ABSTRACT
In Australia, Education for Sustainability (EfS) has been part of the national agenda for over 30 years. One of the first major moves towards joining the global trends was in 1984 with the National Conservation Strategy for Australia that focused on educating communities towards sustainable development and conservation. The lofty intent of the new Australian Curriculum cross-curricular priority of sustainability may remain largely unrealized. Whilst there is a great deal of goodwill within the school towards incorporating sustainability into the curriculum, a number of teachers talked about the priority need for 'results' in literacy and numeracy. Systems thinking advocates analysing situations, events and issues as a whole rather than in isolation, which emphasises the interrelationships between parts. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) suggests that sustainability encompasses four major dimensions, namely the natural, economic, social and political.
