ABSTRACT
Educating for sustainability and social justice is about the kind of citizens we create and the kind of world they'll create together. To make a life for themselves, students will need to replace the ecological and social crises they'll inherit with a story of sustainability and social justice. This chapter is organized around the three common domains of competencies—the "head, hands, and heart" of learning. To review, a system is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole; examples include ecosystems and educational systems. A systems perspective makes students better thinkers, but to be effective actors, they also need to be invested in the people and places around them. This disposition of caring starts with empathy, "the act of perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state" of another person. An inclusive society depends on communicating and working with people of all backgrounds.
