Green Schools Globally: Stories of Impact on Education for Sustainable Development

453 Pages·2020·7.138 MB·English

by  Annette Gough, John Chi-Kin Lee, Eric Po Keung Tsang

International Explorations in Outdoor
and Environmental Education
Annette Gough
John Chi-Kin Lee
Eric Po Keung Tsang  Editors
Green
Schools
Globally
Stories of Impact on Education
for Sustainable Development
International Explorations in Outdoor
and Environmental Education
Series Editors
Annette Gough, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Noel Gough, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Editorial Board
Peter Bentsen, Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Susanna Ho, Ministry of Education, Singapore, Singapore
Kathleen Kesson, Long Island University, Brooklyn, USA
John Chi-Kin Lee, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong
Justin Lupele, Academy for Education Development, Lusaka, Zambia
Greg Mannion, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK
Pat O’Riley, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Chris Reddy, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Hilary Whitehouse, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia
This series focuses on contemporary trends and issues in outdoor and environmental
education, two key fields that are strongly associated with education for sustainability
and its associated environmental, social and economic dimensions. It also has an
international focus to encourage dialogue across cultures and perspectives. The
scope of the series includes formal, nonformal and informal education and the need
for different approaches to educational policy and action in the twenty first century.
Research is a particular focus of the volumes, reflecting a diversity of approaches
to outdoor and environmental education research and their underlying epistemological
and ontological positions through leading edge scholarship.
The scope is also be both global and local, with various volumes exploring the
issues arising in different cultural, geographical and political contexts. As such, the
series aims to counter the predominantly “white” Western character of current
research in both fields and enable cross-cultural and transnational comparisons of
educational policy, practice, project development and research.
The purpose of the series is to give voice to leading researchers (and emerging
leaders) in these fields from different cultural contexts to stimulate discussion and
further research and scholarship to advance the fields through influencing policy
and practices in educational settings. The volumes in the series are directed at active
and potential researchers and policy makers in the fields. Book proposals for this
series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Claudia Acuna E-mail: Claudia.
[email protected]
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11799
Annette Gough • John Chi-Kin Lee
Eric Po Keung Tsang
Editors
Green Schools Globally
Stories of Impact on Education
for Sustainable Development
Editors
Annette Gough John Chi-Kin Lee
School of Education Offices of the President
RMIT University The Education University of Hong Kong
Melbourne, VIC, Australia Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong
Eric Po Keung Tsang
Department of Science and
Environmental Studies
The Education University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong
ISSN 2214-4218 ISSN 2214-4226 (electronic)
International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education
ISBN 978-3-030-46819-4 ISBN 978-3-030-46820-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46820-0
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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This book is dedicated to the families of
Annette Gough, John Chi-Kin Lee and Eric
Po Keung Tsang
Series Editors’ Foreword
The ancestry of this book, the fifth in our series, lies in large part in a long-standing
history of conversations and collaborations among the co-editors of this series and
this book’s co-editors, with Annette Gough being a common element.
In the early 1990s, John Chi-Kin Lee, who was then teaching at The Chinese
University of Hong Kong (CUHK) while working on his PhD thesis (researching
environmental education in Hong Kong primary schools), initiated a paper-based
(snail mail) correspondence with each of us to seek our publications and advice, a
correspondence we have happily continued beyond John’s roles at CUHK into his
current position as Vice-President (Academic) at The Education University of Hong
Kong (EdUHK). Prior to taking up his vice-presidency at what was then known as
The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIE), we had been collaborating with Eric
Po Keung Tsang on research projects sponsored by the Hong Kong Environmental
Campaign Committee. Eric also led the development of the Institute’s Master of
Arts (Education for Sustainability) – MA (EfS) – programme, within which we
designed, developed and delivered two subjects (Research Methods and Thesis
Writing) and supervised a number of the students’ research projects between 2014
and 2019.
As discussed elsewhere in this book (see Chapter 1), an early stimulus for a
global green schools movement can be found in Agenda 21 (1993, p. 25), the out-
comes document from the United Nations (1993) Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED, aka Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 to 14
June 1992, which frequently refers to the desirability of youth participation in envi-
ronmental protection and promoting economic and social development. However, as
discussed in Chapter 3, the seeds for such a movement had already been planted by
the Foundation for Environmental Education in Europe (FEEE), which was already
offering a Blue Flag program which promoted sound environmental education and
sustainable management of beaches, marinas and boating operators worldwide.
With this focus on the desirability of youth participation in mind, we have been
very pleased to witness the recent emergence of XR (Extinction Rebellion) and
Greta Thunberg’s ‘School Strike for the Climate’ as global movements (see
Extinction Rebellion 2019; Greta Thunberg 2019), and we are confident that few
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viii Series Editors’ Foreword
readers of this series will need to look very far beyond current headlines to appre-
hend the growing acceptance of a widespread view that humanity is on the cusp of
natural, cultural and historical crises that involve complexities for which we are
poorly prepared. However, acceptance of this view does not guarantee support for
sociopolitical actions that could ameliorate the effects of these crises. Some see a
conservative and controlled state of affairs to be the best action strategy, whereas
others are exploring and innovating and experimenting and experiencing and reflect-
ing and laying down many differing paths for knowing and learning and doing
and…and…and….
We align ourselves with the latter position and, although we initially located our
understanding of the conjunction “and…and…and….” in Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari’s (1987, p. 25) work, we are also attracted to Guattari’s (1984, pp. 11–23)
prior notion of transversality. In geometry, a transversal is a line that passes through
two lines in the same plane at two distinct points, which Guattari (1984, p. 13)
deploys metaphorically in his critique of the politics of institutional
psychotherapy:
The idea of transversality is opposed to:
(a) Verticality, as described in the organogrammes of a pyramidal structure (leaders, assis-
tants, etc.)
(b) Horizontality, as it exists in the disturbed wards of a hospital or, even more, in the senile
wards; in other words a state of affairs in which things and people fit in as best they can with
the situations in which they find themselves
We also interpret transversality as carrying connotations of intellectual mobility
across disciplinary boundaries, including the establishment of a continuum through-
out theory, practice and militant action.
Anja Kanngieser (2012) extends Guattari’s work to map out a movement that
destabilises categorical dualisms between activists and non-activists, artists and
non-artists, through a creative and ambiguous form of political intervention that she
characterises as ‘the performative encounter’. Kanngieser (2012, p. 267) adapts the
term ‘performative encounter’ from Mireille Rosello (2005) who draws upon fic-
tional literary and filmic texts connected to the North African region of the Maghreb,
to identify a new potential emerging in Franco-Algerian relations that stands to
counterbalance a violent history of colonisation. Characterising a performative
encounter as ‘a multidimensional event that creates subjects’, Rosello (2005, p. 2)
argues that this potential is linked to the transformations that performative encoun-
ters effect on subjectivity.
We are disposed to distance ourselves from any categorical dualisms that per-
vade political debates about climate change and other environmental issues, and we
therefore welcome Kanngieser’s (2012, p. 265) provocations to extend Guattari’s
(1984) concept of transversality in order to open spaces for the emergence of new
subjectivities, relations and worlds. In doing so it critically extends Guattari’s con-
ceptualisations of political organisation, group subjectivation and aesthetics into
radical political terrains that are antagonistic of the nation-state and capital at the
same time as being affirmative of possible present and future conditions.
Series Editors’ Foreword ix
We suggest that being open to the concept of transversality might also be genera-
tive for readers of this volume. We suspect that many readers will be tempted to be
very selective in their choices/priorities about which chapters they prioritise, but
being open to transversal connections across chapters might be more rewarding.
The country stories of various green school movements in Part II describe a wide
range of experiences – successful and not necessarily so – with an enthusiasm for
environmental education and providing opportunities for students and schools to
engage with their local environments and develop sustainable lifestyles that are con-
sistent with the intentions of the recommendations from the 1992 Earth Summit.
Although not all schools in the countries are participating in the green school move-
ments available to them, and not all governments are making (environmental) edu-
cation for sustainable development mandatory in their school curricula, there is still
much to learn from the experiences reported in the stories.
This is an important book for starting, and continuing, conversations around
green school movements, their impact on education for sustainable development
and the enablers and barriers encountered by the movements. We are confident that
educators around the world will find this volume of interest to their practice at
all levels.
RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Annette Gough
La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Noel Gough
References
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia
(B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Extinction Rebellion. (2019). This is not a drill: The extinction rebellion handbook. London:
Penguin Books, Limited. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1FnQxAEACAAJ
Guattari, F. (1984). Molecular revolution: Psychiatry and politics (R.  Sheed, Trans.).
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Kanngieser, A. (2012). … And … and … and … The transversal politics of performative encoun-
ters. Deleuze Studies, 6(2), 265–290. https://euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/dls.2012.0062
Rosello, M. (2005). France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters. Gainesville: University
of Florida Press.
Thunberg, G. (2019). No one is too small to make a difference. London: Penguin Press.
United Nations. (1993). Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action from Rio. Retrieved
from http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
Acknowledgements
The editors would like to thank all of the authors who have provided chapters for
this book. Their enthusiasm for the task and their patience is greatly appreciated.
We would also like to thank those people who supported the authors in research-
ing, writing and illustrating their chapters. Many have been acknowledged at the
ends of the chapters, but others may not have been, and we would like to recognise
their support. Annette wishes to acknowledge that this book was edited and her
chapters written on the unceded lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung peo-
ples of the Eastern Kulin Nation who are the Traditional Custodians of these lands
and pays her respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
We have endeavoured to obtain permission for the illustrative materials where
needed, but please contact us if we have missed anyone.
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