Sustaining Partnerships between Schools and Industry: A Minerals and Energy Case

Principles Of Sustainability

As an ecological principle, a system (including an industry-school partnership system) is susceptible to external and internal shocks, which may threaten sustainability (Anderies, Janssen, & Ostrom, 2004). Ecological theory includes two principles that the authors of this paper have adapted to better understand the sustainability of industry-school partnerships: (a) resilience capacity; and (b) adaptive capacity. These principles originated from Holling’s (1973) research on social-ecological systems and were further developed by other researchers in the field (Folke, Carpenter, Walker, Scheffer, Chapin & Rockstrom, 2010; Walker, Holling, Carpenter & Kinzig, 2004). It should be noted that literature on these principles is derived from the business sector and is consequently not considered within current literature on industry-school partnerships.