Arts for Sustainability: Teachers’ Perspectives of Intersections between Education for Sustainability and Arts Learning

Issues of sustainability are real and an increasingly prominent part of children's life experiences. Accordingly, education for sustainability is a highly relevant and growing field in the formal education sector, particularly since sustainability is now embedded as a cross-curriculum priority in the Australian Curriculum. This chapter explores teachers' perspectives of intersections between the fields of education for sustainability and arts learning and considers the affordances each field offers the other.

Results are presented from a pilot study conducted with a small number of teachers who participated in an education for sustainability professional learning event hosted by the University of Tasmania in 2013. In interviews conducted after the event participating teachers shared their classroom experiences, elaborating upon a range of connections they perceived between sustainability education and arts learning.

The findings of this study are discussed in relation to key discourses within the fields of arts education and sustainability education. Inter-relationships between the two fields lead to an emergent conceptualization of arts for sustainability. The chapter concludes with calls for further research in this area to more fully explore the pedagogical synergies between arts-rich learning and sustainability education.