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Publications
A Curriculum Review of Environmental Education
Curriculum Corporation
for Environment Australia, 2003
The Commonwealth's National Action Plan Environmental Education for a Sustainable Future, released in July 2000, identifies the following priorities in relation to the formal education sector (schools):
In order to strategically address these needs, in 2001 the National Environmental Education Council commissioned a review of nationwide curriculum documents to develop a comprehensive map indicating where matters relevant to environmental education are represented and to identify national priorities. After a tendering process, the review was undertaken by the Curriculum Corporation, in conjunction with a national reference group and in consultation with the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training.
Curriculum Corporation carried out this task under the leadership of Dr. Brian Sharpley and a review team consisting of Howard Brown, Shirley Sharpley, Emma Tunley, and Michael Walsh. An expert group, convened to support the project, met twice during the process to evaluate the review instrument and methodology, and to consider the preliminary findings and suggest possible recommendations to be included in the final report.
Curriculum documents from the Northern Territory, Tasmania (K-10) and Queensland (Mathematics and English) were not considered by the review team as they were being reviewed at the time of the mapping. Despite these omissions the findings of the review provide useful information and a starting point for further research.
All States and Territories of Australia have a curriculum framework or syllabus outline that directs curriculum delivery and guides assessment in schools for the compulsory years including primary and secondary schooling to the end of Year 10. This curriculum is generally divided into eight Key Learning Areas (KLAs). The names of the KLAs may vary across the States and Territories but they can be said to include English, Health and Physical Education, Languages other than English, Mathematics, Science, Studies of Society and the Environment, Technology, and the Arts.
Each State and Territory also develops curriculum documents or study guides, which prescribe the studies to be undertaken in an extremely wide range of subjects in Years 11 and 12. The review also examined these curriculum documents in order to identify where matters relevant to Environmental Education are represented.
Several popular textbooks were also examined in order to discover how the curriculum documents are interpreted in these books. It should be noted that a myriad of other interconnecting documents and resources exist in each State and Territory that attempt to inform and support Environmental Education. Some of them are direct, others less so. This review made no attempt to map these resources. The mapping of curriculum documents and a small number of other policy documents should be seen as a starting point - a part of the picture of how State and Territory departments support and encourage Environmental Education.
The Mapping was designed to identify Environmental Education within curriculum outcomes and objectives from the start of school until the end of Year 12 according to the following categories:
An important consideration was the encompassing of the notion of 'Education for Sustainability' within Environmental Education. This decision is in line with the definition of Environmental Education identified within the National Action Plan Environmental Education for a Sustainable Future (2000) and reflects the intent of the review to be 'forward looking'.
Sustainable development is that which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (Brundtland Commission, 1987)
Sustainability reflects a shift in focus for Environmental Education. According to the Department of Environment and Heritage, Environmental Education 'should be defined in its broadest sense to encompass raising awareness, acquiring new perspectives, values, knowledge, and skills, and formal and informal processes leading to changed behaviour in support of an ecologically sustainable environment' (Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2000).
Tilbury (1995) argues that Environmental Education for Sustainability differs from previous Environmental Education approaches in that it focuses more sharply on developing closer links between environmental quality, ecology and socio-economics and the political threads which underlie it. Its basis is the creation of a more holistic outlook on problems, requiring a deeper integration between the study of environment and development problems.
Although there is a great deal of work required to develop meaningful and workable definitions of Environmental Education for Sustainability, the following elements are important:
Of the indicators used in the mapping process, a sub-set of 36 specifically pertaining to environmental education for sustainability were also used to further evaluate and rate course content in relation to the above elements.
A set of Environmental Education indicators was developed to provide a detailed map of the curriculum documents being analysed.
These indicators were developed from the content and issues pertaining to Environmental Education identified within the Agenda 21 document, as well as other sources. This set was used to conduct a preliminary mapping of Victorian curriculum documents, before being reviewed and reshaped by the expert group. The 147 indicators identified through this process were used in the mapping of all the documents in the review.
Student learning outcomes were the unit of analysis for the review of the compulsory years for all Key Learning Areas. The unit of analysis for the Years 11 and 12 subjects varied depending on the way that the documents were written. If student learning outcomes were provided, then these were the unit of analysis, otherwise it was by subject topics or units. Curriculum courses were analysed to see how many of these indicators were found in the learning outcomes.