guidelines should be revised if necessary to reflect newerthinking about environmental education and education for sustainabledevelopment.
• The school as a whole, led by the principal, should take responsibility forenvironmental education and integrate it into school plans. Sporadicinvolvement by a few teachers in ad hoc projects not founded in the
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school's long-term plans has proven unsustainable. This approach cannotsubstitute for 'the long route' involving the whole school.
• Teachers' competence in environmental education needs be raised, bothin terms of contents, methods and interdisciplinary cooperation. Thisincludes basic teacher training, in-service training and school supportservices.
• Schools should enter into cooperation with actors outside the school whowill use the knowledge generated by schools. These actors include publicand private institutions responsible for environmental research and man-agement at the local, national and international level. Partners outsidethe school provide support to ensure objectivity and quality control, thusincreasing the competence of teachers and pupils alike. Such cooperationalso ensures that the pupils' work will be used and valued by society,giving the instruction much greater meaning for pupils.
Table I and the list above constitute an awesome agenda of systemic issuesthat need to be addressed for sustainable environmental education to becomea reality. In light of this, it should come as no surprise that major problemshave been encountered world wide in implementing widespread, high qualityenvironmental education during the last 20 years.
THE ILLUSION OF CHANGE
The failure of governments to make environmental education universal andsustainable since the Tbilisi Declaration in 1977 may be due largely to misdi-rected efforts. Typically, small groups of eager teachers and environmentalgroups have, with the very best of intentions, started their own projects andprogrammes. The educational authorities have also tended to use their resourcesto develop pilot programmes for a handful of progressive schools, rather thanworking to change the education system to provide better framework conditionsfor environmental education. Such projects seldom seem to go beyond the pilotphase to generate models which are adopted more universally.
In many countries the activities generated in this way, while positive for thechildren and schools involved, seem to function as a smokescreen. They give theimpression that something is happening, but systemic changes are actually veryslow in coming. In some cases environmental education projects and pro-grammes may have even given the educational authorities an alibi for notaddressing policy issues and mandating environmental education from the topdown. The educational authorities can report that 'environmental education isbeing taken care of through these projects'.
In some, but certainly not all, cases the scientific and pedagogical quality ofthis kind of environmental education project may also be an issue. There are fewquality controls on content, objectivity and methodology. The projects are oftensponsored and organised by interest groups such as environmental groups,energy companies and forestry organisations. The activities and materials of-
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fered frequently by-pass the educational authorities, being addressed directly toteachers and schoolchildren. The abundance of environmental educationprojects currently marketed to schools but not 'owned' by the school systemcould actually delay or reduce the efforts of the educational authorities to workfor high quality and universal environmental education.
Working around a system which is not working very well for environmentaleducation may thus reduce the chances of successfully working to change thesystem. A pilot project approach cannot substitute for committed, long-termwork by the educational authorities to make environmental education a man-dated part of every teacher's training and every child's upbringing.
EXPERIENCE WITH THE SYSTEM APPROACH IN NORWAY
It would be interesting to make a checklist of framework conditions for goodenvironmental education and compare several countries. Norway is an exampleof a country that has at least attempted to use a systems approach to main-streaming environmental education and I will therefore use it as an example ofwhat such an approach might entail (see also Ministry of Education, Researchand Church Affairs and Ministry of the Environment, 1994). Needless to say,such a strategy would have to be tailor-made to each country's education systemand situation. Experiences from Norway, both successes and difficulties, may bean interesting starting point.
I will outline what has happened in each of the four areas of system change:commitment, curriculum, competence and cooperation. The emphasis will beon cooperation with actors outside the school, because this appears to be a veryimportant factor. In conclusion I will reflect on lessons learned and make somecritical comments about difficulties in implementing the strategy.
Commitment
In the early 1990s, the Ministry of Education started a process to develop astrategy and action plans for environmental education. This strategy was partlya result of the World Commission on Environment and Development reportOur Common Future and preparation for the Rio conference, as well as thelongstanding involvement of Norway in UNESCO programmes for environ-mental education.
The goal of the Ministry of Education's strategy was that all pupils shouldreceive environmental education in line with the UNESCO goals, includingboth knowledge, attitudes, capabilities and behaviour. A rather large group ofteachers, researchers and organisations was involved in developing the strategy,which went through several stages of revision and is still being periodicallyrevised. Thus, the Ministry of Education itself has taken a leading role in initiatingchange. Staffing (one full-time position) and a substantial budget was allocatedto this work, which was led by the Ministry of Education.
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The goals of the Norwegian strategy were primarily directed toward thesystem as a whole, not individual schools or programmes. They were to:
1. clarify the goals and contents of environmental education (throughresearch and development work, strengthened environmental training inall disciplines and development of professional networks);
2. contribute to organisational development in schools (through integrationof environmental education in basic teacher training and in-servicetraining, support for school-based development projects and county-level support services);
3. ensure that the strategy is implemented (through plans for in-servicetraining, articulation of resource needs and clarification of roles andresponsibilities);
4. clarify and coordinate efforts in environmental education between theschool system and its cooperative partners (through developing a com-mon understanding of goals and coordination of teaching materials andprogrammes);
5. evaluation (through evaluation of the Ministry's programme andtraining in evaluation of environmental education itself).
These goals touch on three of the four 'Cs': commitment and responsibilityon the part of the Ministry of Education, competence and cooperation. Curricu-lum was being dealt with in a general curriculum reform and therefore did notappear in the strategy goals.
Curriculum
A curriculum reform called Reform-94 for primary schools included strongemphasis on what was called 'the environmentally aware human being'. The lastcurriculum revision, L-97, strengthens the natural sciences and clearly statesthat project methodology and local work with environmental issues are to beincluded in schools. The amount of school time devoted to thematic and projectwork is greatest in primary schools (about 80% in grade 1) and gradually tapersoff through lower secondary school. At the lower secondary level, about 20% ofschool time is to be used for thematic and project work. A reasonably goodcurriculum framework for environmental education is therefore present after the1997 school reform.
Competence
To raise the competence of teachers and improve school planning processes, 40hour in-service training courses in environmental education were conducted forall teachers in primary and secondary schools in the early 1990s. As part of the1997 school reform, the curriculum of teacher training colleges was also revisedto include a full-time, half-year course called Nature, Society and Environment.All teachers in training must take this course, which gives an introduction to
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principles of environmental education as well as specific environmental topics.This course has not yet been evaluated, but experience so far is mixed. Someteacher training institutions have succeeded in creating a cohesive and inspiringinterdisciplinary course, while others have difficulty doing this. Yet another levelof competence raising may be needed, namely the teachers at the teachertraining colleges.
An interesting innovation intended to build competence in environmentaleducation at the county and regional level was introduced in the early 1990s. Asystem of inter-sectoral cooperation was started in the counties called 'countycontact groups'. What these groups actually achieved varied greatly from countyto county. They did, however, foster a lively discussion of environment andschools by key partners from many sectors (such as the environment, health andagricultural authorities, energy companies, industry and agriculture/forestryorganisations). The county contact groups reported to the education ministryand participated in regular national meetings.
Still another approach to competence raising in environmental educationwas that several nationally coordinated environmental monitoring programmeswere started under the auspices of the Ministry of Education. Schools were tocreate local projects related to themes such as water and energy. As part of theirprojects the students should collect data using standardised methods and sendthe data to a national database. They could then access the database via theInternet to compare their data with those of other schools. National environ-mental research institutions such as the University of Bergen and the NorwegianInstitute for Water Research were contracted to develop materials and databasesand provide quality control. Several hundred schools enrolled in these pro-grammes, and the teachers participated in training workshops and receivedsupport from consultants as well as the research institutions.
Cooperation
In the mid and late 1990s other factors came into play that created a morefavourable environment for implementing the ministry's strategy for environ-mental education in Norway. The Rio conference with Agenda 21 and LocalAgenda 21 gave a strong boost to concrete environmental work. Informationtechnology also became a top priority in school development work, supportingthe use of databases and the Internet in the national environmental pro-grammes. These developments, along with the school reform of 1997, con-tributed to a greater consensus about the value of the Ministry of Education'swork with environmental education, both within the Ministry of Education andby cooperating ministries and organisations. Although budgets for ministry-ledenvironmental education work declined, the climate for cooperation improved.
The programmes started in the early 1990s have now been further consol-idated and institutionalised. The 14 original national environmental educationprogrammes are now combined into a single programme called the Environ-mental Education Network. There are three sub-programmes: water; land; citiesand towns. These share the same four main themes: the diversity of nature;
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cultural heritage and cultural landscape; land use and planning; resources andconsumption.
Implementation of the Environmental Education Network has also beenstreamlined and delegated to the National Centre for Educational Resources,which coordinates the programme and sub-contracts research institutions intheir areas of specialisation. An important principle has been that responsibilityfor steering, organisation and programme development should be placed withinstitutions in the education system that have competence in education. Therole of other actors (such as other ministries and interest groups) should be tocooperate and provide viewpoints and competence in specific topics.
These programmes are a framework for development work in schools, nota set of ready instructional materials. The teachers together with their pupilsmust define the local context for their work and make local projects. What thenetwork provides is background information on issues and priorities, an elec-tronic communication and discussion network, a set of approved researchmethods, quality control, help in interpreting data and, in many cases, a serioususer of knowledge generated by schools.
A Model for Cooperation
The Environmental Education Network functions as a forum for exchange ofenvironmental information between three main actors: the school, local andregional management in various sectors and research institutions. Managementinstitutions give schools real tasks to do that are high priority in officialenvironmental policy. The research institutions provide top scientific com-petence and methods, as well as quality control of the data and help ininterpreting the schools' findings in a wider (regional, national and global)context. This model is a universal one that should be transferable to othercountries.
The flow of information in the network are as in Figure 1.Other important features of the network is contact between the school and
the local community, and public access to environmental information and theschools' databases through the network.
Inter-sectoral Cooperation
Cooperation between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of theEnvironment has gradually strengthened and the division of roles and responsi-bilities has become more clear during the last 5 years. The school system needsto respect the competence of environmental scientists, managers and otherprofessionals, but these experts also need to respect the role and competence ofeducators. Instruction offered in schools should be steered by the school system,as this is their area of competence and they are responsible for the teaching andlearning that takes place. Hopefully, cooperation between the educational andenvironmental authorities will be expanded to include Local Agenda 21, draw-
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Local informationFeedbackGuidance
Local andregionalmanagement
ElectronicmeetingplaceDatabases
Data
MethodsFeedbackGuidance
Qualitycontrol
FIG. 1. Schools cooperate with management and research institutions in the NorwegianEnvironmental Education Network.
ing schools actively into the municipalities' work to develop local environmentalplans.
Many other sector ministries, companies and institutions also cooperate inthe Environmental Education Network. These are represented in the 'inter-sectoral contact group for environmental education', which meets regularly andis coordinated by the Ministry of Education. This group is responsible forproviding reference persons with high competence in particular environmentalissues and it also approves all major changes in the structure of the Network.
Lessons Learned
What lessons can be learned from the Norwegian example of working systemi-cally that could be useful for others?
First, shortcuts don't work. Teachers who struggle to implement environ-mental education within the framework of an educational system that isn't madefor it may succeed in the classroom in the short term, but their efforts areusually not sustainable. Furthermore, allowing external actors to take responsi-bility for environmental education efforts, 'by-passing' the educational authori-ties and institutions whose job is educational development, is particularlyunlikely to lead to the desired systemic, sustainable change.
The goal should be not only to get results fast in the classroom, but to buildan educational system in which all the parts recognise and take responsibility forenvironmental education, from teacher training colleges to research institutions,centres for developing teaching materials, school principals, teachers and (notleast) the Ministry of Education itself. All of these levels are connected and mustcooperate. The inspired teacher cannot succeed without certain framework
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Sustainable Environmental Education 445
factors provided by the higher levels and the Ministry of Education cannotsucceed in steering educational development without full cooperation by teach-ers and principals.
A second lesson is that the process of bringing about systemic changes inpriorities, competence, curricula and patterns of cooperation and communi-cation is a long-term process. It may take several decades for such changes todevelop and become integrated into the education system.
Experiences in Norway indicate that raising teachers' competence in en-vironmental education will require much more than short in-service trainingcourses, although these kinds of courses can be effective in initial awarenessraising. The concepts and methods of environmental education and the conceptof sustainable development should be included as a required part of basicteacher training.
Conceptualising environmental issues also requires systems thinking: notjust understanding natural ecosystems but also human systems, such as cycles ofproduction and consumption and cultural systems of attitudes, way of life andbehaviours. Understanding the interconnections between natural and humansystems is intellectually challenging and requires openness to a wide range ofdisciplinary paradigms, from history, anthropology and literature to economics,biology and political science. It will be interesting to see whether new Nor-wegian teachers educated under the new teacher training curriculum are betterenvironmental educators than their older colleagues.
A third lesson is that structural changes in communication and cooperationrequire patience, goodwill and commitment. Vertical communication betweenthe Ministry of Education and local bodies such as municipal school directorsand schools is full of tensions. The Ministry is by definition supposed to steerthe regional and local level and check whether schools are following theguidelines they have been given. Schools often don't feel the need to be steered,but do want and expect support in the form of consultants, project funding,training courses, teaching materials, equipment, etc. Some sort of compromiseby both parts and understanding of the roles and responsibilities must bereached if change is to be possible.
Lateral cooperation such as cooperation between the Ministry of Educationand Ministry of the Environment in Norway is also a delicate matter. One caneasily tread on the others' 'territory' and area of expertise. Unrealistic expecta-tions and unclear communication can put a quick end to such cooperation.
Finally, cooperation and network building between the school and actorsoutside the school seems to be a key to high quality environmental education.The Environmental Education Network in Norway should thus be of consider-able interest as a model for cooperation and information flow between schools,local and regional management and research institutions. When ministries,management and research agencies outside the school system give schools realtasks to do and actually use the data generated by schools, the instruction takeson additional meaning for the pupils. They learn that their input and effort andconcern are important for society. They can make a difference.
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BACK TO SUSTAINABIUTY
In summary, efforts to bring about educational change through environmentaleducation should be directed at framework factors such as placement ofresponsibility for environmental education in the educational system itself,curriculum change, competence-building and networks of cooperation with theworld outside the school that can provide teachers and pupils with high qualitysupport and meaningful real-life tasks. This kind of systematic approach tomainstreaming environmental education is a long and difficult route to changingthe kind of instruction pupils receive. It may, however, be the only approachthat can ensure that environmental education itself will be sustainable and notsubject to the year-to-year vagaries of politics, academic fashion and programmebudgets.
Correspondence: Faye Benedict, 3750 Drangedal, Norway
REFERENCES
Fullan, M. (1991) The New Meaning of Educational Change (New York, NY, Teachers CollegePress).
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND CHURCH AFFAIRS (1991) Strategy for Environment andDevelopment in the Norwegian Education System (Oslo, Ministry of Education, Research andChurch Affairs).
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