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Professional Learning in Sustainability Education and Local Curriculum Design: One School’s Practice Development Through Critical Participatory Action Research

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Thesis(16.23 MB)

Date

2025

Authors

Hulbert, Rachelle

Supervisor

Youngs, Howard
Swanson, Carolyn
Benade, Leon

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Doctor of Education

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

The thesis investigates how professional learning and development (PLD) can support primary school teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand to embed sustainability education into their teaching practice and local curriculum design. It establishes the growing urgency of sustainability at both local and global levels and highlights the critical role that schools play in preparing students to respond to these challenges. Despite growing recognition of sustainability in education, a persistent gap remains between policy rhetoric and classroom practice, shaped by political and economic agendas that prioritise growth over sustainability. Grounded in the theory of practice architectures, this single-site case study examines how school-based practice arrangements and teachers’ sayings, doings, and relatings enabled or constrained the integration of sustainability education and local curriculum design. A critical participatory action research (CPAR) design documented teachers’ evolving understandings of sustainability, their engagement with PLD, and opportunities created to embed sustainability themes into planning and pedagogy. The research was conducted through critical participatory action research (CPAR) cycles across three distinct phases of the research. Phase One examined the local context; Phase Two evaluated the Sustainability Education and Local Curriculum Design (SELCD) PLD; and Phase Three explored how the PLD was embedded into practice. The findings show that, while sustainability remains an ambiguous concept requiring contextual definition, teachers’ practices still shifted across the phases as they integrated sustainability into curriculum planning. New sayings, doings, and relatings emerged, including place-based inquiry units, Indigenous knowledge integration, and peer-supported learning structures. These practices reflected growing teacher agency and reconfigured practice arrangements. The study revealed that PLD for sustainability must engage with cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements to support long-term change. Key elements include holistic models of sustainability, practical frameworks and resources, localised learning opportunities, time for integration, and a whole-school approach that fosters collaboration. The study offers a context-responsive, bespoke PLD model for sustainability education that is embedded, localised, and transformative. By foregrounding teachers’ lifeworlds and recognising the personal and professional dimensions shaping practice, the model has the potential to enrich the developing literature on site-ontological approaches to sustainability education and teacher professional learning.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/20139

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Doctoral Theses