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The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a curricular perspective, fresh ideas emanating from the USA that have potential to improve educational settings across the globe. As such, this conceptual undertaking begins by arguing that little attention is being paid to the quality of present experiences in schools and classrooms. Stated differently, there is too much focus on tests, standards, workforce development and college readiness. Subsequently, educators are ignoring present experiences, which in the authors’ view may lead to mis-education rather than education.

To assist the authors in understanding this problem, as well as remedying it, they examine John Dewey’s ideas about experience generally and his notions of continuity and interaction in particular. From there, the authors argue that to delve deeply into present experiences, educators might use ideas found in aesthetic and ecological education. They elaborate upon each based on their prior research into a style of aesthetic education called CRISPA, an acronym that stands for connections, risk-taking, sensory experiences, perceptivity and active engagement, and a mode of ecological education called ecological mindedness.

The authors suggest that educators use CRISPA. Further, they argue that attention be paid to ecological care, interconnectedness and integrity.

The authors believe that workforce development and college readiness are important goals, but to achieve these goals, as well as any others deemed important by educators in their local contexts, we must focus on the quality of present experiences for both teachers and students. Only then will we have an education worthy of the appellation.

Volgograd, Russia, my home for most of my life, was entirely rebuilt after World War II. Under its prior name, Stalingrad, the city was the epicenter for what many believe was the most crucial battle in the entire war. That battle came at the cost of many millions dead and wounded and the destruction of all but one shell of a building. From this oblivion, a new city arose under the direct order of Stalin, who mobilized captured German engineers for the task. Following his concept of planning, the city would be long and narrow, hugging the banks of the mighty Volga River for some 80km. The width would involve only two main thoroughfares with side streets. The narrow profile would allow for farms and dachas to be close by on one side and the river on the other, providing bounteous and accessible food. Residences were organized in neighborhoods formed around key enterprises lining the river to meet their needs for water. The neighborhood designs allowed workers to easily walk to work. It was a truly utopian scheme.

In the United States, the mandate to provide access to general education curriculum standards for all learners is clear. This chapter provides an overview and a framework for making individualized and curriculum choices for learners with low-incidence disabilities and cognitive deficits. Topics covered include reconciling an ecological curriculum model with a standards-based framework and an expanded discussion on embedding individualized learning targets within the ongoing lessons, routines, and activities of inclusive classrooms. Carefully planned and implemented embedded instruction can provide a match between a student’s need for individualized instruction and the everyday practices of inclusive classrooms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the integration of Okala curriculum into Interior Design coursework. Okala, as a teaching package, is utilized extensively in industrial design education. However, this study examines the expansion and insertion of Okala modules in an existing interior design curriculum. The Okala modules included were: broad ecological information, eco‐design history, and strategies and processes for ecological design implementation. To interpret if the integration was effective, an online survey was developed and distributed to students enrolled in the course.

The survey was administered at the end of the spring 2009 semester. To evaluate the effectiveness of Okala modules and the perceived perceptions of the students' awareness toward the environment – ecologically, economically and sustainably – the researchers used the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) questionnaire. Developed by Dunlap and Van Liere in 1978, the NEP has been a reliable instrument in several previous studies, has measured other populations' attitudes toward the environment, and correlates well with the intent of researching Okala modules.

The key findings suggest that the incorporation of Okala modules: heightened students' confidence that humans' ability to produce environmentally‐friendly technologies will not allow for environmental collapse; equalized students' feelings about humans' and nature's rights; and did not change students' perception about Earth's capabilities and limits. Overall, the study had successfully determined students' environmental feelings prior to and after course instruction.

This paper exposes the importance of integrating sustainable development and interdisciplinary coursework into the content of a curriculum‐required course.

The purpose of this article is to explore sustainability commitments’ potential implications for the curriculum of introductory economics courses. Universities have signed the Talloires Declaration, committing themselves to promoting students’ environmental literacy and ecological citizenship, thereby creating pressure to integrate sustainability across the curriculum.

A case study approach involving qualitative research methods and the three largest public universities in British Columbia, Canada, was used. As one component of a larger study, 11 of the 19 economists who delivered the course over the study period were interviewed. The theoretical framework was informed by ecological economics scholarship on how mainstream economic thought represents environment-economy linkages.

Findings suggest that universities’ sustainability commitments have not influenced principles of economics curriculum. Sustainability is not salient to lecturers; prospects that mainstream economics departments will integrate sustainability into curriculum in a timely manner without external pressure appear limited.

While institutions often enthusiastically report on courses that contribute to students’ ecological literacy, identifying curriculum that may confound student understanding of sustainability receives less emphasis. Introductory economics courses appear to merit scrutiny from this perspective.

About 40 per cent of North American university students take an introductory economics course, relatively few take more advanced economics courses. This course, thus, teaches many students economic theory and the economics profession’s approach to evaluating public policy, and has potential to contribute to knowledge of sustainability. Few studies examine how undergraduate economics curriculum addresses sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine school health education in the USA and present alternative approaches for more critical and comprehensive health education.

An ecological model framework is used to identify the limitations and opportunities for improvement in school health education in the USA. An argument is made for school health education that embraces ecological approaches, political economy theory, and critical pedagogies.

US schools have been tasked with providing health education that is primarily rooted in individualistic approaches. Often missing from this education is recognition of the social and structural determinants of health that greatly influence one’s ability to practice the health behaviors promoted in schools. This raises pedagogical and ethical concerns, which can be addressed by teaching health education that is grounded in ecological and political economy understandings of health and in critical pedagogies that allow students to more comprehensively and accurately understand health, how their worlds influence health, and their agency within those worlds.

This paper offers justification for a critical model of school health education and for the professional preparation of school health educators that is grounded in critical pedagogy and ecological approaches.

This work complements other research on critical health education by adding explicit integration of the ecological model and the political economy theory within critical pedagogies.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance awareness and foment the concept of “eco‐citizenship” within today's students in higher education.

The paper takes the form of a literature review on environmental issues and spiritual thinking, student reports, discussion.

The paper's three main findings are: the need to develop educational methodologies that allow students to become advocates of a new society and way of thinking is insufficiently addressed so far; exposing students to such learning triggers a factual mindset change; and faculty and student engagement on matters of spirituality and environmental issues is becoming pivotal in a period where natural resource limitations in conjunction with overpopulation are stressing ecological systems to a threshold where it cannot be sustainable any further.

Further implementation of similar courses, and monitoring of students' long‐term behavioral changes are suggested to verify if such courses trigger a domino effect in terms of the emergence of the “eco‐citizen”.

This was the first time that such an educational approach was employed, where students not only critically investigated the course material in respect to environmental science and spirituality but also became facilitators to their own community, assisting in the development of good citizenship and enhancement of responsibility. It is clear to the authors that community interaction is very important in the curriculum design as the working ground to bring real world experience to the classroom as well as for the development of environmental and spiritual awareness. Based on the students' community activities and personal comments, in regard to the course focus and its effectiveness in changing their attitudes towards a more sustainable way of living, it was demonstrated that the course was successful.

Aiming to find out how to incorporate green building into the architectural curriculum, this study aims to explore the psychological path for cultivating architectural students’ awareness and motivation to learn the green design concepts and related technologies.

Based on a global review of relevant architectural courses in universities, a set of green building learning behaviors was proposed and a survey was conducted in architectural schools in South China to verify the “value-belief-norm” theory through the lens of green building learning behaviors. The psychological path that affects students’ green building learning behaviors was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results showed that biospheric and altruistic values could directly affect students’ motivation to learn green building, while personal norms served as the mediating condition for personal values and beliefs, and ultimately improved motivation.

The study suggests that the cultivation of environmental awareness and a sense of the ecological crisis should be developed through foundation courses, by establishing an ecological architecture curriculum, to more effectively guide students to learn and practice green building.

This study, for the first time, applied the “value-belief-norm” theory, which was developed to explain the psychological path for pro-environmental behaviors, to green building learning behaviors of architectural students.

To build awareness of an emergent global network of sustainability consortia, the network's Sustainability for the Americas (SFTA) regional cluster, its pilot US‐Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC), its subsequent North American Sustainability, Housing and Community Consortium (NASHCC), the process through which these consortia are emerging and evolving to sustained implementation, planned parallel academic and project funding tracks, and models, tools and techniques used for knowledge transfer. To build awareness of an emergent global sustainability network of multi‐national consortia of universities and non‐institutional partners created to promote sustainability and innovation that connects people, ideas, and resources for a sustainable future; and to invite people interested in multi‐national partnering to enter into a dialogue that can lead to emergence of a multi‐national consortium.

The paper establishes the need for key universities to lead society to a sustainable future. It builds understanding of the role of international partnering, global networking, global media networking, multi‐sector partnering, and sustainability consortia in this leadership. It identifies efforts of the Land Design Institute (LDI) at Ball State University and key partners to facilitate emergence of a global network of sustainability consortia. It reviews the model through which these consortia are emerging and evolving to sustained implementation, including the model's parallel academic and project funding streams. It focuses on the SFTA initiative, including its pilot consortium, as a case‐study in phased emergence and evolution to sustained implementation of these consortia. It presents the consortia model for integrating internal and external knowledge networks; and processes, tools, and techniques used by consortia to lead society to a sustainable future. It reviews the model's nested curricula and international collaborative partnership approach to building sustainability leadership. It builds on experiences to date in this pilot consortium to make suggestions for future consortia.

Paper findings include the relative ease of consortium emergence, seeding, implementation start‐up, and acquiring academic funding; relative difficulty of achieving sustained implementation and project funding; increased awareness of the need for project seeding; and a new understanding of the catalytic benefits of consortia, including increased faculty interaction, development, and productivity including professional papers, journal articles, and proposals for external funding.

The paper fulfills the need for effective models, processes, tools and techniques for international partnering to lead society to a sustainable future.

The education of future business leaders is centred in the many MBA programmes in the world. Most of these are based on the idea of managers acting as agents of capital whose task is then to be the agents of economic efficiency. This idea, taken from liberal market theory, is limited to a particular ideological stance. Provides a critique of that and other ideological stances from Christian conceptions of love and freedom, ethical and ecological grounds and argues that neither liberal market capitalism nor state centralism is acceptable. Argues that a changing understanding of both social and physical eco‐systems leads to a need to open up leadership education to a wider array of ideologies, including social democracy, democratic socialism and ecological conservationism. Otherwise the next generation of leaders will be less able to cope with the wider array of values in the global economy and unable to acknowledge their role of citizens as of equal importance with their organizational roles.