Education for Sustainable Development Through Extra-Curricular or Non-curricular Contexts

Citation

Rushton EAC & Batchelder M (2019) Education for Sustainable Development Through Extra-Curricular or Non-curricular Contexts. In: Quality Education. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69902-8_19-1

Abstract
Introduction: Over the last 40 years, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has grown out of Environmental Education (EE) and Development Education (ED) in a complex and complicated evolution (Hart and Nolan 1999; Marcinkowski 2009; Kopnina 2012; Stevenson 2013) that is beyond the scope of this entry. To avoid ambiguity, ESD is used in this entry to mean learning that promotes “sustainable development” and that “sustainable development” represents a desire to move away from existing models of development which leave the needs of the planet and people unbalanced, toward those models which support a prosperous and peaceful world for all (Wals 2009), while accepting that the meanings of this definition is open to debate. The focus of this entry is to consider the role of extra-curricular/non-curricular settings as a context for ESD. At the outset the usage and meanings of the terms are briefly explored, which include the terms informal and nonformal learning. The challenges and opportunities provided by extra-curricular/non-curricular activities in a range of settings are discussed before some examples of these types of ESD are outlined. The entry concludes by suggesting possible future directions.