Creating Change for Sustainability in Universities in Australia, One System at a Time

Abstract

Higher education should be advocating for future citizens to engage in creating a more sustainable world. Teacher education, however, lags behind in building the capacity of 21st century teachers to facilitate such a transformation. This chapter discusses a decade-long Australian research program that has agitated for change using systems theory to build teacher educator capacity in education for sustainability (EfS). The program works to achieve change across the whole teacher education system, thereby overcoming many challenges inherent in the small-scale, fragmented initiatives that are typical in higher education and teacher education. Through collaborations between teacher education academics, policy makers and representatives from professional and non-government organisations, the program has effected change for sustainability through new policy directions, curriculum initiatives, and leadership capacity-building for EfS. Within universities, particularly, the program has engaged change agents at all academic levels, with different EfS expertise, and across disciplines. Reports, papers, case studies and a guide on using systems change are specific outcomes of the research program. A national network of EfS teacher educators continues the collaborations. Drawing on this example of academic engagement with sustainability in a discipline area that has been slow to engage, this chapter offers a theoretically robust way to scale up sustainability across the whole of a university.