Obtain a sustainable education

 

When the concept of sustainability enters education

 

Author

Marianne Dubé is a pedagogical advisor at the Université de Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada). As part of her duties, she coordinated the fabriqueREL (Quebec) from 2019 to 2023. It was through the fabriqueREL that she discovered a passion for open education and OER: real ways of embodying knowledge as a common good.

 
Acknowledgements

This text, in its current state, is the fruit of discussions, the integration of comments and feedback from colleagues, which, without their critical eye and collaborative stance, would not have been presentable.  

  • Jean-François Comeau (Université de Sherbrooke): reflections on the conceptualisation of the four pillars of sustainable education.
  • Claude Potvin (Université Laval), Maryse Beaulieu, Constance Denis and Jean-Sébastien Dubé (Université de Sherbrooke): (much) commented reviews.
  • Nadia Villeneuve (Université Laval): literature review.

 

Various actors in open education (OE) from around the world accepted Colin de la Higuera’s invitation to write a series of posts on OE. This text is part of that initiative. It is the fruit of reflections and questioning on the proposed subject: Achieving sustainable education. To begin with, I have a few questions: Does the sustainability model have anything to contribute to the OE ecosystem? Why does OE need to incorporate a sustainability model? Isn’t education already sustainable? What do we mean by sustainable education?

Although this subject seems to require a systemic and multidisciplinary approach, necessarily including specialists in the fundamentals of education, I am sharing my thoughts from the perspective of a practitioner, in the hope of opening up the discussion more widely. 

After a quick, contextualised review (including “grey literature”), I immediately understand that: 

  1. The concept of sustainable education is poorly defined, if at all, in the literature consulted in the field of education;
  2. The sources consulted deal more with education for sustainable development, sustainable management of an educational establishment or the integration of sustainable development into training.

Concepts for discussion

I feel it is necessary to contextualise certain concepts on which I base my reflections: 

The most popular definition of sustainable development (SD) is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland and CMED, 1987). The three fundamental pillars of sustainable development are the environment, the economy and society. The term “sustainable” (Usito dictionary) is generally used to refer to SD and its three pillars, and is imbued with an ecological awareness and a concern for a fairer global economy. It also has a temporal notion, implying a duration in time, with or without limited temporal access.

Open education, for its part, refers to “an approach to education that aims to remove barriers to learning by implementing open educational practices in courses and by creating and using open educational resources (OER)” (CARL, 2020). Here, the concept of accessibility is an integral part of open education, particularly in terms of content (universal access), economics (free) and time (permanent access).

As for quality education (SDG [Sustainable Development Goal] 4 of the same wording), this is expressed in particular by free access to primary and secondary education for girls and boys, but does not characterise either the quality of education or educational success. The Ministry of Higher Education in Quebec defines the latter as follows

“[the] acquisition and integration by students of knowledge and skills linked to high-level training that is part of their personal project and contributes to their professional, artistic, scientific, cultural, civic and personal development” (MoES, 2021, p. 12).

In this contextualisation exercise, we have to admit that these definitions converge on certain points, namely accessibility and equity in a long-term vision. 

(Re)defining the angle of reflection

The concept of sustainable education, although not very present, seems to be approached with different components depending on who is writing the texts. De la Higuera (2024) raises a paradox concerning the time-limited availability of educational resources: once the course has finished, it is not uncommon for access to the course site and therefore to the resources to lapse. In this context, how can we promote sustainability? This highlights the need for a paradigm shift, from a concept of learning centred on content and the teacher to one centred on the learner and his or her success.

With one of my colleagues (Dubé and Soukpa (2023)), we detailed the contribution of OER to the achievement of the SDGs and broke down into major contributions (SDGs 4, 10, 12 and 9) and minor contributions (nine other SDGs). However, thinking about sustainable education needs to go beyond the contribution of OER to the SDGs.

In order to train professional people capable of contributing to sustainable development, UNESCO (2017) identifies a list of eight essential competences. From these, Beaulieu and Soukpa (2024) targeted six that they contextualised to the higher education environment. They mention their frequent presence in the graduation profiles of university programmes. It seems essential to integrate the development of soft skills and cross-disciplinary competencies into a concept of sustainable education.

The concept of (sustainable) education fluctuates with each reading. Ideas relating to the development of cross-disciplinary skills, pedagogy, accessibility and sustainability of educational resources, not forgetting the contribution to the SDGs, are scattered throughout. An integrated approach to these ideas would make it possible to think about the concept of sustainable education in a comprehensive way.

The four pillars of…sustainable education (!)

Schéma qui présente les quatre piliers de l'éducation durable. Il s'agit d'un diagramme de venne à 4 cercles (les 4 piliers). Les interconnexions de ces cercles présentent 4 qualificatifs. Au centre, se trouve le concept d'éducation durable.

Inspired by the concept of the fundamental pillars of SD (environmental, social, economic), I had some fun thinking what the “pillars of sustainable education” would be, including the different characteristics I had identified in my reading:

  1. access to quality knowledge (“savoirs de qualité”): this is the generic term Knowledge, which includes conceptual knowledge popularised in the language of instruction and which has a credible scientific basis, experiential know-how, interpersonal skills and competencies;
  2. use and sharing of open educational resources (OER; “REL”): this is permanent content that can be used for educational purposes, including student productions;
  3. learner-centred (“centrée apprenant.e”) approach: this involves placing learners at the heart of their learning project (an active, experiential teaching approach), with the aim of developing both subject-specific and cross-disciplinary skills;
  4. an approach based on the co-construction of knowledge and skills: experiential knowledge developed both within the school community and with external partners must also be included.

From these four interconnected pillars emerge the qualifiers of sustainable education:

  • efficient because the central objective is quality education, which is possible thanks to quality knowledge that is popularised and disseminated via OER;
  • accessible because of the qualities inherent in OER (available permanently, immediately and free of charge, right from the start of a course). OER can be modified in terms of accessibility and pedagogy, and can be adjusted to the needs and posture of learners and teachers;
  • inclusive, thanks to the active contribution of contributors to the design of OER of varying granularity (from pedagogical grain to syllabus) and of learners in pedagogical activities that place them at the centre of learning processes;
  • contextualised by combining the knowledge of the various stakeholders to improve this knowledge or develop new knowledge.

So, considering these pillars and the adjectives that emerge from the interconnections, the concept of sustainable education seems to offer some exploitable material. Behind this proposal lies a reflective stance that includes a desire to explore the potential of this idea of sustainable education further, to change the angle of reflection and to enrich the ideas previously put forward. This writing exercise, although very brief, turned out to be fascinating and enabled me to clarify the concept of sustainable education a little. It goes without saying that the subject deserves to be explored in greater depth in future contributions.

 

Please note that this article has been translated with the help of artificial intelligence and reviewed by individuals who are not professional translators. Despite our efforts to ensure accuracy and fidelity, errors or inaccuracies may remain. Feel free to let us know at: chaireunescorelia@univ-nantes.fr

 

References 

  • Brundtland, G. H et Commission mondiale sur l’environnement et le développement. (1987). Notre avenir à tous. Éditions Lambda.
  • Soukpa, M.-S., Beaulieu, M., & Cabana, M. (2025, février 14). Comment la pédagogie peut-elle sauver le monde !? . Université de Sherbrooke, Service de soutien à la formation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14871825

 

License
Licence Creative Commons

This article by Marianne Dubé is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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