| This dissertation centers around the application of ecological principles and systems thinking to re-structuring schools so that they become key sites for promoting sustainable development. The research is partly based on an ethnographic study done at three public schools (one primary school and two secondary ones) in high poverty areas in Colombia, South America that attempt to foster competence, care, and appreciation to awaken the dimensions of the political, environmental and aesthetic in all students. The schools are doing this by replacing the individualistic, classroom-based, book-centered learning so common in modern schools with a search for balance between the individual and the collectivity, reflection and action, and school and community. The schools have also substituted a fragmented curriculum with an interdisciplinary one that focuses around the study of place.;Moreover, the two secondary schools have established school-based enterprises with a social and ecological orientation to encourage in students a sense of responsible entrepreneurship. The connection between education, sustainable development and economics is still in its infancy. As it currently stands, even if schools teach noble values and beliefs, the reality of the economic system is such that graduates end up accepting jobs that contradict the principles learned in school. For this reason, this dissertation seeks to make the case that progressive educational change must not be limited to what happens in the classroom or even school, but instead must look at the wider connections with other social systems, especially with the economic one. |
