New postgraduate course in education for sustainability
The Master of Education will offer a new course with a focus on education for sustainability from Trimester 2, 2020.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many questions about the sustainability of our global economic, health, and environmental systems. The recent world-wide student-led climate strikes demonstrate the concern of children and young people across the globe, for their futures if climate change is not urgently addressed.
Our new course, Special Topic: Education for Sustainability in Aotearoa (EDUC 464/564), explores the growing field of education for sustainability that seeks to equip children and young people with the knowledge and skills they need to advocate for sustainable futures. Our teaching is aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to which our government is committed. Goal 4.7 highlights the importance of education for sustainable development (ESD) and global citizenship education (GCE) in supporting the overall vision for the 17 SDGs.
ESD involves content, critical pedagogies, and skills such as advocacy, in relation to sustainability issues such as social and economic justice, cultural and linguistic sustainability of Indigenous/Pacific Islands languages, climate change and related considerations such as rising sea levels, biodiversity loss, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable consumption and production. These and other serious concerns are an important focus of education, particularly now as we weigh up our responses to the current COVID-19 situation. This new course will encourage students to focus on a particular ESD/GCE issue and/or context of particular concern or relevance to them, and to consider this in relation to education policy, curriculum and pedagogy in the Tiriti o Waitangi-based context of Aotearoa New Zealand.