Education for Sustainable Development Tool Kit

Education for Sustainable Development Tool KitURL: http://www.esdtoolkit.org

Keywords: Sustainable development, Education

The ESD Tool Kit has four major components:

• 1.

  A description of the major thrusts and components of education for sustainable development (ESD).

• 2.

  A discussion of 12 major issues that have stymied the progress of ESD and that need to be addressed for ESD to be successful.

• 3.

  Eight exercises to help schools to reorient curriculum to address sustainability, five exercises to assist communities develop sustainability goals, and three exercises to help explain the concept of sustainability.

• 4.

  A case study of the Toronto Board of Education's community consultation and subsequent curriculum revision that indirectly addressed ESD as a result of the citizens' vision and desires.

The purpose of the ESD Tool Kit is to help schools and communities develop a process to create locally relevant and culturally appropriate education. The toolkit is based on the idea that communities and educational systems within communities need to dovetail their sustainability efforts. Local educational systems can reorient existing curriculums to reinforce local sustainability goals. As we developed the exercises to reorient curriculum to address sustainability, it became apparent that many communities do not have sustainability goals or action plans on which to base educational change. As a result, we included some exercises to help communities develop such goals. We also included a few exercises to explain sustainable development, in case some community members are not familiar with the concept.

For further information, please contact: Dr Rosalyn McKeown, Director, Center for Geography and Environmental Education, 311 Conference Center Bldg,University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, USA. E-mail: mckeowni@utk.edu