Transformative learning

Learning and change within people and society towards a more sustainable world

Transformative learning

Author Archives: arjenwals

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About arjenwals

Arjen Wals is a Professor of Social Learning and Sustainable Development. He also is a UNESCO Chair in the same field. Wals has worked at Wageningen University since 1992 in various departments. He is a guest professor at IDPP at Gothenburg University since 2014. His research focuses on learning processes that contribute to a more sustainable world. A central question in his work is how to create conditions that support new forms of learning that take full advantage of the diversity, creativity and resourcefulness that is all around us, but so far remains largely untapped in our search for a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect. Wals has been involved in a number of projects in Africa that seek to make curricula more responsive to current societal and labour market needs and challenges posed by (un)sustainability. Popular books include: 'Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability (Kluwer Academic, 2004) and Social Learning towards a Sustainable World (Wageningen Academic, 2007).

UNESCO Chairs in Education for Sustainable Development reflect on accomplishments and challenges in new report

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A new UNESCO publication containing the reflections of  a number of UNESCO Chairs who focus on an aspect of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has just been published as an open access report.

Michelsen G. and Wells P. J. (Editors) A Decade of Progress on Education for Sustainable Development Reflections from the UNESCO Chairs Programme. Paris: UNESCO. Freely downloadable. Download the report here!

Conclusions  from the foreword by the editors.

“The UNESCO Chairs, together with UNITWIN projects, made an active contribution to the worldwide UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development. In particular, in the area of higher education, but also in other educational sectors, the UN Chairs have kick-started a wide variety of interesting activities, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate. Even though a number of UNESCO Chairs focusing on specific issues related to sustainable development, and to education for sustainable development, have been established in several countries over the past few years, it has unfortunately not yet been possible to anchor sustainability in the teaching that occurs in higher education – apart from individual examples, such as Sweden, where higher education institutions are legally required to promote sustainable development. UNESCO Chairs should be given the resources and opportunities to take on even greater responsibility for this area of education, as its graduates play a key role in disseminating ideas about how society should develop, and they make a significant contribution to sustainable development through science and research.

The SDGs mark an important turning point in the focus of the UNESCO Chair and UNITWIN Programme work as well as a challenge to build on their acknowledged achievements. As highlighted earlier, the SDGs place an earnest call on higher education institutions to focus their endeavours on addressing the world’s most fundamental developmental issues – not only those related to education but on all areas of human activity – from clean water and healthy living spaces, to peace building, issues of gender disparity and non-discriminatory prosperity. The challenges for the UNESCO Chairs on ESD, and indeed for all the UNITWIN Networks and Chairs across all fields of activity, is to now use their power of collective creative thought to find solutions to meet these challenges. The Chairs in ESD have now entered a period of consolidation and forward strategizing – a period which requires them to look beyond the theory to the practical and to pertinent problem solving. Turning theoretical knowledge into practice demands them to be at once trans-disciplinary in their implementation design worldwide, to cooperate and collaborate with the wider family of UNESCO Chairs and to urge the full embodiment of ESD into the broader research, teaching and learning higher education agenda towards 2030. The current publication provides a reference point, reflecting the past achievements of the UNESCO Chairs’ diverse areas of thematic focus during the worldwide UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development, their outlook for the Global Action Programme (2015-2019) and beyond in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

As on of the invited Chairs I wrote Chapter 2 titled Transformative Social Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at the Interface of Science and Society: A Forward-looking Retrospective.

Wals, A.E.J. (2017). Transformative Social Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at the Interface of Science and Society: A Forward-looking Retrospective. In: Michelsen G. and Wells P. J. (Editors) A Decade of Progress on Education for Sustainable Development Reflections from the UNESCO Chairs Programme. Paris: UNESCO, p. 18-28.

Online MSc-level Course on Education for Sustainable Development (15ECTS) starts in November at Gothenburg University

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Last year IDPP at Gothenburg University in Sweden, with support from ECS  at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, pilotted an on-line Masters Course on ESD. The course has been designed to become the the starter course for a whole MSc-degree in ESD that is currently under construction which we hope to launch in September of 2018. This November we will run the course again, not only because the course received positive evaluations but also because we think we can do even better having had the benefit of the feedback we received from students and our own reflections.

The course is of interest if you:

  • Want to work for increased public awareness, knowledge and action competence in sustainable development and responding to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
  • Are interested in supporting learning for sustainable development among diverse groups;
  • Are involved in social movements for people, animals, and the environment, and want to learn more about the role of education in creating a more equitable, peaceful, and ecologically viable world;
  • Are a teacher/educator looking for ideas and strategies to better integrate education for sustainable development in your classrooms or in community settings.

What is the role and responsibility of education to not only respond to sustainability problems, but also to prevent them and create more sustainable futures?

This question is at the core of the web-based course in Education for Sustainable Development. In this 15 credit MSc-level Master’s course you will critically and actively explore central concepts and perspectives in the field of education for sustainable development. The course content will be related to your own interests and prior experiences. You will be among other Master students from different parts of the world with different backgrounds (e.g. environmental sciences, social sciences, economics, arts and humanities).

It is a distance course, all teaching will be carried out online. Course language is English.

More information: Info about GU-ESD100 course at Gothenburg University

Or paste  www.idpp.gu.se/ESD100 into your browser.

Alternatively send an email to Sally.Windsor@gu.se or to me: Arjen.Wals@gu.se or

Note: For most European students the course is free. Non-EU citizens likely will have to pay a tuition fee.

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Environmental Education in Asia – Special Issue in the Japanese Journal of EE

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This special issue edited by Shinichi Furihata and Sachi Ninomiya-Lim from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and Tokai University respectively,  is the result of a 2-year collaborative project involving environmental education (EE) societies/ associations from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, North America, and Australia. In the editorial introduction the following is stated:

“The aim of the project was to create a platform to share ideas, practices, and theories of EE in the Asian region, with English as the common language. The discussion was organized around five core themes: 1) Development, current situation, and challenges of EE in formal education; 2) Development, current situation, and challenges of EE in non-formal education; 3) Research trends in EE; 4) Insights for EE in Asia from outside of Asia; 5) Review, comparison, and synthesis of findings to go beyond a presentation of EE in various countries and instead highlight the recurring transversal issues. We hope this special issue will contribute to furthering dialogue among EE scholars and practitioners in Asia, and to building bridges between EE in Asia and other regions.

The Japanese Journal of Environmental Education (JJEE), published by the JSOEE/JSFEE since 1991, has provided EE researchers and practitioners with an important space to share their ideas, thoughts, methods, and evaluative analyses, and to participate in theoretical discussions, etc., similar to many EE journals published in other countries and regions. However, since most of JJEE articles are written in Japanese (with summaries in English), its readership is essentially limited to Japanese language users, most of whom reside in Japan. Thus, although the JJEE has become a critical platform for communication among Japanese EE researchers and practitioners, there is a need to expand these discussions to a wider, global network, so that Japanese EE professionals may participate in international and transnational debates on issues of wider relevance in EE. Similarly, EE research in different journals published in Asian countries, including Korea and Taiwan, is mostly written in the local language and is therefore largely inaccessible to people who do not read these languages. The aim of this special issue, therefore, was to create a space where such discussions may be shared and connected. In addition, we decided to invite several prominent international researchers to provide their insights, ideas, and suggestions on developing EE in Asia, increasing Asian participation in the global EE arena, and promoting collaboration on EE with different countries and regions around the world.”

I was asked to write a reflective response paper together with Peter Blaze Corcoran and Joseph Weakland in which we look ahead to the future of EE in the region and beyond. Our paper titles “Preparing for the Ecocene: Envisioning futures for environmental and sustainability education” is based on the introduction to the recent book we edited for Wageningen Academic Publishers (see elsewhere in this blog). All papers are available as open-access and can be found here: Link to the entire Special Issue  You can find our closing paper in which we introduce the notion of the imaginary Ecocene here: Preparing for the Ecocene: Envisioning futures for environmental and sustainability education

Sustainability by Default: Co-creating Care and Relationality Through Early Childhood Education

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The above illustration comes from the new Harvard MOOC on Early Childhood Development and Sustainability

This new paper will be part of a special issue on early childhood education and sustainable development. I wrote the piece  based on a keynote address presented at the 68th OMEP World Assembly and International Conference held in Seoul in July 2016. In the paper I argue that children are more in tune with sustainability than most adults and that both adults and children can benefit from intergenerational dialogue and expanded learning opportunities in so-called ecologies of learning. First the idea of growing up in the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch that is shaped by one single species, home sapiens, is introduced. What does growing up in the Anthropocene mean for today’s children? A short critique is provided of the neoliberal forces that increasingly influence what happens in education and care settings and that essentially make unsustainability the default in our society. Drawing on Martin Buber’s ideas of relational ways of being in the world; Nell Nodding’s notions of care; and George Siemen’s ideas about learning ecologies, some suggestions are offered for co-creating early childhood education and care with people and the planet in mind.

The paper ends with the following: “What seems critical is that children encounter a multiplicity of different worlds by crossing boundaries, both individually and together, and having bodily experiences that strengthen their relationality with the human, the non-human and the material. It is through these encounters that agency, care and empathy can develop. All three of these qualities are foundational for a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect.

Citation: Wals, A.E.J. (2017) Sustainability by default: Co-creating Care and Relationality Through Early Childhood Education, International Journal of Early Childhood Education doi:10.1007/s13158-017-0193-5

Note that this is an open access publication that can be downloaded for free here: Sustainability by default

Using the SDGs as a catalyst for re-designing higher education in the Anthropocene

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Last week (June 13-14, 2017) the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Agriculture hosted an the 2017 ICA-Edu Colloquium “Delivering graduates to meet the challenges of sustainable development goals (SDGs): embedding the development of ethical and sustainable values ​​in the curriculum.” The colloquium was organized in cooperation with ICA (the Association for European Life Science Universities) which is the umbrella network of 54 life science universities in Europe. ICA’s goal is to improve higher education and research in agronomy and related sciences.

I was one of the keynote speakers along with Prof. David A. Knauft (University of Georgia) and  Prof. Georg Gratzer (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna – BOKU). Unfortunately I could not be physically present and I had to resort to using the ‘green room’ in the Social Sciences building of Wageningen University (a studio that is used for recording, among other things, short video’s for MOOCS). The 34 minute talk with the title ‘Using the SDGs as a catalyst for re-designing higher education in the Anthropocene’ can be viewed here: Keynote Zagreb ICA Conference

New: The interplay between social learning and adaptive capacity in climate change adaptation

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Pics source: www.knowledgebank.irri.org

One of my PhD students, Le Thi Hong Phuong from Vietnam, just had her review article (with me and Robbert Biesbroek of Wageningen UR as humble co-authors) published in NJAS . In the paper she maintains that successful implementation climate change adaptation depends to a large extent on the capabilities of individuals, organizations, and communities to create and mobilize the adaptive capacity (AC) of their socio-ecological system. In the paper, creating and mobilizing AC is seens as a continuous process that requires social learning (SL). Although rich with empirical cases, the literature theorizing and empirically investigating the relationship between AC and SL is highly fragmented. This paper aims to critically examine the peer-reviewed literature that focusses on SL and AC in the context of climate change adaptation (CCA).

Special attention is paid to the interplay between the two. Understanding this interplay can help improve our understanding of how CCA takes place in practice and advances theoretical debates on CCA. Systematic review methods are used to analyse 43 papers (1997–2016). The findings reveal three perspectives that each play an important role in different contexts: an AC-focused perspective, a SL-focused perspective, and a hybrid perspective. These differences in conceptualizations of the relationship between SL and AC may seem trivial at first, but they have consequences for the design of learning-based interventions aimed at helping communities respond to climate change. It appears that such interventions need to be preceded by an analysis of the climate change context in order to decide whether to emphasize AC, SL or both simultaneously.

You can find the paper here: The interplay between social learning and adaptive capacity in climate change adaptation or request a copy by emailing me at arjen.wals@wur.nl The DOI is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2017.05.001

Highlights

  • Social learning (SL) & adaptive capacity (AC) are critical in climate change adaptation.
  • Social learning does not necessarily build adaptive capacity and vice versa.
  • Three interplays between SL and AC emerge: SL-focused, AC-focused and hybrid.
  • The effectiveness of an interplay depends on the climate adaptation context.
  • This has implications for governance to help communities to adapt to climate change.

Radical ruralities in practice: Negotiating buen vivir in a Colombian network of sustainability – new article!

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The Journal of Rural Studies just released a new paper on the conceptualisation and realization of buen vivit in a Colombian sustainability network. Martha Chaves as a part of her PhD-work (see earlier blog posts on this) led a team of authors that also included Thomas Macintyre, Gerard Verschoor and myself.

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This paper explores the emerging concept of buen vivir –  interpreted as integrative and collective wellbeing  – as it is being envisioned and practiced by a network of sustainability initiatives in Colombia. As an example of a transition narrative currently taking place in Latin America and beyond, buen vivir represents a turn towards a more biocentric, relational and collective means of understanding and being in the world. Yet despite the many discourses into buen vivir (many of which tout it as an alternative to neoliberal models of development), there is a general lack of research into its varied forms of application, especially in terms of lived experiences. Drawing on the new ruralities literature, this paper explores the extent to which buen vivir visions and practices represent radical new ruralities e so-called alternatives to development. Data were collected from individuals and ecological communities in predominantly rural areas who are members of the Council of Sustainable Settlements of the Americas (CASA), a
network which promotes many of the principles of buen vivir. Through participatory methods, results demonstrate that CASA visions are based on constructing territorial relations through intercultural knowledge exchange and experimentation into alternative lifestyles. Despite the substantial challenges and contradictions of putting these visions into practice, we argue that lived experiences promote processes of self-reflection on what buen vivir really is or could be. We hold that the inclusive nature of buen vivir offers opportunities for diverse peoples to cohere around shared meanings of the ‘good life,’
while providing the freedom to live variations depending on social and ecological context.

Here’s the DOI: //dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.02.007

For a sneak preview you can also have a look here: Chavesetal2017RadicalRuralities

Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education – now available

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Last month the fifth book in the Wageningen Academic Publishers Series on Education in the context of Sustainable Development, that started almost 10 years ago with Social learning towards a Sustainable World, appeared. Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education invited educational practitioners and theorists to speculate on – and craft visions for – the future of environmental and sustainability education. The book, I co-edited with Peter Blaze Corcoran and Joe Weakland, explores what educational methods and practices might exist on the horizon, waiting for discovery and implementation. A global array of authors imagines alternative futures for the field and attempts to rethink environmental and sustainability education institutionally, intellectually, and pedagogically. These thought leaders chart how emerging modes of critical speculation might function as a means to remap and redesign the future of environmental and sustainability education today.

Previous volumes within this United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development series have responded to the complexity of environmental education in our contemporary moment with concepts such as social learning, intergenerational learning, and transformative leadership for sustainable futures. ‘Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education’ builds on this earlier work – as well as the work of others. It seeks to foster modes of intellectual engagement with ecological futures in the Anthropocene; to develop resilient, adaptable pedagogies as a hedge against future ecological uncertainties; and to spark discussion concerning how futures thinking can generate theoretical and applied innovations within the field.

The future of environmental education is an urgent question in the larger context of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which human activities have become the dominant driver in the ongoing evolution of Earth’s biosphere. Our contemporary ecological moment is characterized by complexity, uncertainty, and ‘accelerating change’ (Wals and Corcoran 2012). While the global impact of anthropogenic climate change is undeniable, the pace of temperature and sea level rise depends on ecological feedback loops that are not fully understood – and which may be increasing the rate of biosphere destabilization (Hansen et al.2015). From a social perspective, the Anthropocene is an age of what humanities scholar Rob Nixon (2011) terms ‘slow violence,’ or ecological violence and environmental injustice that occurs on spatial and temporal scales that are hard to understand or represent, most often against the world’s poorest peoples. In light of such developments, educators need strategies for anticipatory engagement with changing socio-ecological realities – both in the present and future – in order to be effective within their various embodied contexts. This volume explores how environmental educators can engage in imaginative mapping concerning large scale global processes, as well as create useful, situated knowledge for dissemination within their respective socio-ecological contexts.

Keywords: sustainability education, environmental education, education, sustainable development, social learning, transformative leadership, intergenerational learning

The opening chapter is available here: introchapterenvisioningfutures for free as an open access publication or at the publisher’s website where the book can be purchased: http://www.wageningenacademic.com/doi/abs/10.3920/978-90-8686-846-9

 

Towards Transgressive Learning through Ontological Politics: Answering the “Call of the Mountain” in a Colombian Network of Sustainability

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Just before the end of the year a fascinating paper appeared in the journal Sustainability authored by a multi-author team led by Martha Chaves who just completed het PhD in Wageningen last month.

Chaves, M., Macintyre, T, Verschoor, G & Wals, AEJ (2017)Towards Transgressive Learning through Ontological Politics: Answering the “Call of the Mountain” in a Colombian Network of Sustainability. Sustainability 2017, 9, 21; doi:10.3390/su9010021  Link to the paper.

Abstract: In line with the increasing calls for more transformative and transgressive learning in the context of sustainability studies, this article explores how encounters between different ontologies can lead to socio-ecological sustainability. With the dominant one-world universe increasingly being questioned by those who advocate the existence of many worlds—a so-called pluriverse—there lays the possibility of not only imagining other human–nature realities, but also engaging with them in practice. Moving towards an understanding of what happens when a multiplicity of worlds encounter one another, however, entails a sensitivity to the negotiations between often competing ontologies—or ontological politics. Based on an ethnographic methodology and narrative methods, data were collected from two consecutive intercultural gatherings called El Llamado de la Montaña (The Call of the Mountain), which take place for five days every year in different parts of Colombia. By actively participating in these gatherings of multiplicity, which address complex socio-ecological challenges such as food sovereignty and defence of territory, results show how encounters between different ontologies can result in transformative and potentially transgressive learning in terms of disrupting stubborn routines, norms and hegemonic powers which tend to accelerate un-sustainability. Although we argue that a fundamental part of the wicked sustainability puzzle lies in supporting more relational ontologies, we note that such learning environments also lead to conflicts through inflexibility and (ab)use of power which must be addressed if sustained socio-ecological learning is to take place. Keywords: ontological politics; transformative learning; transgressive learning; sustainability; Colombia; narrative methods.

Here’s the cover of Martha Chaves’ PhD-thesis which can be downloaded from the Wageningen University Library system.

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Unreasonable doubt, viral nonsense and the Post-truth Trump era – avoiding hopelessness and creating sustainability by default

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On December 17th, one year ago, the warmest December 17th on record on The Netherlands, I gave my a second inaugural address at Wageningen University titled: Beyond unreasonable doubt –  education and learning for socio-ecological sustainability in the anthropocene  (link to the text) the address took place exactly 6 months after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the USA. At that time nobody really thought he had any chance but that was then. Now that we have entered a new phase of potential depression, hopelessness, psychic numbing, withdrawal, giving up, loss of energy, it seems like the challenge of moving towards a more sustainable world has become greater than ever before which is why I am re-posting the video that Wageningen University made back then about the role of education in creating more critical, mindful, empathic and responsible citizens willing and able to turn the tide and making living lightly and equitably on the Earth the default rather than the exception.

Here is the link to the 2,5 minute video that may be more accessible than the booklet (I hope it spreads as rapidly as some of the non-sense that spreads with lightening speed these days):

Breathing sustainability

 

Interview UNESCO Master Class over Toekomstbestendig onderwijs in een duurzamere wereld – nu terug te zien

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Vorige keer kondigde ik het vijfde gesprek dat Anouschka Laheij hield met UNESCO Chairs in het kader van de Masterclass over duurzame ontwikkeling aan. Dit keer mocht ik zelf opdraven om te praten over hoe moeilijk duurzaamheid ons wordt gemaakt en hoe makkelijk het wordt gemaakt om onduurzaam te zijn, maar ook over de aantrekkelijke onduidelijkheid van een schijnbaar vaag begrip als duurzame ontwikkeling en over hoe je onderwijs en leeromgevingen anders kunt inrichten zodat jongeren leren omgaan met complexiteit, onzekerheid en ambiguïteit. En niet alleen ‘leren omgaan met’ maar ook leren veranderen en leren de wereld te veranderen.

Het hele interview

In het gesprek van 1 uur komen een veelheid vragen aan bod zoals:  Wat voor type onderwijs, wat voor soort leerprocessen en leeromgevingen zijn nu bij uitstek geschikt om te breken met onduurzame waarden, routines, leefstijlen en systemen? Hoe kun je gedrag en mogelijkheden om duurzaam te handelen creëren die kunnen leiden tot een transitie naar een duurzamere wereld? Een wereld waarin alle Duurzame Ontwikkelingsdoelen (SDG’s) in samenhang een plek krijgen. Zie ook mijn eerder blog post hierover in het kader van het verschijnen van het Global Education Monitor Report 2016.

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UNESCO Masterclass Onderwijs in relatie tot de Sustainable Development Goals

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Wat voor type onderwijs, wat voor soort leerprocessen en leeromgevingen zijn nu bij uitstek geschikt om te breken met onduurzame waarden, routines, leefstijlen en systemen? Hoe kun je gedrag en mogelijkheden om duurzaam te handelen creëren die kunnen leiden tot een transitie naar een duurzamere wereld? Een wereld waarin alle Duurzame Ontwikkelingsdoelen (SDG’s) in samenhang een plek krijgen. Zie ook mijn eerder blog post hierover in het kader van het verschijnen van het Global Education Monitor Report 2016.

In de vijfde aflevering van de online masterclass-serie over UNESCO en de SDG’s zal ik ingaan op deze vragen.

De gratis online masterclass wordt live uitgezonden in samenwerking met de Open Universiteit en vindt plaats op 25 november om 13.00 uur. Nadien is deze ook via https://www.unesco.nl/node/3567 terug te kijken.

De live uitzending van de masterclass kunt je gratis volgen. Voor deelname aan de chatsessie met de expert, is het nodig je vooraf te registreren. Dat kan via de website van de Open Universiteit.

Answering the “Call of the Mountain”: Co-creating Sustainability through Networks of Change in Colombia

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It is one thing to talk about wanting to live in harmonious relations with people, nature and Planet or Mother Earth, but quite another to put this into practice.

Today, Tuesday November 22nd, the day the FARC and the Colombian government are signing a new peace treaty, one of PhD students, Martha Chaves, successfully defended her dissertation. Martha’s thesis represents a systematic attempt to investigate individuals, communities, networks and gatherings of networks that seek to develop a more relational and caring way of living and of being in the world. In her native Colombia she studied what is it like to attempt to bring the principles of buen vivir such as; reconnecting to ancestral wisdom, questioning values of competition and individuality, and forming new relations to place and territory, into practice. Below you see a happy group of people who all played a role in the ceremony.

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Her research unveils the tensions between the dominant ontology or (ways of being) of modernity, and other marginalized more relational and cosmological ones such as those of Indigenous Andean communities. Her thesis also re-affirms the importance of plurality in creating the ‘dissonance’ that invites continuous learning that is sometimes at the edges of people’s comfort zones. More so, she shows how intercultural encounters between different ontological positions can lead to more a confronting and overcoming of our unsustainable habits. As such the thesis can help inform socio-ecological niches and movements across the globe that seek to provide a counter narrative to economic globalization, modernity and the neo-liberal agenda.

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After the defence – from left to right: Prof. Danny Wildemeersch, Prof. Rutgerd Boelens, myself, Dr. Martha Chaves, Dr. Gerard Verschoor, Deputy Rector Prof. Francine Govers, Prof. Heila Lotz-Sisitka and Prof. Noelle Aarts.

Furthermore, her results show or at least suggest that encounters between different ontologies can result in transformative and potentially ‘transgressive’ learning in terms of disrupting stubborn routines, norms and hegemonic powers which tend to accelerate unsustainablity. This finding connects well with here future work within the ISSC-funded project on T-learning (www.transgressivelearning.org) that I blogged about in the post below this one.

Afterwards there was a WASS seminar Symposium “Disruptive Networks of Change: Can ‘Transgressive’ learning alter the status quo?” where some critical follow-up questions were asked such as: What types of learning are needed to disrupt ingrained unsustainable behaviour? And how can learning-based change be upscaled? With invited speakers from the fields of environmental education and social learning, and building on the ISSC funded T-learning project which addresses issues of transformative/transgressive learning, we will set out to explore these questions, and possible paths towards more sustainable futures. Martha Chaves first presented here work briefly (presentation-for-defense-22-nov-2016), followed by responding presentations by Prof. Heila Lotz-Sisitka of Rhodes University in South Africa (issc-tkn-seminar-wageningenn) and by Prof. Danny Wildemeersch (paper-presentation-maynooth) of the University of Leuven in Belgium.

 

Time for ‘T-learning’ – transformative, transgressive learning in times of climate change

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Still feeling very privileged and a bit lucky to be part of a very rich consortium of partners from 4 different continents – as one of 3 selected proposal out of more than 500 (!) original expressions of interest – to work on this ICSS-funded project on T-learning. The project just launched its website: http://transgressivelearning.org/ with the case studies form the 10 different countries. Here is what we are talking about:

Radical changes in society are needed for responding to climate change, and for transforming to sustainability. It is increasingly clear that people everywhere will need to learn to transform to sustainability in ways that are socially just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable.

It is now already widely known that transformations to sustainability can occur if people learn to make changes at niche level. This can drive wider social changes and regime shift transformations, especially if such forms of learning become more collective.

Transformations to sustainability do not come about easily because of ‘lock-ins’ in the system. Transformative, transgressive types of learning are needed to help ‘unlock’ the lock-ins and to strengthen wider forms of collective social learning.

Yet, we know little about the type of transformative, transgressive learning (t-learning) that enables such change.

Here’s the initial ‘academic’ paper we wrote: transgressiveSocialLearning (only to have a look, not for sharing with others).

Full reference: Lotz-Sisitka H, Wals AEJ, Kronlid D, McGarry D. (2015) ‘Transformative, transgressive social learning: rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dysfunction’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability , 16, 73-80, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2015.07.018

Go visit the website! http://transgressivelearning.org/ or here: Join T-learning form

On-line Masters Course on Education in the Context of Sustainable Development at Gothenburg University

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New Course: Education for sustainable development – an introduction

With global challenges such as climate change, mass extinction of species, rising inequity and a growing world population, the prospects for a quality life for all, forever seem rather bleak. Central in this new course is the question: What is the role and responsibility of education in not only responding to sustainability problems but also in preventing them and in creating more sustainable futures? But also what might such education look like? The course will take advantage of some of the materials and lessons learnt from the recently finished Global Environmental Education Course Gothenburg University supported – along with Wageningen University & Research and other universities and the US EPA- which was lead by Cornell University in association with the NAAEE’s EECapacity Program.

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In this 15 credit Master’s course you will critically and actively explore central concepts and perspectives in the field of education for sustainable development. The course content will be related to the participants’ own backgrounds, specific interests and prior experiences. Master students / students who have completes their Bachelors with different study backgrounds (e.g. environmental sciences, social sciences, economics, arts and humanities) can enrol in this course as long as you have an interest in both sustainable development and education and meet the basic English proficiency requirement of Gothenburg University.

The course is offered  online at half time starting November 1 and finishing March 22, 2017). The main course language is English. There are four blocks: 1) Understanding Sustainable Development, 2) Understanding Education in relation to SD, 3) Understanding learning environments, processes and outcomes conducive to SD and 4) Education in relation to your own SD-challenge (personal project). Each block is divided up in course weeks, each with short introductory videos, background literature, discussion questions and online discussion. Periodically there will be assignments that will be used in providing feedback and assessing the quality of your contributions. The new Global Education Monitor Report on Education for People and Planet: Creating Sustainable Futures for All will be one of the texts used in the course.

For the pilot course we are admitting a maximum of 50 students. You will need to formally register for the course through Gothenburg University via this link to the GU course web-page.

More information about course content contact me at: Arjen.wals@gu.se

More information about course logistics and registration can be found via the link to the course’s webpage (hyperlink).

Note: eligible students from European Union can participate without paying tuition to Gothenburg University. Students from outside the European Union will have to pay a tuition fee. It is assumed that participants have a bachelor degree or equivalent and have a proficient mastery of the English language (evidence of this may need to be provided).