Big Ideas are also known as “Enduring Understandings”. They operate at the level of principles that are transferable. They describe the big ideas students will understand, and that will have lasting value (“why” we are learning) in the real world over time. They serve as the rationales for the content and performance standards but are not the same. The list of Big Ideas that are associated with educating for sustainability is not complete or exhaustive. This is a collection of the Big Ideas that were independently articulated again and again by the authors and scholars in the field, and thought to be essential for humans and other life to flourish on Earth over time. These big ideas collectively frame the other essential elements of EfS and serve as a distinguishing characteristic of the field.

  1. LIVING ON PLANET EARTH

  • A healthy and sustainable future for human and other life is possible

  • Adaptability helps all living things (including humans) survive (even thrive) over time

  • Creativity (the generation of new forms) is a key property of all living systems and contributes to nature’s ability to sustain life

  • Humans are dependent on Earth’s life-support systems

  • Diversity makes complex life possible. It assures resilience in living systems

  • Everything must go somewhere because there is no such place as “away”. Matter and energy do not appear or disappear. They cannot be created or destroyed. In a healthy community, one species’ waste is another species’ food

  • All systems have limits. Healthy systems live within their limits. Tap the power of limits.

  • Life organizes towards life. Life contributes to its own regenerative capacity, and so far, .1% of all the species that have existed on Earth have prevailed.

  • Places are alive, unique and evolving. If humans want to flourish over time, our relationships with the places in which we live must be mutually beneficial

  • There is an appropriate rate and scale for every living thing and they may not be the same in every circumstance

  • Change is inevitable. Life is dynamic and living systems develop or they die

  • We are all in this together: We are interdependent on each other and on the natural systems

  • Nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities

  • Living and non-living things are subject to the laws and principles derived from nature

 2. MAKING CHANGE

  • A small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything

  • A sustainable solution solves more than one problem at a time and minimizes the creation of new problems

  • Treating symptoms makes them worse over time, creates new problems and doesn’t address the fundamental problem. Create change at the source not the symptom

  • Quick fixes to complex problems tend to back fire

  • Every system is perfectly formed to get the results it gets

  • The changes to the Earth’s surface environments made by

  • human activity are causing unintended consequences on the health and well-being of human and other life on Earth (proposed Anthropocene Epoch)

  • The significant problems we face can’t be solved with the same thinking we used to create them

  • Our prior experiences with the world create cognitive frameworks (also known as mental models/maps) that inform

  • what we can perceive. They shape our behavior and our behavior causes results. If we want to produce different results, it all begins with a change in thinking

  • There is no beginning or end in a system. Intervene where there are favorable conditions, i.e., where and when possible

 2. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DIFFERENCE WE MAKE

  • Fairness applies to all. To us, to them and to the “we” that binds us all together

  • Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

  • We all depend on and are responsible for “the commons”, i.e., what we share and hold in trust for future generations. Recognize and Protect the Commons

  • Individual Rights are upheld by Collective Responsibilities. We must reconcile them when they come into conflict with one another

  • We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and

  • behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback

  • We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don’t do makes a difference