Sustainability and education

ACU has a strong commitment to caring for our common home, as outlined in Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ and by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), which address the global challenges of poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice.

Last year’s inaugural ACU Sustainability Report featured a number of our researchers whose work supports the work of the UN SDGs including Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith, whose work with her collaborators directly addresses SDG 4 – quality education.

Supporting the future of education

Watch a Workplace video interview between Associate Professor Michael Baker and Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith to hear how the work of the ACU Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education is contributing to sustainability.

“The Sustainable Development Goals encapsulate what we could think of some of the major challenges facing humankind in the present era,” says Professor Wyatt-Smith.

She believes that this era of tumultuous change requires a shift to research that works in partnership to inform practice and policy.

“The sort of the research we need to undertake will need building on, extending, re-imagining, to engage with these global challenges. And education is the means by which we can make a contribution to how we engage”

“It’s a data-saturated communication world we’re in. I think one of the important roles for us, now, is to say what is the education that we want for our citizens? Education informed by the Sustainable Development Goals, and the critical inter-cultural communication and inter-cultural competence needed for the world we’re in. The sort of education we want whereby familiarity and expertise in using new digital platforms is built in. Where educators are agile, just as we talk about agility in the commercial world.”

Associate Professor Michael Baker and Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith discuss how the work of the ACU Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education is contributing to sustainability.