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EDEV-1363; No. of Pages 8 International Journal of Educational Development xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

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International Journal of Educational Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school Dan Gottlieb a,*, Eran Vigoda-Gadot a, Abraham Haim b, Meidad Kissinger c a

Division of Public Administration and Policy, School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel c Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel b

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Environmental education Ecological footprint analysis Education for sustainability

Education is widely acknowledged to be a means for advancing environmental sustainability. Many schools have recently introduced the idea of sustainability into their educational agenda and curriculum. This study uses an innovative method of communicating the principle of sustainability, the ‘Ecological Footprint’ Analysis, which illustrates the impact of community lifestyles upon the natural environment. This paper describes the process of integrating the concept of the ecological footprint at the high school level, analyzes the school’s ecological footprint, and discusses its contributions to education for sustainability in schools. ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In the international arena, education is seen as not only a fundamental human right but also a potential promoter of values and attitudes that can foster sustainable practices among students as future citizens. The decade from 2004 to 2015 has been declared by UNICEF as the decade of education for sustainability. The need for more citizens to think about not only the economic but also the environmental and social impact of their actions in order to facilitate more sustainable development has thereby been recognized (IUCN, 2003). The background to this research is the view that in general educational systems can be considered as having a potential role in raising public awareness and enabling students to make informed decisions. The particular potential of a school is its ability to help address sustainability from a local perspective. In its most basic definition, sustainability is a way of life that takes into account the limits of the natural environment in terms of supporting human beings. It refers to the ability of the human system to continue to maintain a production level or quality of life for future generations (Daly, 1990). To achieve sustainability means to ensure that all people can live well within the means of nature. Many believe that education holds the key to altering the environmentally damaging patterns of the human sphere, and that it is critically important in helping society to break away from unsustainable models in the process of human development. While not the complete answer, education ‘‘must be a vital part of

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +972 4 8597167; fax: +972 4 8288576. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Gottlieb).

all efforts to imagine and create new relations among people and to foster greater respect for the needs of the environment’’ (UNESCO, 1997). In this context, the essence of education for sustainability (EFS) is believed to be an acknowledgment that environmental, social and economic issues are inevitably interwoven, and thereby need to be addressed in a more holistic manner. In this framework, EFS is considered as more than the dissemination of knowledge of sustainability issues; it should also seek to engage students as future citizens in a critical reflection of current lifestyles and actions and enable them to make informed decisions and changes toward a more sustainable world (Palmer, 1998). As education for sustainability in schools receives more attention (Huckle and Sterling, 1996; Martin and Jucker, 2005; Rowe, 2007), it is necessary to develop methods for measuring the ‘ecological load’ of schools and to identify their potential contribution to sustainability. In recent years, several tools and concepts for measuring sustainability have been suggested (e.g., Becker, 2004; Kumar Singh et al., 2009). One approach that has been receiving a lot of attention in academic, policy and education circles is the ecological footprint (EF hereafter). The EF is defined as the total land area required to supply the natural resources an individual (a student in our study) or a community (for example, a school) consumes, and its capacity to absorb the waste and pollution it produces (Rees, 1992; Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). EF calculations have revealed that the natural services and resources now being consumed in many places throughout the world are having an impact that is in excess of nature’s renewable productivity and assimilative capacity. In many countries, the demand for ecological capacity exceeds its available biologically productive area. As a result, the depletion of natural resources is aggravated and has

0738-0593/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

Please cite this article in press as: Gottlieb, D., et al., The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

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become a severe worldwide environmental problem (Wackernagel et al., 2006; Kitzes and Wackernagel, 2009). There has recently been a worldwide increasing interest in EF analysis among environmental educators in schools and nongovernmental organizations. The overall goal of the present paper is to use the EF as an educational tool for sustainability in high schools. Our paper presents the results of a one-year research study (2008/ 2009) in one of the largest public high schools in the city of Haifa (Israel). During the research period, the size of the school’s EF and its components were measured, analyzed and discussed with both the students and staff. Analyzing the EF enabled us (researchers, teachers, and students) to monitor and identify the school’s ‘ecological loads’, to raise awareness, and to explore directions for minimizing those ‘loads’ by changing consumption patterns and collaborating with the larger community. 2. Theoretical background 2.1. Education for sustainability In its most basic definition, sustainability refers to a way of life that takes into account the limits of the natural environment to support us. Sustainability has two dimensions: influence and dependence. The better we know our influence on the natural environment the more we learn about and understand our dependence on life-supporting ecological systems. This is the first challenge of education for sustainability (EFS): to engender consciousness and understanding. The second challenge is to engage students in critical reflection of current lifestyles and actions and enable them to make informed decisions and changes toward a more sustainable world (Fien and Tilbury, 2002; Tilbury, 2004). The knowledge, values and practices of sustainability offer a way of effecting this, with its focus on addressing environmental and social issues through social, behavioral, and critical pedagogical practices, and its support of interdisciplinary approaches to overcome curriculum fragmentation (Tilbury, 1995). Since the UN 1992 Agenda 21 was adopted by 178 governments as an action plan for sustainability, education and capacity building have been increasingly recognized as critical means for promoting sustainability among local communities (UN, 1993; Rowe, 2007). Furthermore, through the influence of the Agenda 21, education for sustainability is being increasingly recognized as more than just the dissemination of knowledge or sustainability concepts; it is now understood that sustainability constitutes a process of adaptive management and systems thinking, requiring creativity, flexibility and critical reflection (Tilbury, 2004). While traditional environmental education is a more scientific method of learning about the environment, EFS focuses on more complex social issues, such as the links between environmental quality, human equality, globalization, and their underpinning politics (Sterling, 2001). This requires students to have critical enquiry and systemic thinking skills in order to be able to explore the complexity and implications of sustainability. EFS has therefore implications on the way in which schools conceptualize and approach issues such as curriculum and resource management (Sterling, 2001). In this context, the EF as a measure and as a concept might be useful. 2.2. EF as a measure of sustainability The EF is a quantitative tool that uses material and energy flows to estimate the biophysical ‘load’ that human populations or industrial processes impose on ecosystems around the world (Rees, 1992; Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). EF analysis estimates ‘load’ in terms of the total ecosystem area required to support an individual, a city, a region, a country, or the entire human world population (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Wackernagel et al.,

2006). The EF is based on the assumption that different categories of human activity, such as energy and resource consumption and the emission of waste, require a certain amount of productive or absorptive land or water. The total area required constitutes the EF of the population involved. In the present age of globalization, the area required to support the existence of a given human population is much greater and often far more remote from the area in which that population lives than it was in earlier times (GFN, 2009). EF balance sheets have been calculated for the planet (e.g., Wackernagel et al., 2002), for nations (e.g., Wackernagel et al., 1999; Haberl et al., 2001; Monfreda et al., 2004; Moran et al., 2008), for cities and regions (e.g., Warren-Rhodes and Koenig, 2001; Barrett et al., 2002; Wood and Lenzen, 2003; Aall and Norland, 2005; Collins et al., 2006; Wackernagel et al., 2006; Kissinger and Haim, 2008; Scotti et al., 2009). Some studies have also calculated the EF of organizations, universities and activities such as specific industrial production and supply (e.g., Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Venetoulis, 2001; Kissinger et al., 2007; Conway et al., 2008; Herva et al., 2008; Franz and Papyrakis, 2010). The results of these studies and others revealed that the natural services and resources now being consumed in many places throughout the world are having an impact that is in excess of nature’s renewable productivity and assimilative capacity. One of EF’s strengths is its ability to communicate effectively the notion that any society depends on ecological goods and services that might be beyond its local bio-capacity, and that we depend on the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems that might be on the other side of the world. While part of any population’s EF is on local sources, uneven global distribution of population and natural resources combined with economic growth, processes of economic integration (i.e., globalization) and increasing international trade imply that the EF of any society is increasingly on ecosystems beyond its own boundaries (GFN, 2009; Kissinger and Gottlieb, 2010). 3. The EF as an educational tool—a case study of public high school in the city of Haifa 3.1. Action research in schools In the current study, the concept of EF was incorporated in a high school through action research, which is defined as a research activity that initiates and accompanies a process of socioenvironmental change and improvement (Elliott, 1991). In the field of education, action research serves to develop school study programs, to gather information about the ways in which the schools operate and the professional development of teachers (Carr and Kemmis, 1988; Elliott, 1991). In essence, action research is not a kind of study that is conducted by the researcher with regard to the school per se, but is rather a study orientated toward a change in attitude that is carried out by, with, and for the school. The action researcher is deeply involved with the setting, the people, and the processes of change. However, action research has two main handicaps: (1) personal bias might be involved in conducting the research, as a result of the blurred borderlines between the researcher and the community being studied. In the current study, the researcher is not a neutral observer but is intrinsically involved within the school community; (2) inability to generalize the results of the research to other communities and populations (Mills, 2000; McNiff and Whitehead, 2002). One should therefore try to understand the results of the research under discussion in the light of these two handicaps. 3.2. The process The present action research study was held in a public high school in the city of Haifa during the course of the school year

Please cite this article in press as: Gottlieb, D., et al., The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

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2008/2009. During that year, the first author inaugurated an educational program based on the EF approach. The high school is one of the largest in the city, with 1520 students and 47 classes, from the seventh grade to the twelfth grade (12–18 years old). As a first step toward incorporating a program of environmental education based on the EF in the school, a meeting was held at the school in August 2008, about a month before the beginning of the school year, with the participation of the coordinator for geography studies in the school, the coordinator for social education, the principal of the school, and the administrative manager. During the course of the meeting, the EF approach was presented to the staff and an explanation was given as to how it would be possible to integrate the theoretical and practical aspects of the EF within the framework of the school’s study program. The main difficulty at this stage was to convince the school staff that the outcome of calculating the school’s EF would not be to expose negative information about the school’s consumption patterns but, on the contrary, to place the school at the forefront of educational advances and environmental activity. The 10th grade cohort of students was chosen to participate in an educational program based on the EF. The main reason for this choice was the possibility of transmitting the program in the framework of the geography curriculum, a required subject at this grade level. The educational program consisted of two components: (1) a theoretical, interdisciplinary component based on content material from the fields of the social sciences and ecology and (2) a practical part that included the calculation of the EF of the school and exploring ways to reduce it. The educational program began in October 2008 and continued until May 2009. In its framework, the first author met regularly for 1 h a week with each of the 10th grade classes participating in the program.1 A variety of teaching methods was used that included lectures, presentations, films, and discussions. The students were exposed to content materials that included the basics of ecological economics, globalization and trade, consumerism, the EF foundations, and environmental issues associated with environmental and social justice, which are subjects not taught in the educational program of public schools in Israel. The theoretical groundwork was meant to inculcate in the students an awareness and understanding of the unconsciously perceived link between the patterns of consumption and behavior and their influence on life-supporting ecological systems. During the month of December 2008, we began to collect data related to paper and energy consumption from the school administration. At the same time, questionnaires were distributed among a sample of students of the school. The questionnaires were intended to trace the consumption patterns of food and materials and modes of transportation to the school and back. In the month of January 2010, we calculated the EF in four main spheres: food, energy, transportation, and materials. 3.3. EF calculation at high school—step by step 3.3.1. EF—methodological foundations In general, EF values are calculated by estimating the land area required to support consumption patterns (including waste absorption). When estimating EF values, it is customary to refer to four types of land: (1) ‘‘Energy land,’’ the total area of forests somewhere on the planet that would be required to absorb the CO2 emissions that result from energy consumption; (2) ‘‘Built land,’’ upon which infrastructures for residential, transportation, industrial and other purposes are located; (3) ‘‘Farm land,’’ divided into crop and grazing land required to grow the agricultural products, including animals and plants; and (4) the area of forest required to 1 Altogether four classes of the 10th grade level (140 pupils) participated in the program.

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produce wood and paper products (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). The translation of consumption and waste patterns into the equivalent area of ecologically productive land required to produce goods and absorb waste is the main function of calculating EF. This ecologically productive land is given a standardized unit: Global Hectares (gha).2 3.3.2. Documenting consumption patterns in the high school In order to make the EF balance sheets relevant to high school, a component methodology were employed (Simmons et al., 2000). This involves the analysis of some key activities: electric power consumption, transportation, food and material consumption (paper, plastic bottles and aluminum cans). These components represent the main consumption categories for high school students. One unique contribution of this study is related to the data-gathering methods. Collecting the data for this study involved three data sources: (1) the school administration; (2) external sources; and (3) questionnaires. Data on energy and office paper consumption were obtained from the school administration personnel, while data on transportation modes, food consumption, plastic bottles and aluminum cans consumption were gathered by means of a questionnaire. Since schools do not document their students’ consumption patterns, a questionnaire was designed to gather data from a sample of students from all grades (N = 333) about their consumption patterns during one week at school and their mode of transportation. A stratified sample of two classes from each age group of students was selected randomly to fill the questionnaires, with each age group comprising between six and eight classes. Therefore, the 333 students that were sampled represent six different age groups, from 12–13 year-old students up to 17–18 year-old students. Note that the high school classes are heterogeneous and identical in terms of their composition, which means that the research sample was highly representative of the overall school population. Therefore, the data that were collected by the questionnaires extrapolated to all the students at the high school (N = 1520) for the school year 2008/2009.3 In order to document food consumed at school and material consumption habits, the students were asked to indicate the number of times they had consumed certain items from a given list during the previous week. With regard to transportation means, we asked: ‘‘During the previous week how many times did you come to school and return home by the following means: bus, private car, motorcycle, bicycle, on foot?’’ (For the questionnaire, see Appendix B) 3.3.3. Creating EF conversion factors for each item The second step was to create a conversion datasheet that expressed the EF per unit of consumption in terms of kWh, kg and km. The conversion factor used is the total land (in gha units) for production of the consumed items. For example, since transportation footprint focuses on CO2 emission, the conversion factor expresses the land we need for sequestering CO2 emission. For food items, the conversion factor is the crop land that is needed to grow the items and the land used for sequestering CO2 emissions as a result of using energy inputs in the growing process, such as fertilizers and machinery. In the current research, most of the conversion factors were derived from two studies that calculate the EF of a variety of items. The first study dealt with the EF of the city of York (UK) (Barrett et al., 2002) and the second with that of the city of Ra’anana (Israel) (Kissinger and Haim, 2008). It should

2 Global hectares represent hectares with the potential to produce renewable biomass equal to the world’s potential average of that year. The use of a common unit makes the results of EF analyses globally comparable (Monfreda et al., 2004 ; Kitzes and Wackernagel, 2009). 3 213 days, excluding weekends, holidays and summer vacation.

Please cite this article in press as: Gottlieb, D., et al., The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

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Table 1 EF of the school according to consumption patterns. EF (gha/year) Food Egg sandwich Cheese sandwich Tuna fish sandwich Chocolate sandwich Meat sandwich Fried poultry sandwich Chocolate confectionery Non-choc confectionery Fruits Vegetables

Number of items per year 16,980 125,090 15,300 50,130 49,480 25,480 23,350 34,620 46,540 27,920

Total food print

Fig. 1. The ecological footprint of the high school.

be noted that with regard to food, since the conversion factors in those studies are for grocery items such as cheese, chocolate and bread, we had to calculate the EF of sandwiches consumed by students by summing up the ingredients according to their relative weight (for details, see: Barrett et al., 2002; Chambers et al., 2000; Kissinger and Haim, 2008). The EF of both electricity and transportation account for the CO2 emitted while producing electric power or driving a car (DEFRA, 2007; EGGED, 2004; Kitzes et al., 2007; IBS, 2008). After obtaining the data, we calculated the EF of the high school in each of the four domains: electricity, food, materials, and transportation (for equations see: Appendix A).

Electricity Lighting systems Air conditioning Computerization Electrical equipment

Transportation Bus Private vehicle Walking or cycling

The results showed that the size of the EF of the school was 320 gha for the year 2008/2009. This means that the land consumed by the high school community is 160 times larger than its physical or built-up land which accounts for only 2 ha. As presented in Fig. 1, the main EF components are food (38%, 120 gha) and electricity (35%, 113 gha), followed by materials (19%, 62 gha) and transportation (8%, 25 gha). Table 1 presents the detailed figures of the school’s consumption patterns and the relative EF of each studied component. 3.5. EF methodological limitations There are certain limitations to our calculations, due mainly to the fact that not all the data necessary to complete the coverage of each consumption category were available. For example, our calculation of food EF relies on data that are probable for the original food items themselves and may not reflect packaging. A further limitation of relying on an EF calculation includes the incomplete nature of the approach in that the impact of materials such as toxic wastes and ozone depletion are not considered (Moffatt, 2000; Rees, 2000). Therefore, as noted by Wackernagel and Rees (1996), any measure of EF should be regarded as a conservative measure for sustainability. 3.6. Promoting sustainability in the high school by the EF 3.6.1. Interactions with the students For the first time students were exposed to an ecological space hidden from their eyes and from their consciousness, a space created by the interrelations between the students and the natural environment which can be quantified by the EF. The realization that the ecological area ‘consumed’ by the school students (320 gha) was significantly greater than that of the physical area of the school

Total EF

23 68 11 11 113 gha

Weight (kg) 2530 9710 5000 3160

Total material print

Total transportation print

3.4. Results

120 gha kWh 107,630 322,890 53,810 53.810

Total electricity print Materials Paper (school) administration Paper (students) consumption Plastic bottles Aluminum cans

4 26 8 14 24 19 10 5 8 2

6 23 12 21 62 gha

Commuting 62% 20% 18%

13 12 0 25 gha 320 gha

(2 ha), and the understanding of the students of the reasons for this made it possible to advance to the next stage: the development of a program of action to reduce the EF. The action plan was suggested by the students themselves during February 2009 and was based on changes in behavior and consumption patterns in each of the domains of the EF that was calculated, i.e., food, energy, transportation, and materials. In each domain of action we were able to present an estimated calculation of the school’s EF and to discuss the actual changes that would be made in consumption patterns. For example, in the food domain, the students suggested encouraging the consumption of food based on egg and cheese sandwiches, and fresh fruit and vegetables; in the energy domain, they suggested reducing the use of air conditioners in the classrooms; in the domain of transportation, it was suggested that students who lived within a radius of 2 km from the school should be encouraged to go to school on foot or by public transport, and students who lived within a radius greater than 2 km should use public transport to get to school; in the domain of material consumption, solutions were suggested with regard to plastic and paper based on a reduction in consumption and on recycling. While most of the students expressed a normatively positive attitude toward the need to reduce the ecological footprint, translating these normative attitudes into actual behavioral patterns provoked discussion during which an unavoidable confrontation occurred between sustainability values and the liberal values that underlie a modern consumer society. Some of the students thought that they were able to promote change in their lifestyle through their own efforts and rejected any involvement of the school in this matter. Others thought that a precondition for change in consumer patterns among the students necessitated involvement ‘‘from above’’ (teachers, school admin-

Please cite this article in press as: Gottlieb, D., et al., The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

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istration). However, there was a general consensus among the students that sporadic changes in consumer patterns by some of the students would not make it possible to reduce the ecological footprint of the school significantly. In the course of time, discussion resulted in agreement among the students regarding the importance of setting up a Green Council in the school. With the aim of promoting changes in the consumption patterns of students at the school, the students proposed that the Green Council would be composed of student representatives (on an age-group basis) and representatives of the teachers and administration. It was suggested that the activities of the Green Council would focus on supervision and enforcement in the field of energy and on explanation and education in the fields of food, transportation, and materials. The educational program ended at an artificial point in April 2009 due to formal considerations (e.g., proximity to matriculation examination dates held at the end of the school year) as well as to considerations related to the research timeframe. Although the educational program was completed, including the calculation of the ecological footprint and its components, at this stage, however, additional needs arose that ‘‘threatened’’ to blur the borderlines between the researcher and the school teacher, such as the need to oversee the establishment of the Green Council to instill sustainability principles in the school, the request by other teachers to extend the educational program to additional classes, and so on. Furthermore, it was not possible within the research timeframe to explore whether the ecological footprint of the school was indeed reduced; it would therefore be necessary to conduct further research in the school (e.g., through interviews and/or questionnaires) in the future. 3.6.2. Educational implications From discussions with students and teachers who participated in the program, two main inferences of significance for the incorporation of the EF as an educational tool were drawn. The first was that environmental education for sustainability based on the EF would enable students to evaluate, understand and examine the connection between personal and local lifestyle and the influence on ecological systems that support life on the global level. As one of the students expressed it: When the teachers spoke to us about global warming, the melting of icebergs, and the danger that threatened the polar bears and environmental resource depletion and pollution, I was unable to understand the extent of my own personal responsibility for this. I always thought that, since the large corporations were responsible for the environmental degradation, they were also responsible for rectifying it (10th grade student). The second inference was the opportunity to integrate environmental education for sustainability based on the EF with disciplines that were not specifically categorized as natural sciences. In fact, the education for sustainability program based on the EF should integrate natural sciences with social sciences content material, which might then develop among the students the skills to adopt environmental attitudes and take action. Like other countries, Israel also has study programs in natural sciences that include environmental materials, especially in the curricula for elementary and intermediate schools (see, for example, Aikenhead, 2005). However, these materials are usually presented as ‘‘studies about the environment’’. Other topics that are taught include the influence of air pollution and the risks connected with water pollution. The social and behavioral aspects that should be at the center of interest in environmental education for sustainability are, however, given very little emphasis. For instance, there is a lack of association

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between social and behavioral phenomena, such as consumerism and globalization, and environmental justice that deals with ways to develop and utilize natural global resources. Therefore, the EF, both as a measuring tool on the one hand and as a perspective on the other, can bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the social disciplines, which means dealing with the connection between environmental problems and the critical examination of social, economic and political issues. In the following section we shall discuss in greater detail the educational significance of EF incorporation as an educational tool. 4. Discussion and conclusions In recent years, the vital role of schools in education for sustainability has been recognized (UN, 1993; Sterling, 2001; Rowe, 2007). This paper is intended to support schools pursuing sustainability by imparting a practical way to implement EF as an educational tool in schools. Monitoring and analyzing the current EF in the framework of an educational program based on theoretical and practical foundations is an innovative and meaningful method of communicating the message of sustainability to students. By analyzing the school activities through specific components, the school community can identify the relative contribution of specific activities to the school’s overall ecological load. The results of our study revealed that food and electricity consumption are the major components of the school’s EF, corresponding with the results of other studies that emphasize the significance of these components (e.g., Barrett et al., 2002; Wiedmann et al., 2006; Kissinger and Haim, 2008). However, our results differ from other EF studies done on an urban scale, in that in our study transportation is the smallest component. This can be explained by the nature of the studied community and the fact that most students either walk to school or use public transportation. The EF results highlight the unique composition of activities at different scales, i.e., the school EF composition is different from that of a city or the state. They therefore allow the studied community to identify activities that generate higher loads and to build on those activities in which the community presents the most efficient environmental behavior (e.g., commuting to school). This paper also presents a detailed explanation of the school EF calculation step by step, allowing other schools interested in calculating their EF to do so in the future. Compared with EF studies on a national scale, which make use of statistical data from national and international agencies, available data for the school (organization) scale are very limited. To overcome this limitation, our research combined both top-down and bottom-up approaches. For the former, we gathered data from the school administration and for the latter we developed a questionnaire that allowed us to identify the unique consumption patterns of the high school students. From an educational point of view, we think that the incorporation of the EF concept into school teaching curricula will have a number of benefits: A. Sustainability on the educational agenda as a school vision—An effective school vision is expressed by a set of values and an agenda that are reflected in the educational program, means of teaching, and the behavior of the students and staff. It represents the preferred image of the school for which the teachers, administrators and students are willing to invest their efforts in order to achieve a desired future (Sergiovanni, 1994). It provides a sense of unity and encourages cooperation within the school on the one hand and with the community on the other. In this connection, EF might be considered as a part of the school agenda and vision, based on the values of sustainability and environmental justice. Within the framework of this vision,

Please cite this article in press as: Gottlieb, D., et al., The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

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the school endows its students with understanding, critical thought, and mental and behavioral sensitivity toward the environment and its natural resources that constitute part of the common world wealth and heritage. An important component in realizing this vision is the incorporation of the EF both as a measuring device indicating whether the school community practices the vision of sustainability by monitoring energy and material consumption at school, and as an attempt to reduce them in order to maintain sustainability. B. Monitoring and raising awareness—To calculate the EF, the school community will have to monitor its current material and energy consumption. This monitoring generates valuable information about the relative contribution of specific activities and behavior patterns to the overall school EF. Results of the EF analysis are presented as a single aggregate measure of land area; they are therefore generally simple and easy to understand (Becker, 2004) and can help transmit the message of ‘ecological load’ to the students and staff. Being able to draw up a balance sheet of the school’s EF makes it possible for students to understand that the impact of their activities and lifestyles goes beyond the narrow limits of the school boundaries or the family, community, and state in which they live. In other words, it captures the dependence relationships between the school population and resources found outside its geographical boundaries (Costanza, 2000; Rees, 2000). C. Self governing and action—Traditional environmental education focuses on generating and transferring knowledge of a wide range of environmental issues (e.g., non-renewable resource consumption, pollution, climate change, and loss of biodiversity). Education for sustainability based on the EF analysis has the potential to provide, in addition to that knowledge, the capacity to plan and manage changes toward sustainability within the school community (Elliott, 1991; Bonnett, 2002; Smyth, 2005). As illustrated by our results, EF calculation provides data using which the students can make responsible informed decisions and set targets to reduce the EF of their high school as a student community. Furthermore, these students are also members of families that may be influenced by their children to reduce the EF of their households. D. The collaboration challenge—Since the EF reveals the ‘ecological load’ the school population imposes on the natural environment, active participation and partnerships for sustainability should occur not only within the school boundaries (involving teachers, students and administration) but also among the school’s students’ families and other organizations that might help reduce the general EF (e.g., ‘green industries’ that collect and recycle papers or plastic bottles) by disseminating the ideas among larger communities and up to the national level. Achieving sustainability requires the development of wellinformed citizens who actively participate in reducing their own EF. Therefore, the preparation of a school action plan aimed at reducing the EF as a part of the teaching curriculum might be an important step in developing national civic involvement among future citizens (the students of today). This is especially relevant in view of recent studies that have shown how citizens, nowadays, are continually being excluded from the centers of policy making and implementation that, in turn, has led to a decline in citizen activism (Vigoda-Gadot and Golembiewski, 2001; Vigoda-Gadot, 2003). To summarize, the EF as an educational tool has the potential to offer a range of strategies that aim to help students understand the linkage between behavioral choices and their impact on the ecological systems. It also enables students to think critically about the choices they make and the environmental consequences of those choices and

to take the opportunities and responsibilities they have as members of a larger community for active participation and collaboration in moving toward sustainability.

Appendix A. Calculating the EF components A.1. Electricity print Electricity print ðgha=yearÞ ¼ Energy land ðgha=kWh-yearÞ  kWh ðyearÞ (A.1) Electricity print captures the CO2 emissions resulting from generating the electric power consumed by the school. The data are converted into the associated land area required for sequestering the CO2. We have multiplied the conversion factor by the school’s annual electricity consumption (2008/2009).

A.2. Transportation print Transportation print ðgha=yearÞ ¼ Distance from school ðkmÞ  Times per year  EF per Passenger ðgha=km-yearÞ

(A.2)

Transportation print captures the CO2 emissions while commuting. The calculation combines the distance each student travels to school and back home, the number of days during the study period, and the mode of transportation A.3. Food print Food print ðgha=yearÞ ¼ Items per year ðkgÞ  EF per item ðgha=kgÞ

(A.3)

Food consumed by the students is from two main sources: home and the school cafeteria. The EF (gha year/kg) for each category of food consists of two main parts. First, the area (gha) of ‘energy land’ required to sequester (absorb) the emitted CO2 during growing and processing the food; the second is the total area of grazing land or crop land required to produce 1 kg of the food (Table 1). That EF is then multiplied by the quantity of food consumed annually.

A.4. Material print Material print ðgha=yearÞ ¼ Items per year ðkgÞ  EF per kg

(A.4)

Our research covers three types of material: paper, plastic bottles and aluminum cans. The EF for paper represents two types of land: the ‘forest land’ needed to produce the cellulose fiber, and the ‘energy land’ needed to absorb the C02 generated by energy used to manufacture the paper. Calculating the EF of plastic bottles and aluminum cans accounts for the energy required to produce the item in terms of land needed to sequester the C02 emissions (Table 1). That footprint per item is then multiplied by the overall material used by the school community during the research period.

Please cite this article in press as: Gottlieb, D., et al., The ecological footprint as an educational tool for sustainability: A case study analysis in an Israeli public high school. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2011), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.03.007

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EDEV-1363; No. of Pages 8 D. Gottlieb et al. / International Journal of Educational Development xxx (2011) xxx–xxx

Appendix B. Questionnaire on consumption habits (main questions)

Subject

Questions

Transportation

From what neighborhood do you travel to school? Indicate the number of times on which you used the following means of transportation in order to get to school and return during the past seven days

Food

Materials

Paper

What kind of food items did you bring from home or buy at the cafeteria during the past seven days? What kind of drink containers did you bring from home or buy at the cafeteria during the past seven days? Estimate the quantity of paper that you use in school during one school day (one sheet of paper = 2 pages)

Attachments

Attached list of the means of transportation

Attached list of food items

Attached list of containers

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