Overview

The unit provides pre-service teachers with an understanding of the concepts of environmental sustainability and the ability to apply these concepts to teaching and learning in education. An additional aim is to empower pre-service teachers to integrate effective advocacy for sustainability in their professional teaching role. This unit focuses on educating with sustainable futures, questioning the kind of world we want and how teachers influence the futures-oriented understandings of children and young people. Environmental and global complexities are explored through the lens of relatedness and shifting perspectives.

Requisites

Prerequisites
EDU10004 Theories of Teaching and Learning

Rule

150 credit points 

AND

EDU10004 Theories of Teaching and Learning

Teaching Periods
Location
Start and end dates
Last self-enrolment date
Census date
Last withdraw without fail date
Results released date
Teaching Period 2
Location
Online
Start and end dates
08-July-2024
06-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
21-July-2024
Census date
02-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
23-August-2024
Results released date
29-October-2024
Semester 2
Location
Hawthorn
Start and end dates
29-July-2024
27-October-2024
Last self-enrolment date
11-August-2024
Census date
31-August-2024
Last withdraw without fail date
13-September-2024
Results released date
03-December-2024

Learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

  • Summarise the scope and purpose of educating for a sustainable future
  • Critically reflect upon their own attitudes and values in relation to sustainability perspectives and how these effect their teaching and professional role
  • Consider concepts and themes related to environmental sustainability and describe how they can be integrated into learning in an education setting
  • Analyse the concept of ecological literacy and articulate the benefits and limitations of becoming eco-literate
  • Create a school profile with a holistic range of teaching and learning strategies to integrate sustainable perspectives, critical thinking, values and citizenship objectives implicit in reorienting education towards sustainable futures

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Live Online
Lecture
1.00 12 weeks 12
On-campus
Class
2.00 12 weeks 24
Specified Activities
Various
6.00 8 weeks 48
Unspecified Activities
Various
5.50 12 weeks 66
TOTAL150

Swinburne Online

Type Hours per week Number of weeks Total (number of hours)
Online
Directed Online Learning and Independent Learning
12.50 12 weeks 150
TOTAL150

Assessment

Type Task Weighting ULO's
AssignmentGroup 40% 1,2 
ReportIndividual 60% 1,3,4,5 

Content

  • Defining the concepts, themes and terminology
  • Articulate the complex issue of sustainability between and within communities, societies and cultures at local and global levels
  • Recognise the historically and culturally situated concept of environmental change in the Anthropocene
  • Four pillars of sustainability: social, economic, political and environmental
  • Systems of relatedness with self, communities, environment, and Earth species
  • The role of education to teach understandings of sustainability for positive change
  • Teachers’ roles as advocates for social inclusion, justice and sustainable futures
  • Curriculum and government policies
  • Eco-biographical narratives
  • Ecological literacy and ecologising education
  • Designing sustainable and environmental curricula
  • Case studies of sustainable practice, pedagogy and initiatives 

Study resources

Reading materials

A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.