Integrating sustainability: What do we mean by “innovation”?

As teachers and educators, we play an important role in helping our learners develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to flourish as citizens of the world, and many of these skills relate to sustainability.

‘Sustainability encompasses the knowledge, skills and attitudes we need to ensure a fairer, brighter future for people and the natural world’ 

The Cambridge Sustainability Framework for ELT maps sustainability into four dimensions: knowledge, values, innovation, and transformation. In this post, we take a deeper look at what the innovation dimension involves, and how we can help our learners to develop their skills in this area. 

What do we mean by innovation? 

Exploring perspectives 

Looking at the perspectives of different people and social groups in our local and global communities helps us work towards sustainable solutions.  Exploring perspectives includes critically evaluating sustainability claims.  This means interpreting and drawing inferences from sustainability arguments and data, and identifying any underlying bias or assumptions in arguments or the way data is presented.  We also need to consciously explore our own personal perspectives on environmental, social and economic sustainability issues, and actively research perspectives held by other individuals and organisations. Framing and reframing issues can help us to incorporate new information and explore an issue from different perspectives. Comparing and contrasting perspectives helps us build an understanding of the bigger picture in relation to sustainability questions or issues. Exploring and taking into account different perspectives on an issue is essential if we are to gain a deeper understanding of sustainability issues and start generating ideas for potential solutions. 

Exploring perspectives: Classroom tips

When learners read, listen to, look at images, or watch videos relating to sustainability issues, encourage them to think critically about the information. Use questions such as:

• Why is the information presented in this way?
• Is this fact, or someone’s opinion? How do you know?
• What does the author want the reader/viewer to think and feel about this?

Encourage learners to explore different perspectives on sustainability issues using questions such as:

• How might someone else in my community view this issue?
• How might someone in another part of the world view this issue?
• How can I find out what other perspectives people might have on this issue?

Generating ideas

Once we fully understand the challenges we want to address, we can start generating ideas for better solutions in our local and global communities.  Generating ideas for sustainability involves imagining how the future might unfold in relation to environmental, social and economic issues, and exploring ways in which we would like to see it unfold differently.  When we can imagine an alternative and more positive future, we can recognise and explore where, when and how positive change might happen, and identify ways to help make it happen.

But we’re not starting from zero: a lot of positive change is already happening, with groups and organisations around the world exploring, facilitating, and implementing ideas and solutions. Identifying sustainable alternatives – researching and drawing on these existing successful sustainability projects or enterprises – helps us to start innovating for sustainable development: generating new ideas and exploring how we can put these ideas into practice. 

Generating ideas: Classroom tips

• Invite learners to imagine and describe how they would like the world to be different in the future. Invite them to illustrate and share their ideas.

• Encourage learners to research and explore positive actions that are already being implemented by groups and organisations around the world.

• Encourage creativity by celebrating originality – encourage learners to think outside the box, be creative, and take inspiration from the world around them.

Exploring solutions 

Having considered diverse perspectives and generated ideas, we can then put this thinking into practice, by exploring solutions to help tackle sustainability issues and challenges – in both our local and global communities.  We need to actively promote equality, non-discrimination, and equity – not only during the process of generating sustainability solutions, but also in the solutions we come up with.  When presenting ideas and solutions, we should be able to justify them in relation to their sustainability impact, and convince others of their value in relation to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Once sustainability solutions are implemented – whether they are our own implemented solutions or those of other people, groups or organisations – we should then reflect on them to evaluate their effectiveness.

Exploring solutions: Classroom tips

When learners come up with possible solutions for sustainability, issues and challenges, encourage them to think more deeply about their ideas, using questions such as:

• How might this solution work in practice?
• How might other people respond to this solution?
• Who might be affected by this solution?
• Is the solution fair for everyone?

Developing sustainability innovation in the classroom

To help you integrate the development of sustainability skills into your teaching, we’ve created a set of activity cards for different stages of learning. These provide a range of activities for each Core Area of the Sustainability Framework for ELT.  Here are some examples from the innovation dimension for different stages of learning:

Exploring perspectives: Adult learners

Generating ideas: Teenage learners

Exploring solutions: Young learners

Find more inspiration and activities for helping your learners to develop their sustainability skills in the Innovation dimension in our activity cards for Young Learners, Teenage Learners and Adult Learners.

Teaching sustainability helps learners to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to flourish as citizens of the world. Take a look at our “Sustainability Skills” page, and discover tips on how you can integrate sustainability into your English classroom.