Linking Cooperative Education and Education for Sustainability: A New Direction for Cooperative Education?

In this article the authors propose that co-op practitioners and researchers need to constantly re-examine the practice and future of cooperative education. Co-op currently introduces large numbers of graduates into the business and manufacturing employment sectors. A number of authors have argued that co-op graduates rapidly advance in companies and assume middle and senior management roles. These co-op graduates and their non-co-op counterparts become the business and commercial leaders of the future. Here we argue that one beneficial future direction for co-op could be in the area of graduate understanding about education for sustainability (EfS). This paper begins with a description of the principles that underpin concepts for both EfS and cooperative education and examines three propositions as to how cooperative education might act as a vehicle for delivering aspects of EfS.