Topic:Out-of-school science education institutions (OSSEIs), such as museums, science centres, zoos and aquaria, have strong potentials to promote sustainability, yet seem to lack an operational definition of sustainability that aligns with their specific characteristics and institutional remit. We draw on literature from research and practice to account for the features of sustainability science and policy, as well as the different specific strengths of OSSEIs, to identify unique potentials for sustainability education.

Research Question:  What are the unique potentials (and conversely the missed opportunities) that OSSEIs offer sustainability education?

Theoretical Framework: Sustainability is a notion ubiquitous in society today (Stevenson, Ferriera & Emery, 2016), however means different things in different contexts. This implies that we cannot take any particular explication of sustainability as definitive, because that explication will always be adapted to the (scientific, societal, educational) context that it exists within. This institutional relativity of knowledge is modelled in the Anthropological Theory of Didactics (ATD), a research programme concerned with the diffusion of scientific knowledge through society and social institutions (e.g. schools or museums) and the conditions and constraints that govern that diffusion (Chevallard & Bosch, 2014). Here, we use ATD to systematically develop an operational definition of sustainability for OSSEIs, designated as the reference model.

Objective: Although achieving sustainability on a global scale is a daunting task, education has been identified as a crucial means to this end (e.g. Holfelder, 2019). Sustainability education goes beyond changing knowledge, awareness and behaviour, to providing society with the skills for effective leadership and management that aids humanity in moving towards systemic change for global sustainability (Steinfeld & Mino, 2009).

Recent research has pointed to out-of-school science education as an especially important arena for preparing citizens for a sustainable future (e.g. Clayton, 2017; Janes & Grattan, 2019). OSSEIs such as museums, science centres, zoos and aquaria are globally distributed, receive large numbers of visitors annually, hold a high level of trustwithin society and across different political backgrounds, whilst also appealing to a diverse age-range (Cameron, Hodge & Salazar, 2013; Clayton,2017). We seek to substantiate and qualify the claim that OSSEIs have a unique role to play in promoting global sustainability, that is, they can offer something due to their specific institutional conditions and practices that the formal school system cannot.

Although there seems to be widespread agreement that OSSEIs are well situated to provide sustainability education, sustainability is not easily translated into practice in museums and other cultural institutions (Brown, 2019; Cameron, Hodge & Salazar, 2013; Hedges, 2020). This has important implications for OSSEIs, whose efforts to provide sustainability education may be constrained by the lack of an operational definition of sustainability that aligns with their characteristics and remit. Without such a definition or framework, sustainability education risks being governed by the unpredictable funding patterns, serendipity, specialised campaigns and local idiosyncrasies that are reality for OSSEIs, rather than by a strong alignment between institutional strengths and sustainability objectives. In response, we suggest that it might be valuable with a perspective on sustainability that comes from outside the institutions in question. We draw on the out-of-school branch of ATD research, to analyse the conditions and constraints imposed by the ecosystem of sustainability that (potentially) shapes sustainability education. It is not our goal to provide an exhaustive analysis of this ecosystem; rather, we use ‘confirming sampling’ to identify conditions and constraints relevant to OSSEIs, building upon previous results (cf. Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyen, 2012). The system under study includes scholarly knowledge on sustainability (in the form of the still-emerging research domain of sustainability science), critical societal actors involved in deciding sustainability (education) policy, and the range of OSSEIs where sustainability education can potentially take place. Taking into account important features of sustainability that are simultaneously of relevance to OSSEIs and sanctioned by critical societal actors, we distil from this system the unique potentials (and conversely, the missed opportunities) for the institutions’ sustainability education. These potentials are synthesised and illustrated in a set of institutionally specific guidelines that optimise the organisation of sustainability for each kind of OSSEI. For example, one feature of sustainability of particular relevance is its temporal nature. Temporality has direct relevance to natural history museums, which have significant expertise to offer with respect to disseminating the extended timelines of geological, evolutionary, or cultural processes (Krishtalka & Humphrey, 2000). This is illustrated at the Natural History Museum London with collections of four British butterfly species used in further understanding climate change and responses by biodiversity (Brooks et al., 2014).

As already indicated, sustainability is ‘seldom well-defined for museology’ (Brown, 2019:3), meaning that when OSSEIs are indicated as key actors in sustainability education, broad and non-specific terms are used. To ensure sustainability education is successful, transformative pedagogical innovations are required that are inter/transdisciplinary, place-based and experiential (Brundiers, Wiek & Redman, 2010; Sipos, Battisti & Grimm, 2008). However, our institutionally specific reference model goes further in arguing and illustrating the potentials for sustainability education that are singular to different kinds of OSSEIs, and that optimise the fit between knowledge, pedagogy and institution.

Brooks, S.J., Self, A., Toloni, F., & Sparks, T. (2014). Natural history museum collections provide information on phenological change in British butterflies since the late-nineteenth century. International Journal of Biometeorology, 58.8, 1749–1758. Brown, K. (2019). Museums and Local Development: An Introduction to Museums, Sustainability and Well-being. Museum International, 71(3–4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13500775.2019.1702257 Brundiers, K., Wiek, A., & Redman, C. L. (2010). Real-world learning opportunities in sustainability: from classroom into the real world. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 11(4), 308–324. https://doi.org/10.1108/14676371011077540 Cameron, F., Hodge, B., & Salazar, J. F. (2013). Representing climate change in museum space and places. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 4(1), 9–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.200 Chevallard, Y., & Bosch, M. (2014). Didactic Transposition in Mathematics Education. Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education, 1984, 170–174. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4978-8_48 Clayton, S. (2017). Zoos and Aquaria as Informal Learning Environments for Climate Change Communication. 1(January), 2017–2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.394 Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, H. H. (2012). How to design and evaluate research in education. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Hedges, E. (2020). Actions for the future: determining sustainability efforts in practice in Arizona museums. Museum Management and Curatorship, 0(0), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2020.1752293 Holfelder, A. K. (2019). Towards a sustainable future with education? Sustainability Science, 14(4), 943–952. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00682-z Janes, R. R., & Grattan, N. (2019). Museums Confront the Climate Challenge. Curator: The Museum Journal, 62(2), 97–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12298 Krishtalka, L., & Humphrey, P. . (2000). Can Natural History Museums Capture the Future? BioScience, 611–617. https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0611:CNHMCT]2.0.CO;2 Sipos, Y., Battisti, B., & Grimm, K. (2008). Achieving transformative sustainability learning: Engaging head, hands and heart. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 9(1), 68–86. https://doi.org/10.1108/14676370810842193 Steinfeld, J. I., & Mino, T. (2009). Education for sustainable development: The challenge of trans-disciplinarity. Sustainability Science, 4(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-009-0072-6 Stevenson, R. B., Ferreira, J. A., & Emery, S. (2016). Environmental and Sustainability Education Research, Past and Future: Three Perspectives from Late, Mid, and Early Career Researchers. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 32(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2015.49