Whole-School Approaches to Sustainability

Whole-School Approaches to Sustainability

Schools have long been seen as a vehicle for green education, and school-based approaches to environmental education have varied significantly since the 1970s, when content and field studies approaches to environmental education dominated the field. Since the mid-1990s, whole-school approaches to sustainability—targeting all aspects of school operations, not just the school curriculum—have become increasingly popular across many countries of the world. This approach not only has environmental education embedded in the school curriculum, but it also models sustainability policies and practices within the whole-school context.
A whole-school approach to sustainability would therefore consider, for example, the school's waste management systems; how students are transported to and from school; where food is sourced and how it is grown; how much energy the school uses and how energy needs are powered; the volume of water used and the way water is consumed; the consumption of other natural resources such as paper; the amount of habitat and green space provided for in the school grounds; and the role of the school within the broader community. Whole-school approaches to sustainability view the school as a microcosm of society and promote the take-up of sustainable lifestyles through the modeling of natural resource conservation and efficiency, and by adopting whole-school policies aimed at reducing the school's ecological footprint. Such an approach is a direct response to international calls to reform and reorient education toward a new global sustainability agenda.

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