<p> This paper evaluates an organics and recycling program in a large urban school district over a three year period 2010-2013. Student researcher evaluates the effectiveness on organics and recycling via a K-12 program. Is the school district closer to reaching its organics and recycling goals? What are the cost savings to the school district? What are the best practices from other schools in the United States? District waste is compiled over a course of three years and analyzed. An on-line data tracking system was created to evaluate the program. Student creates recommendations for maximizing cost savings to the district and benefits to the environment.</p>

<p> Sustainability educators could benefit from better understanding how the built environment, natural environment, and curricular activities can interface to encourage connections between people and place. My research explores the relationship between these dimensions at the Michael Ritchie Big Barn Center for Environmental Health and Education at the Center for Discovery--an innovative project in place-based education and design for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other disabilities. Specifically, my research addressed the following question: For the occupants of the Big Barn, what is the relative and synergistic importance of (a) the built environment, (b) the natural environment, and (c) the curricular activities and experiences, as they encourage connections between people and place? My research was supported by a range of literature related to place-based education and design, as well as research related to universal design and phenomenological ecology. This literature review shaped my decision to use various research methods, including photo elicitation, surveys, interviews, observations, and document analysis. Using qualitative and quantitative techniques, I identified several important themes, including the relationship between photo content and meaning; the importance of curricular activities and the pedagogical value of the farm; the synergistic relationship between the environment and the activities; the relationship to the broader community; and the potential for staff training. These themes provide insight into the lived experiences of the Big Barn staff and highlight lessons that could potentially inform place-based education more broadly.</p>

Our world faces environmental and socio-cultural problems that will impact young children in the long term. Therefore it is important to advance research in the field of Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) to support educators in working alongside young children, families, and communities toward a more sustainable future. The purpose of my study was to create professional development to support educators in engaging in ECEfS with the children in their care. The participants were 14 early childhood educators who worked with young children between the ages of 1.5 and 5 years old. My study was grounded in social constructivist theory and systems theory, and was informed by the work of influential scholars in ECEfS. I adopted a complex mixed methods design that consisted of four research phases. In Phase 1, I collected qualitative and quantitative data about the educators' ECEfS previous knowledge and practices by means of the adapted Environmental Rating Scale for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood and interviews. In Phase 2, I merged the qualitative and quantitative data, created and implemented ECEfS professional development, and let 2 months pass for the educators to apply the strategies learned in the professional development. In Phase 3, I conducted a second implementation of the scale and a second round of interviews. In Phase 4, I performed a final merged interpretation of the data. Results of the study indicated that some of the educators' ECEfS reported practices improved slightly after the professional development while other ECEfS practices decreased due to strict COVID-19 restrictions. Although the modest improvements in the educators' ECEfS practices after the professional development point to the need for a deeper and broader engagement with ECEfS, the educators' reported engagement with ECEfS also provided evidence about the importance of professional dialogues, reflective practices, and loose parts as mediums to engage in ECEfS. A key implication is that some ECEs are engaging in ECEfS despite not labeling their practices as such.

Sustainability has become a buzz word of our time, although our developed world community is still coming to terms with what the word really means. Universities and polytechnics in Aotearoa New Zealand will have to change in many ways before sustainability can be considered to occupy a meaningful place in the tertiary education sector. However the change process that sees an organisation moving towards sustainability is complex, and agency for change can be considered on many different levels including the individual identities of staff and students, the identity of managers, and the programme and wider organisational identities constructed by the communities that comprise them. This qualitative research explores education for sustainability within the context of outdoor education using the Bachelor of Adventure Recreation and Outdoor Education (BRecEd) at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) (the programme into which the author teaches) as a case study. Participatory action research forms the overarching methodology for a multiple method approach to data collection. The research leans heavily on the lived experiences of staff and students within the programme, is woven with my own reflections, and incorporates many examples of students’ work. The weaving together of these experiences grounds the research and helps bring theory to life. The research reveals the complexity of change towards more sustainable ways of practising outdoor education in an organisational setting. It explores the tensions that are encountered and mechanisms that have allowed for staff and students to engage in education for sustainability in a more meaningful way. The key themes of the research explore the intersection of identity construction processes and change agency, and it is argued these processes are inseparable for those concerned with organisational change towards sustainability.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze children’s meaning making processes in science related to environment and sustainability at the pre-school level. This thesis examines an approach to early childhood education which is conceptualized by an explorative as well as a listening approach that specifically addresses children’s questions. The purpose is to create knowledge on how the processes develop and what specific science related content that emerges. All studies are based on a Deweyan pragmatic perspective. Study 1 “logs in” to the debate on children’s possibilities to become “agents for change” and contributing to positive changes for the environment. The results reveal that the children’s positive and negative aesthetic utterances have significance for how the process develops and is being fulfilled. The contextual aspects are imperative both for the content and for the choices the children make along the course of actions. Study 2 examines children exploring animals in a pre-school project concerning biodiversity.  Initially, the results reveal that the organisms’ appearances and movements received morphological and physiological explanations. Further on, knowledge was gained in a manner which has similarities to ecological and evolutionary ways of explaining biological phenomena. Study 3 takes departure from the discussion on the fact that sustainability related problems often are unstructured, multifaceted and conceptualized as “wicked”. The study examines how the process of imagination comes into play when children explore a sustainability related problem that is important to them. The results reveal that creative solutions come into existence when blending various experiences.  Study 4 investigates how children raise and answer science related questions by non-verbal actions. The results expose that non-verbal actions serve as inquiry, comparative systematics, visualization, question-generators as well as a public and self-reflective communication. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: In review. Paper 3: In press. Paper 4. Manuscript.</p>

In this research I explore ways in which teachers and parents can enhance the sustainability agenda to bridge the gap towards sustainability through the creation of caring, democratic, just, ecologically regenerative schools-as-communities. I learned that we can only transform ourselves and not others, therefore to transform the model of experience of schooling and society, we need to transform ourselves, the whole community of the school, towards sustainability. This follows the work of Sterling (2001, 2002a and 2002b) which illustrates that education and society will need to change together in a mutually affirming way, since there is no linear cause-effect relationship. This dissertation focuses on one aspect of the developing field of education for sustainability (EfS). I use radical ecology as the philosophy which supports the vision of community transformation towards sustainability (Orr 2002; Fien 2001; and Sterling 2001). I use the emancipatory research paradigm and detail a participatory epistemology fused with a holistic, constructivist notion of reality, to situate a participative approach which enables important interdisciplinary connections to be made. The research comprises ethnographic research and cooperative inquiry projects that were implemented at two small community schools, as well as reflective practice to develop personal and professional practices of sustainability. Contemporary work in the field of EfS has a cultural understanding of sustainability, which uses four pillars: the biophysical, the social-cultural, the economic and the political. The political pillar is the key organising principle for this research. The research is significant because I develop and build upon Sterling’s (2001) notion of transformative learning for sustainability. I show that participatory structures, procedures and processes are necessary, but not sufficient for a socially transformative school-as-community culture and that socio-ecologically contextualised knowing is transformative knowledge about community sustainability. For people to behave in cooperative ways, they need to develop a practical, reconnective knowledge of cooperation. Likewise, for people to behave in ecologically regenerative ways, they need to develop a practical, reconnective knowledge of ecological reconnection. The research methods of reflective practice and cooperative inquiry are discussed and evaluated as vehicles for transformation towards sustainability. The dissertation thereby assesses their effectiveness in enabling the development of practical knowledge about sustainability. In Australia, over the last decade our federal government has shown little interest in fulfilling its own narrowly defined ecological sustainability policy commitments. In Western Australia, our government has recently launched a comprehensive State Sustainability Strategy however its major weakness is that it has afforded very low significance to education at a time when major international organisations such as UNESCO (2002b) see education as an integral part of sustainability and learning as a key to a sustainable future. Sadly, the State Sustainability Strategy does not recommend a reorientation of the education system towards sustainability, does not incorporate a socially critical view of education, and almost completely overlooks the role of learning in the social task of change towards sustainability. In Western Australia, we urgently need policies and political action for commitment through structural reorientation towards EfS. Even in the face of this, a multi-perspectival, inclusive approach to the development of civil society through devolved, locally-based decision making and action within a school community can facilitate the emergence of learning for sustainability in that community. Even within a context of contradiction, tension and paradox, it is possible for school communities to contribute to sustainability through reconnective transformative learning.

Purpose: This paper aims to conceptualize impacts of higher education institutions (HEIs) on sustainable development (SD), complementing previous literature reviews by broadening the perspective from what HEIs do in pursuit of SD to how these activities impact society, the environment and the economy. Design/methodology/Approach: The paper provides a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2005 and 2017. Inductive content analysis was applied to identify major themes and impact areas addressed in the literature to develop a conceptual framework detailing the relationship between HEIs- activities and their impacts on SD. Findings: The paper identi fi es six impact areas where direct and indirect impacts of HEIs on SD may occur. The fi ndings indicate a strong focus on case studies dealing with speci fi c projects and a lack of studies analyzing impacts from a more holistic perspective. Practical implications: This systematic literature review enables decision-makers in HEIs, researchers and educators to better understand how their activities may affect society, the environment and the economy, and it provides a solid foundation to tackle these impacts. Social implications: The review highlights that HEIs have an inherent responsibility to make societies more sustainable. HEIs must embed SD into their systems while considering their impacts on society. Originality/value: This paper provides a holistic conceptualization of HEIs- impacts on SD. The conceptual framework can be useful for future research that attempts to analyze HEIs- impacts on SD from a holistic perspective.

Many higher education institutions (HEIs) have started to incorporate sustainable development (SD) into their system. A variety of sustainability assessment tools (SATs) have been developed to support HEIs to systematically measure, audit, benchmark, and communicate SD efforts. In recent years, stakeholders have increasingly asked HEIs to demonstrate their impacts on SD. These impacts are the direct and indirect effects an HEI has outside of its organizational boundaries on society, the natural environment, and the economy. This study analyzes to what extent SATs are capable of measuring the impacts that HEIs have on SD. A mixed-method approach, using descriptive statistics and an inductive content analysis, was used to examine 1134 indicators for sustainability assessment derived from 19 SATs explicitly designed for application by HEIs. The findings reveal that SATs largely neglect the impacts HEIs have outside their organizational boundaries. SATs primarily use proxy indicators based on internally available data to assess impacts and thus tend to focus on themes concerning the natural environment and the contribution to the local economy. Updating existing SATs and developing new ones may enable HEIs to fully realize their potential to contribute to SD.

Submitted by admin tede (tede@pucgoias.edu.br) on 2016-08-18T12:47:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 CRISTHIANE SANTOS BARBOSA LIMA.pdf: 3134630 bytes, checksum: e321fa9c7d3283f0c59a5a817d6136dd (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-18T12:47:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CRISTHIANE SANTOS BARBOSA LIMA.pdf: 3134630 bytes, checksum: e321fa9c7d3283f0c59a5a817d6136dd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-04 / The present research is to make a survey of social and economic indicators in the sugarcane sector in the municipality of Inhumas. Had as objective to survey indicators measure that allowed the model of agricultural and agroindustrial development using socio-economic-environmental descriptors, in the years 2000-2013 of the municipality of Inhumas prioritizing the production system of the sugarcane sector, under employability and education; and the survey secondary information regarding education, employment, infrastructure and economy of the municipality. Questionnaires were applied to analyze the situation of migrant workers and workers from the region of manual sugarcane cutting, such as education, working conditions, job training and living conditions. / A presente pesquisa consiste em fazer o levantamento de indicadores sociais e econômicos no setor sucroenergético do município de Inhumas. Teve como objetivo fazer o levantamento de indicadores que permitiram mensurar o modelo de desenvolvimento agropecuário e agroindustrial utilizando descritores sócio-econômicos-ambientais, nos anos 2000 a 2013 do município de Inhumas priorizando o sistema de produção do setor sucroenergético, no âmbito da empregabilidade e educação e o levantamento por meio de dados secundários acerca da educação, trabalho, infraestrutura e economia do município. Foram aplicados questionários a fim de analisar a situação dos trabalhadores imigrantes e trabalhadores da própria região do corte manual da cana, como educação, condições de trabalho, capacitação profissional e condições de vida.

For the global business school community, the twenty-first century inaugurated a season of introspection. As global sustainability concerns grew in prominence, critical debate about the purpose of business and its role in society could not be left without an educational response. At the same time, however, it raised the question of whether business schools were at all ready to equip their students for leadership in a world faced by crucial economic, social, and environmental challenges. The answer is not self-evidently positive. Various authors grapple with questions on the purpose of business schools and their relationship with business and society. This empirical study examines the influence of EQUIS accreditation standards on business school practices in the areas of institutional strategies, programmes, faculty, research, and development, as well as in responsible management education at large. Although accreditation is not the only factor that determines what business schools believe, do, and become, it is an important shaper of the direction in which they will find their way forward in the face of twenty-first–century management education imperatives. This has especially become the case since the inclusion of ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS) in the revised EQUIS standards. The analysis is drawn from a qualitative multi-case study where the author outlined a theoretical framework by developing an understanding of the organisational responses to EQUIS standards, using interviews and document review as the primary source of information. The case study included private, public, stand-alone, and university-embedded business schools. The findings show that business schools engage in a variety of ERS activities in their research and education portfolio. However, different stakeholder expectations pressure business schools to become more ethical, responsible, and sustainable, which leads to a decoupling of the schools’ “ERS talk” from their “ERS actions”. The decoupling can be seen as the consequence of a school’s translation, editing, and imitation activities in order to appear committed to society’s demands. Despite budget constraints and limited autonomy, public business schools seem to be more engaged in ERS education and research as compared to private institutions. Also, a multidisciplinary environment further supports ERS development as compared to stand-alone business schools. The research proposes core changes and developments that business schools may take into consideration to provide a systematic response to EQUIS ERS standards and criteria.