| Sustainable education is education in which students learn content relevant to sustainability, in a context where sustainability is modeled and supported by engaging and empowering pedagogical methods, and sound environmental practices. Sustainable education must also be suited to the local cultural/geographical milieu. Sustainable education in western China presents a challenge in this context since local education has traditionally emphasized rote learning through books and lectures. However, this traditional orientation is now changing with reforms to the Chinese education system.;This thesis concludes that there is broad support for ideas and practices related to sustainable education, but that effective sustainable education is not yet widely practiced. Quality sustainable education will build on the foundation of best practices in traditional education, augmented by new ideas and practices adapted to the local context, while increasing attention to the modeling of sustainability in educational processes and the context in which education occurs.;Survey responses of 251 western Chinese educators indicate that they place high importance on new content and pedagogical factors relevant to sustainable education, while assigning much lower importance to traditional education and a domestic orientation in the content. Survey responses also indicate that while the respondents have relatively high self-efficacy to implement sustainable education, they feel that school-level factors have a much less desirable impact on this implementation. Some significant differences are noted in the responses of participants from different counties, as well as differences related to interactions between the county, gender, and age of the participants. Participant-observer notes made during work experiences related to this research validate and provide some context to the survey results. |
