Sustainability education is not confined to school-based education, it flows into extended education in terms of communities, social movement learning and learning beyond schooling. The Scottish educational term Learning for Sustainability (LfS) is ‘an approach to life and learning which enables learners, educators, schools and their wider communities to build a socially-just, sustainable and equitable society’ (Scottish Government, 2016), therefore encompassing curricular and extended education. It includes Outdoor Learning, Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship, and is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. It is a core to Scottish education and an entitlement of all learners, offering a range of educational outcomes (Christie & Higgins, 2020). The General Teaching Council for Scotland have embedded LfS within its professional standards for teachers (GTCS, 2019), the Scottish Qualification Agency have woven LfS through their benchmarks and the Scottish Government are committed to implementing an LfS Action Plan (Education Scotland, 2019) to further embed and support the development of LfS nationally. Yet, despite the coherent policy architecture, LfS is not fully enacted within professional educational practice nor is it flourishing across all aspects of community and extended educational sectors. It is clear that teachers, organisations and educational leaders are grappling with LfS in terms of where it ‘fits’ within and beyond the curriculum and what it ‘looks’ like (Christie et al, 2019) in these educational spaces. Whilst this process of embedding LfS is in development we do have great examples of practice and I want to share three of these to illustrate the ways in which LfS and the SDGs can flourish in schools, across extended education and communities, and in doing so, equip young people and adults with the skills and values needed to develop a flourishing, sustainable future.
Dr Beth Christie (beth.christie@ed.ac.uk)
Senior Lecturer, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh