Educating for Sustainability: Competencies & Practices for Transformative Action
Achieving a sustainable future requires that individuals adopt different values, attitudes, habits, and behaviors, which are often learned and cemented at a young age. Unfortunately, current educational efforts are inadequate for achieving transformative action. Even programs whose primary goal is to promote responsible, pro-environmental behaviors have largely failed at creating change among students. The lack of efficacy in sustainability-related educational programs is at least partly due to faulty assumptions about knowledge automatically leading to action, and by extension, the information-intensive methods that focus largely on declarative knowledge regarding how environmental systems work. Meanwhile, social science literature clearly highlights the need to go beyond ecological and technical knowledge when educating for transformative action, since sustainable behaviors are motivated by much more than declarative information. In order to effectively educate for sustainability, alternative forms of knowledge (i.e., procedural, effectiveness, and social knowledge) are essential, as is the consideration of various barriers and motivators for action. The transition towards sustainability will require action and change that is guided by an understanding of the complexities that arise within an interconnected system, as well as the ability to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds, while keeping an eye to the future. In formulating our approach to educating for sustainability, we incorporate perspectives from three somewhat disparate fields: (i) behavioral change research, (ii) sustainability scholarship, and (iii) educational pedagogy. While drawing upon diverse knowledge domains, our primary purpose is to integrate behavior change research and sustainability competencies in developing effective educational approaches for transformative actions.
Erin Frisk comes to the School of Sustainability with a B.S. in Biology and Business Administration and an M.S. in Sustainable Systems. For the last 8 years her work and studies has been focused on educating for sustainability. Currently she is in her third year at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University seeking her Ph.D. 
Kelli Larson is currently an Assistant Professor in Arizona State University’s Schools of Sustainability and Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Focusing on human-environment interactions and water resource governance, her recent research examines risk perceptions, environmental attitudes, and ecological behaviors in the U.S. 
