Intellectual Sustainability in a Time of Change: Challenges and Perspectives

We are living in a world characterized by change in all aspects of life, complexity with different types and levels, and paradox with different classes and degrees – education must also change. When the ultimate aim of education is to prepare engaged, reflecting, open-minded, culturally literate, skilled, creative, and tolerant global citizens who are able to map the road to a greener, safer and fairer planet for all, for everyone toward a global common good, sustainability becomes the key to survival on earth. This is because changes that occur in education - as one system of interrelated, and interconnected global systems – may affect them in ways that result in something more than the sum of parts. Therefore, getting sustainability into education is vital, specifically that is devoted to creating sustainable futures for all in all fields – whatever they are. That is intellectual sustainability. For elaborating how to bring it into focus, this research paper addresses six dimensions in order to achieve the aims of the study which are: initiating the support for research on intellectual sustainability (IS), providing opportunities for novel thinking the unthinkables, and  creating new paths for IS in teacher education programs in Egypt. The dimensions of this article are seen as: (1) a world of change, (2) about intellectual sustainability, (3) some theoretical points of departure, (4) challenges of intellectual sustainability (5) keeping challenges in perspective (coping strategies), and (6) embedding intellectual sustainability in  teacher education programs.