Sustainable Education and Approaches

Education in diverse forms and multiple contexts provides the means whereby each generation passes on its culture, discoveries, successes and failures to the next. Without inter-generational education, very little in a human context can be sustainable. Education is also important to formulate, challenge and disseminate ideas, knowledge, skills and values within communities, from young to not so young, and between communities, nations and continents. Education is identified as a key element of sustainability-focused strategies in many contexts and levels: signatories to the Talloires Declaration¹ promise to “educate for environmentally responsible citizenship”; and Agenda 21² declares that education “is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision- making.” The critical role of education has been reconfirmed recently in the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals³ and the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development⁴.

And yet, education also provides the means whereby societies can consolidate and perpetuate, or sustain, ways of knowing, being and doing that may nurture economies or individual societies or communities, but may not be sustainable in other respects. The concept of sustainability demands that we consider long time periods, environmental stability, and the needs of people in diverse places and of non-human inhabitants of the planet. A key challenge for this section is, therefore, to help scholarly communities distinguish between educational approaches that seek to sustain the ‘unsustainable’ from those that seek something else, whatever that may be. Research about, or to promote, high-quality education that does not challenge the status quo will not readily find a place within this section.

Accordingly, Section Editors for the section ‘Sustainable Education and Approaches’ are interested in original and scholarly research articles, conceptual articles, review articles and commentaries that link education to environmental, cultural, economic and social sustainability and sustainable development. The section ‘sustainable education and approaches’ welcomes the full range of previously-unpublished scholarly communication indicated within the journal’s aims (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/about). Also, in line with this journal’s policy of having no restriction on the overall length of the paper, Section Editors will expect academic communications to be concise, clear and readable. Authors are advised to make full use of ‘supplementary material’ in their submissions.

¹ Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future 1994, The Talloires Declaration 10 Point Action Plan. Accessed 15^th December 2017 at http://ulsf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TD.pdf

² United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992): Agenda 21. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. Online at: "http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc.htm".

³ United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2017): Education for Sustainable Development Goals. Learning Objectives. Paris: UNESCO. Online at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002474/247444e.pdf

⁴ United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2014): Roadmap for Implementing the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development. UNESCO. Paris.