The Handbook of SUSTAINABILITY LITERACY: Skills for a changing world
What does the research say?
This handbook advocates for developing sustainability literacy, arguing that current societal trajectories are unsustainable. It proposes a shift in education toward developing practical skills for community resilience, alongside critical thinking about consumption, advertising, and economic systems. The text emphasizes relational thinking, ecological awareness, and the importance of integrating ethical and spiritual values into sustainable practices. It explores diverse approaches, including ecocriticism, permaculture, and appropriate technology, to foster a holistic understanding of sustainability and empowers learners to create positive change. Ultimately, it aims to cultivate a more conscious and interconnected relationship between humanity and the planet.
Why is it important?
Developing sustainability literacy not only plays a significant role in fighting climate change. It also fosters important future-facing literacies such as advertising awareness, commons thinking, materials awareness, ecological intelligence, systems and complexity thinking, developing a social conscience, and finding meaning without consumption.
What are the implications for education?
For educators, the lessons presented in the 32 chapters of this handbook provide opportunity for connecting the curriculum to a key 21st century theme which makes any curriculum real-world and learner relevant.
About the author
Arran Stibbe is Professor of Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester, England. He is the founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association, which has more than 1100 members. Stibbe’s scholarship focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in. He has analyzed the discursive construction of health, illness, animals, masculinity, the environment, and disability.
His areas of teaching include communication for leadership, language and ethics, identity. ecolinguistics, and critical discourse analysis. He has been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching. In collaboration with his students, Stibbe developed and produced the free online course The Stories we live by. He is currently developing a sequel to that course: New stories to live by.
Read the source article
There is nothing like reading the original. Here is a link to the handbook.