Page 114 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

Chapter 9
Communicating Education for Sustainable

Development

Inka Bormann

Abstract There are a number of reasons for communicating education for sustainable
development (ESD). One is to use external events to demonstrate the syndrome of
unsustainable development in educational contexts; another is to analyse scientific
debates on the concept of ESD, including its legitimacy and function and on the
political background of the concept of sustainable development. In this context a
number of different concepts of ESD are discussed.

Keywords Education for sustainable development • Measurability of education
• Criteria and indicators • Competences

Reasons for Communicating Education
for Sustainable Development

The ecological catastrophe resulting from the damaged Deep Water Horizon
drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico (beginning April 2010) can be related to
lifestyles and consumption patterns in industrialized countries and shows the
mutual interpenetration of a number of elements of unsustainable development.
(i) Recognizing this, communicating it and critically reflecting on it can be a
reason for ESD – in which for example attention is drawn to the links between this
issue and ecological, social and economic problem fields (Michelsen 2005).
Initiating ESD programmes using such issues based on the assumption that prob-
lems to which the solution is at first beyond an individual’s ability to influence are
important and legitimate subjects for education. This is in line with Agenda 21
(1992), which served as the starting point for developing the concept of ESD.

I. Bormann (*)
Phillips University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany
e-mail: inka.bormann@staff.uni-marburg.de

J. Godemann and G. Michelsen (eds.), Sustainability Communication: Interdisciplinary 97
Perspectives and Theoretical Foundations, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1697-1_9,
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011