Over thirty years ago environmental education started being talked about at international levels in response to issues of pollution, overfishing, species going extinct, over use of fertilizers, access to fresh water and so on. Initially the discussion was around the environment but it was soon realised that these issues needed to be put into the wider context of development, human interactions, justice, supply and demand, population growth etc,. The discussion then became about sustainability either in terms of development or for the future. The emphasis was different in different places. It is recognised that the changes to our current unsustainable living practices that are required are not trivial and that considerable effort and commitment will be needed. Sustainable
development/futures identifies and examines social, cultural, environmental and economic factors in any situation and then looks at what is happening now, what could be done and hopefully at some solutions.
The UN pursued the goal of getting an international binding agreement in a series of international conferences with mixed success over the next thirty years.
Meanwhile research was being carried out in a number of countries according to the dominant research paradigms in those countries. The application of this research to education produced mixed results. Where behaviourism was used there was little progress partly because this system did not include all the contributing factors. In Scandinavia an approach that arose from critical education theory was tried and had much greater success. This approach is called action competence and comes out of a background of critical education. Critical education is emancipatory in that it wants students to keep asking why things are the way they are. Are there better ways of doing things? If so why not use them?
It is about encouraging critical thinking and developing active citizens.
Danish researchers developed their programme of action competence using the following approach. A relevant conflict over resources, preferably local, is identified. Students then research this issue in the fullest possible way. They discover its scale, history, causes, and range of opinions concerning it. They interview, debate, collate data (both experimental and other), consider values and when all this is done decide on solutions. These must be aimed at the causes not the symptoms of the issue. If so moved, the students might then take action based on all they have learnt. This student-led action is targeted and addressed to solve the problem either directly or indirectly.
The hope is that students become aware not only of the process but of their own ability to effect change. This is important as change on a large scale is unlikely to occur unless active citizens push governments and business in the direction of sustainability. Along the way it is hoped that students will have learnt about finding out different types of knowledge and analysing and reflecting on them,
developed an appreciation of the different points of view, identified several possible solutions, and arrived at an action that could be taken. The ability to arrive at solutions for particular instances is enhanced by students developing their own versions of what a sustainable future might look like. The concept of taking action with others is tied up with experience and both are felt to be important for students to really become aware of what is possible. These factors all contribute to action competence which is seen as an ideal that people can move towards but probably never fully achieve.
Learning theories such as those developed by Kolb and later Schon follow a cyclical process of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. While these processes are listed in one particular order that order is not the only way of using them. It can be seen that the process of working towards action competence covers all these steps and this gives these theories a connection to this concept. It should be noted that with different countries having different histories, a programme developed in one place is unlikely to work if just uplifted and placed, unchanged in a new context. It will need adapting to fit the new context. This has recently happened with work in New Zealand adapting the Danish model of action competence to suit local conditions. However, this adapted model has not been tested and moreover, has not been subjected to testing in a classroom environment where culture plays a significant role in learning.
To successfully develop a programme that helps students move towards action competence requires certain pedagogies to be used in the classroom. These involve the students having the skills and confidence to be able to attempt such a programme.
New Zealand has developed its own versions of this approach. The most common is the Enviroschools approach. The other is where individual teachers are implementing their personal version of this approach in their own classroom.
This is the approach that I took in this study.
From this literature review, it is clear that the following principles would need to be considered in designing an intervention to develop student action competence:
the use of an experiential learning cycle that starts with who my students are;
implementation of a learning culture within the classroom that allows encourages students to be themselves, a consideration of values and culture to help them clarify who they are, students being encouraged to take an action for sustainability; and provided with enough support to help them plan, carry out and report on this action. This action can be directed by an EfS achievement standard, which would be assessed for credit.
The students would be introduced to the concept of action by an intervention that included learning about the aspects of EfS, analysing our class experiences earlier in the year, looking at our personal and cultural identities, identifying what sort of future we want for us and our children and why, learning to research required information and to reflect on new knowledge and on our understandings gained from starting to act, thinking about the connections we can make, identifying who we wish to take action with and why.
The next chapter describes the development of the intervention built around these principles and its evaluation.