This research examines how sustainable product design education can address the deficit in green talent. It presents a framework for a structured curriculum in product design, with hands-on activities, industry-specific case studies, and best practices in alternative design development. The impact of technologies like additive manufacturing on design is considered. Findings demonstrate that knowledge of technological capabilities, industry specific understanding, and proficiency in analytical tools such as Life Cycle Assessments contribute to sustainable designs mitigating a green talent gap.

Sustainable products are becoming increasingly important for companies in order to succeed. However, the development of sustainable products poses a complex challenge, because alongside the classical product development requirements, additional social, economic and ecologic requirements arise. Despite the increasing relevance of this topic, sustainability is not yet fully integrated into the product development processes and mindsets within companies. Simultaneously, the integration of sustainability into engineering education is still insufficient and traditional teaching formats seem to be inadequate to teach such complex and multifaceted topics. Within this publication, the development, the contents and the implementation of two different university engineering courses for sustainability and environmentally compatible product development are described and compared. The different approaches to develop and incorporate sustainability into the engineering education and the usage of innovative teaching concepts are demonstrated to encourage and inspire other universities.

In the Anthropocene, universities play a role in developing students’ sustainability literacy and capacity to solve socio-ecological challenges. The objective of this study is to identify the generic and sustainability-oriented skills and competencies required of business graduates by regional employers. The regional focus meets a gap in the literature. An online survey of employers in North Queensland found that they attach importance to a wide range of skills and competencies and see sustainability as a key factor in future business success. Yet, there are contradictions in terms of their support for sustainability in the curriculum and business practices, particularly when it comes to the recruitment and selection process. Furthermore, contradictions exist between the university’s adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the weak interest displayed by prospective employers in graduates’ sustainability literacy. This study has important implications for regional universities. A reframing of the role of sustainability education in the curriculum is warranted, where a deeper connection is made between sustainability education and the values employers already hold. Recommendations for curriculum designers are made on how to foster and assess the competencies that business graduates need to meet the demands of regional business upon entering the labour market.

This article explores innovative praxis in Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) in four preservice teacher education programmes in Canada. ESE is finding its way into teacher education in a variety of innovative and interdisciplinary ways, as both part of mainstream programmes and in their co-curricular margins. Using a case study approach, each case builds on unique connections to Indigenous education, art education, cultural learning or educational gardening, which supports a variety of differing aspects in relation to ESE. These cases share a common theme of building relationships at the heart of ESE teaching and learning in the mainstream and the margins of the academy. Brought together through a Canadian network of faculty, researchers, policy-makers and community educators that was formed in 2016, these cases demonstrate a deep commitment and imaginative capacity for embedding ESE in Canada’s teacher education systems.

Clean Up Australia Day is the country's largest community-based environmental annual event when participants work in teams to remove rubbish from their local environment. This article describes an interpretive study in which a sample of preservice primary teachers’ (n = 30) responses to questions about their involvement in the event were evaluated to determine their developing knowledge and understanding about environmental and sustainability issues. The study evaluated a university assessment task for its ability to identify and challenge preservice primary teachers’ views as consumers of manufactured products, environmental citizens, and future teachers. The data were drawn from students’ written work that formed part of the assessment task. Results indicate that students found participation in this community event to be a significant, valuable part of their learning about the environment that contributed to their understanding about sustainability and highlighted the power of positive community participation as a force for good.

The first research symposium, organised in conjunction with the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE) biennial conference, began with a dialogue between scholars at three different academic career stages. As we all entered the field at different periods in its development, the first part of our presentation and this article provide our perspectives on the context, approaches and issues that characterised the field at the time we became involved in environmental education (EE) and EE research. The second part of this article presents the lessons we have learnt from EE research, and where we see the field headed in the future.

The mandate for living sustainably is becoming increasingly urgent. This article reports on the Climate Clever Energy Savers (CCES) Program, a student-centred, problem- and project-based program in New South Wales, Australia, aimed at enabling school students to identify ways of reducing their schools’ electricity consumption and costs. As part of the program, students apply for Department of Education and Communities funds to address issues of electricity usage, such as building or appliance modifications, or education campaigns. In particular, this article focuses on the systemic approach used to assist teachers and students in meeting the aims of the CCES program, the Sustainability Action Process (SAP). To ascertain the contribution and value of such a framework in achieving project outcomes and associated learning and attitudinal change, we investigated teachers’ and some students’ uses and opinions of the SAP via surveys (n = 434), 16 interviews, and analysis of documents such as student work samples and lesson outlines. Our research indicates that the SAP has been a highly effective, enabling and engaging tool in helping students to identify ways and means of reducing electricity consumption and evaluating their effectiveness, as well as identifying allies and other sources of assistance in carrying out their projects.

This article explores and reconsiders the view of children's encounters with place as central to a place-based pedagogy that seeks to dismantle rather than support constructions of a nature-culture binary. I unpack the current fervour for reinserting the child in nature and nature-based education as a significant phenomenon in environmental and outdoor education. I will draw on recent literature on place-based research and theorise using new materialist and posthumanist approaches that seek to disrupt anthropocentric views and support new ways of considering our encounters with the more-than-human world. Then, using these new approaches, I will theorise a recent place-based research project with children in the city of La Paz, Bolivia, to illustrate how it is possible to challenge current assumptions that are firmly entrenched in the child in nature movement. I will conclude by considering what intra-species relations, place encounters and child-body-animal-place relations can teach us about questioning anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism. Finally, I consider how can we overcome these limitations of a narrow and nostalgic view of ‘child and nature’ and reimagine a more diverse approach to education for a sustainable future.

This paper focuses on a case study of the collaborative development of an environmental education unit involving the use of puppetry and drama. The collaboration was between an experienced classroom teacher beginning to use drama, and a drama/environmental educator and researcher. The critical lens for the analysis was sustainability education, including how this aligns with some recent theory on multiplist and evaluativist meaning-making. It is argued that these modes of meaning-making are necessary pedagogical goals of an eco-connected pedagogy. This case study showed that collaborative planning, implementation and reflection of drama pedagogy was not only a catalyst for more complex and deeper levels of meaning-making for the classroom teacher, but also prompted discussion about other important issues such as the quality of student engagement, classroom power dynamics and authentic assessment. In addition the teacher observed a range of outcomes achieved by her students that align with sustainability education as they became immersed in a dramatic world. In particular she observed that the students, through role-playing and writing about points of view not necessarily their own, developed deeper understandings demonstrating multiplist and evaluativist meaning creation.

Science education in the Australian primary school curriculum is a relatively rare event. Several studies over the past twenty five years have all reported disappointingly low amounts of science being taught and the reluctance of primary school teachers to make science a priority in their teaching. Similar outcomes have been reported for environmental education. Even though primary aged children are very interested in science and the environment, primary school teachers often struggle to teach science/environmental education because they are not confident and competent in the content, lack curriculum resources and equipment, have inadequate time to prepare, and have difficulty finding a place for science/environmental education in what they perceive as an already overcrowded curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experiences of primary schools involved in the Victorian Science in Schools Research Project which was concerned with improving science teaching and learning strategies but which also unexpectedly led to more environmental (“sustainability”) education occurring. The paper will also suggest a curriculum strategy for achieving more widespread acceptance and implementation of “sustainability education” through primary school science curricula.

How can an organisation move from awareness raising, in the form of natural history poster production, to the development of systems that change organisations? Through close integration of research and practice, the Gould League has achieved this transformation. It began with extensive research into best practice environmental education, going beyond the traditional boundaries of environmental education to areas that included the psychology of culture change, business management, systems thinking, governance, drug education, marketing and organisational psychology. This broad approach to research has led to the development of highly effective sustainability education programs, such as Waste Wise Schools and Sustainable Schools.

The Waste Wise Schools Program, funded by EcoRecycle Victoria and managed in consultation with the Gould League, is an action-based waste education program. Originating in Victoria in 1998, it has been adopted by over a third of Victorian schools and has led to widespread outcomes, including waste reductions of up to 95%. There is strong evidence from surveys that this program is sustainable in schools over time and research confirms that the program is contributing to changes in the waste-wise thinking and behaviour of the families of the children at these schools.

A model for culture change in schools, based on the experiences of the Waste Wise Schools Program, has also been developed. This model, a valuable tool in the continual improvement of Waste Wise Schools, has applications to sustainability education in general.

Higher education institutions are considered by many to be pivotal in shaping the next generation of thinkers and practitioners required to further work towards addressing the sustainability challenges faced by contemporary societies. The extent to which higher education has embraced this responsibility is debateable. Notwithstanding, this article reports upon our experience as three students employed as tutors in teaching sustainability to our undergraduate counterparts. Drawing upon our collective experience as both students and tutors within The Fenner School of Environment and Society of the Australian National University, we explore what makes student-facilitators part of an effective approach for sustainability education. Through this process, we describe some key practices that student-facilitators apply and which contribute to students’ understandings of sustainability. These key practices are: conceptualising what a tutorial should be; taking the position as a facilitator of discussion; using game-based activities; and the role that student-facilitators play in a community of social learning at the Fenner School. We conclude that the incorporation of student-facilitators in the teaching and learning of sustainability play a unique and significant role that should be valued, fostered and supported in higher education.

As social, economic and environmental issues have become more prominent in the 21st century, there has been increased critical scrutiny into the ways that outdoor learning interacts with sustainability issues and concepts. As a result, a number of discourses have emerged which interrogate human/nature relationships in traditional outdoor education and propose greater engagement with place-responsive or sustainable approaches. Drawing on research with teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article explores possible intersections between sustainability education outdoor learning. Accordingly, this article focuses on two key ideas: First, the nexus of experience and place offers significant promise for educational endeavours that seek to educate for a sustainable future. Second, traditional conceptions of wilderness as a pedagogical site, can be problematic for outdoor education programs which seek to claim the ground of sustainability. While there is much that can be gained from journeys in remote pristine environments, not all of these experiences necessarily lead to the development of attitudes, understandings, skills, and motivation to live more sustainably. Furthermore, approaches to outdoor learning that seek to develop connection to and care for remote, pristine places, at the same time ignoring more local or impacted places, could present a dichotomous view of ‘nature’ to students, thereby disrupting efforts to educate for sustainability.

Sustainability education competes for curricular space, both in schools and in teacher education. Opportunities and barriers for the inclusion of sustainability education in an Australian university primary teacher education program are examined in this article. The study focused on the roles, practices and perceptions of teacher educators in promoting sustainability education. Three focus groups were conducted with members of faculty staff from each of the K–6 Key Learning Areas to gather data, which were analysed according to three frameworks: espoused/aspirational and actual practices of staff members; barriers to and affordances for teaching sustainability education; and the nature of initiatives, in terms of teaching/learning activities, assessment tasks, and resources. Beyond the Social Sciences, and Science and Technology, we found that inclusion of sustainability education is somewhat sporadic. The article proposes some ways forward to promote and abet sustainability education in a tertiary context.