Common notions around the concept of sustainability tend to be framed within the values and principles that the world's natural environments need to be used and managed in such a way as to make them available for future generations. Consequently, pedagogical approaches in environmental education that follow this intellectual thread tend to adopt a standard scientific approach to inquiry-based learning. This article argues that the features of a geographical approach to inquiry, particularly in its wider conceptualisation of fieldwork, provides a much more effective means of developing an environmental education that is more cogniscent of the deeper aspects of sustainability. While the importance of the natural systems components of sustainability cannot be ignored, they tend to displace other inherent facets within the sustainability concept and, in particular, the reality that any discussion as to the sustainable use of natural environments must incorporate knowledge and understanding of the way people interact with these environments. We contend that sustainability, when taught in schools, has tended to be environmentally and scientifically based, diminishing the role of humans. In an example of how this deficit might be overcome, the Australian Curriculum incorporates sustainability as one of the three mandatory cross-curriculum priorities; that is, one of the avenues for encouraging complementary learning and teaching across different disciplines. Within this curriculum framework, the concept is expanded to not only include a consideration of the mutual interdependence of the environmental spheres (Systems), but also World View and Futures — thus including the human component. However, using the notion of the fieldwork imperative (Casinader & Kidman, 2017), which distinguishes between the reasons why we do fieldwork and the reasons why we should do fieldwork, we argue that sustainability education would be placed more effectively within the disciplinary domain of Geography, rather than as part of an integrated curriculum approach or in Science.

中文翻译：

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实地考察、可持续性和环境教育：地理调查的中心地位

围绕可持续发展概念的共同概念往往以价值观和原则为框架，即世界自然环境需要以这样一种方式加以利用和管理，以使它们可供后代使用。因此，遵循这条知识线的环境教育教学方法倾向于采用标准的科学方法来进行基于探究的学习。本文认为，地理探究方法的特点，特别是其对田野工作的更广泛概念化，提供了一种更有效的方法来发展环境教育，这种教育更加认识到可持续性的更深层次。虽然可持续性的自然系统组成部分的重要性不容忽视，它们往往会取代可持续性概念中的其他固有方面，特别是任何关于自然环境可持续利用的讨论都必须纳入对人们与这些环境互动方式的知识和理解的现实。我们认为，在学校教授可持续性时，往往以环境和科学为基础，从而削弱了人类的作用。在如何克服这一缺陷的一个例子中，澳大利亚课程包含可持续性作为三个强制性跨课程优先事项之一；也就是说，这是鼓励跨学科互补学习和教学的途径之一。在这个课程框架内，这个概念被扩展为不仅包括对环境领域相互依存的考虑（系统）， 但是也世界观和未来——因此包括人的成分。但是，使用实地考察势在必行(Casinader & Kidman, 2017)，其中区分了原因为什么我们做实地调查和原因为什么我们应该在进行实地调查时，我们认为可持续性教育将更有效地置于地理学学科领域内，而不是作为综合课程方法或科学的一部分。