Sustainability and Inclusion: Similar Discourse, Different Outcomes

Author(s):

Cath Gristy(presenting / submitting)Roger Cutting(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 11 A, Norms in Policy and Curriculum

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-25

17:15-18:45

Room:

NM-A105

Chair:

Jutta Nikel

Contribution

The discourse surrounding education for sustainability has produced a multiplicity of definitions, producing a significant body of discursive literature centred on definitions and a multiplicity of disparate aspirations. The result has at times been close to what Shallcross and Robinson (2007) have called ‘definition dementia’. Such debates and divides of course are far from unique, but a particularly interesting parallel in education may be found in the dialogue surrounding the subject of ‘inclusion’.

In the UK context as in many other parts of Europe, both the areas of sustainability and inclusion in education and wider social contexts have developed over the last few decades. Their parallel developments and implementations have been set in the same economic and political contexts. The debates surrounding definitions, implementation strategies and pedagogical approaches of these two pillars of contemporary human social endeavour, have striking similarities.

This project explores the debates within each of the two areas; sustainability education and inclusion in education. We first examined key similarities and contrasts in these debates in the context of the UK and wider international social, political and economic contexts. The project goes on to explore the recent evident divergence in their achieved outcomes. Whereas inclusion in both a curriculum and operational sense are now key aspects to the ethos and operation of educational institutions, sustainability on the other hand, has not gained such ‘traction’. Sustainability has recently been dropped from the National Curriculum for England (2013) and still remains as something of an option for implementation in both the post-compulsory Further Education and Higher Education sectors in the UK.

Divergence in the impact of these two areas of policy and practice is seen in surveys of contemporary education (and wider social) policy and practice (eg Wals, 2012, Donnelly and Kyriazopoulou, 2014). We argue that there is evidence that inclusion has become a much more pervasive part of contemporary society than sustainability. Issues of inclusion seem to have more ‘traction’ in social contexts and more progress has been made in making inclusion a part of everyday lives of individuals, private and public institutions.

Method

This project investigates the seemingly more effective promotion protocols and persuasive strategies adopted by those allied to the inclusion debate and suggests ways in which their value to the active in the promotion of education for sustainability. This exploration has been done through academic colleagues sharing their own knowledge and experiences of the development of the two disciplines that mirror wider developments outside of education. The result is the output of a shared engagement with two particular personal perspectives rather then a systematic study. The two authors are colleagues in the Institute of Education at Plymouth University in the UK, working on amongst other things, a BA Education Studies programme. This programme has a number of identified pathways-one of these focuses on issues of inclusion and another on sustainability. One author works primarily on inclusion and the other on education for sustainability. A serendipitous event happened during a period of assessment marking that drew attention to some startling similarities between the content and discourse used in written assignments for inclusion and sustainability modules. Through a combined moderation of the work it was noted that some sustainability assignments read in very similar ways to inclusion assignments. There seemed to be a convergence in the language, style and approach of the two kinds of assignments and both were drawing on common sources and ideas. Following analysis of the student texts, we experimented with exchanging the terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘sustainability’ in classic texts we recognised from our own disciplinary studies. We noted how much sense remained when we did this; a text about sustainability could become a text about inclusion with very little loss in meaning, relevance and impact. There then followed a period of developing time lines of the two disciplines. We looked separately at key events, publications, reports and policies etc that have happened globally, as well as in the UK, and those that are specific to education contexts and compared our timelines. Again, there were remarkable similarities in the timings and scale of these key events. For example the rights and activist movements of the 1960’s were moments where rights of all kinds were set up as something worth fighting for; gender, disability, race, the environment were all the focus for rights based activism.

Expected Outcomes

The initial identification of the similarities in the development of both inclusion and sustainability issues facilitated a more detailed exploration of the points of more recent divergence. The development of a clearer understanding of the relative success of the inclusion agenda in education as compared to the still variable and even in recent years demoted position of sustainability in UK education settings is an essential outcome from this study. One key finding suggested has been relative importance of the influence of key UK Government legislation. The impact of a number of watershed pieces of legislation, in particular the Equality Act (2010), has been particularly profound. Legislation in relation to sustainability has been more piecemeal, more pragmatic and has not been closely associated with human rights agenda. The case of enshrining the rights of children to a clean sustainable future in law has never materialised and if such concepts have emerged it has been a commitment to a future that looks exactly like the present. We argue that is perhaps this achievement of a framework of wide reaching inclusion legislation that permeates all society that is a key difference in outcomes of the two movements.

References

Department for Education (2013) The National Curriculum in England. London. HMSO [Online] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-stages-1-to-4/the-national-curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-stages-1-to-4 Donnelly, V. and Kyriazopoulou, M. (2014) Organisation of Provision to Support Inclusive Education :Summary Report.. Odense, Denmark: European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education https://www.european-agency.org/sites/default/files/Organisation%20of%20Provision%20Summary%20Report.pdf Shallcross, T. and Robinson, J. (2007) Is a decade of teacher education for sustainable development necessary for survival? Journal of Education for Teaching 32 (2), 351-365 The Equality Act (2010) London. HMSO [Online] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents Wals, A.E.J. (2012) Shaping the Education of Tomorrow: 2012 Full-length Report on the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development.UNESCO/ Wageningen University, The Netherlands, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002166/216606e.pdf

Author Information

Cath Gristy (presenting / submitting)

Plymouth University, United Kingdom

Roger Cutting (presenting)