The eponymous Jaimie Cloud, President of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education, sent this message out the other day to her ESD/ EfS / LSD / SDE / etc collaborators on a Benchmarking project. She wrote:
Dear Authors and Reviewers,
I am proud to attach the Education for a Sustainable Future: Benchmarks for Individual and Social Learning which will be officially published in the Journal of Sustainability Education on Earth Day—this Saturday April 22nd. You all played a critical role in the development of these Benchmarks, and your unique contributions made it possible for this document to become synergistic. This is the first time forty-two scholars of EfS/ESD have come together to attempt to define the field, and I hope it won’t be the last. This document represents what we agree on right now, and what the field is saying is essential to educating for a sustainable future. As our thinking evolves it will make sense to innovate them periodically to create Benchmarks 2.0, 3.0 etc. Next time it won’t take us so long… I hope.
We used the grounded theory methodology to ensure that the Benchmarks represent as best they can, our consensus on what defines our field. Each author sees EfS/ESD from a different point of view, a different discipline perspective, and a different set of experiences. This is what makes the Benchmarks so rich. None of the authors had all the pieces, but together, I would argue that it is the most comprehensive treatment of EfS/ESD to date. Having said that, I am sure it is not perfect. All the reviewers (some of whom were also authors) and I as Editor did our best to track the patterns, connect the dots, combine like ideas and question assumptions. The section in the beginning called, “Insights’ will give you an idea of the struggles we had and the decisions we made to resolve them. I do hope that when all is said and done, it is useful to you and to your constituents. We would love to hear what you think of the Benchmarks, how you are using them and how your clients and students are using them. If there is anything in the Benchmarks that you take issue with, please let me know and we will figure out how to handle that. It will always remain a work in progress as all living things are, and once we see how the roll out goes, we will be in a better position to design a process for continuous improvement. Just a reminder—the next step is the Call for Exemplars. It is all explained below and in the EfS Benchmarks, and feel free to call or write me to discuss any and all aspects of this endeavor.
Cloud ended by pointing to "a Sample Press Release". This is it:
Long Awaited Education for Sustainability Benchmarks to Be Released on Earth Day
Educating for a Sustainable Future: Benchmarks for Individual and Social Learning will be released by The Journal of Sustainability Education on Earth Day, April 22, 2017. This 70-page account is authored by, and represents the current and best thinking of forty-two of the major scholars and practitioners of the field of Education for Sustainability (EfS). The Benchmarks include the Big Ideas, Thinking Skills, Applied Knowledge, Dispositions, Actions, and Community Connections that define Education for Sustainability. They embody the essential elements that administrators, curriculum professionals, faculty, board and community members need to adopt Education for Sustainability; to align with it; to self-assess their own performance, and to intentionally and effectively educate for the future we want by design. In addition, The Benchmarks embody the consensus that the field needs to demonstrate the impact of EfS and to catalyze wide spread implementation.
Following the Benchmarks, are Supporting Instructional Practices and Perspectives, Organizational Policies and Practices, an Afterword and several Appendices that provide information about the topics often associated with EfS, contributing disciplines, aligned innovations, preliminary research findings on the impact of EfS, and a bibliography. The next step is the Call for Exemplars. We are asking educators at all levels of education to send The Journal of Sustainability Education the evidence they have of Education for Sustainability as defined by The Benchmarks. We want to know what EfS looks like, how educators are achieving the results, and how they are communicating quality criteria at various depths of knowledge, grade levels and degrees of quality. We are inviting curriculum plans, assessment instruments, performance indicators, quality criteria and exemplary student work, and we want to know which aspect(s) of EfS the authors designed for, and which ones they achieved. We will build an open source data base of these exemplars so that the field can begin to calibrate the work for developmental appropriateness, continuity, creativity and continuous improvement.
Where to begin?
Perhaps with the fact that 38 of the 42 authors seem to be from the USA – an example of America First policies, perhaps, but then the USA always tended to think it has a monopoly of wisdom when it comes to environmental education (etc)?.
That said, the question these Benchmarks were developed to address is this:
What are the essential elements that distinguish and define the field of Education for Sustainability?
More on this later on, no doubt, but my first reaction to the question is:
- it has contributed little to solving the world's problems over its 50 year history – and achieved less
- it's never been taken seriously by anyone that matters in core educational circles – largely because it's never really engaged with them
Respond