Ecological Principles for Sustainable Education : Challenging Root Metaphors and the Industrial Schooling System

This book explores how the education sector can transition to being truly sustainable and why necessary innovations for educational change are being subverted and undermined when mapped onto the existing Industrial educational system. Based on PhD case study research with schools that are modelling and teaching sustainability, action research, and the author's 40 years of working in the K-12 system, this volume examines how education continues to perpetuate the status quo, and why education innovations are thus undermined. It shows the importance of redesigning education based on the principles of sustainable living systems and explores how this can be achieved across all levels in the educational system. The first part of the book establishes a new vision of sustainable education, whilst the second brings to light the Industrial mechanistic root metaphors in current practice across management and administration, buildings and grounds, curriculum design, teaching, and learning that are subverting innovative efforts. From understanding the foundational, influential, problematic root metaphors of our 'Industrial' educational system, it moves to explore how the ecological principles of sustainability can be used to rethink and redesign an educational system, from its management, leadership, and policy, to curriculum, buildings, grounds and resources, through to teaching and learning, that will support sustainability, innovation, and creativity, developing systems thinking and sustainability as a frame of mind. Exploring how the education sector can transition to being truly sustainable and find new ways to traverse the problematic 'Industrial' world view at a pivotal moment, it will appeal to administrators, post-secondary educators, policymakers, and researchers and scholars of sustainability education, educational leadership, curriculum design, and educational philosophy.

Author: LIZA. IRELAND

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: Jan 29, 2024

Number of Pages: NA pages

Language: English

Binding: Hardcover

ISBN-10: 1032484675

ISBN-13: 9781032484679