Tag Archives: book

Transformative Sustainability-oriented Open Education

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This new book published by Brill just came out and I am pleased to have been ablte contribute to its contents together with one of my colleagues from the University of Gothenburg, Anne Algers. Our chapter is part of a rich collection of chapters focusing on ways of opening education to allow for more dynamic forms of learning to emerge in a world that is trying to grapple with many of the existential and ecological crises that, both ironically and sadly, humanity itself has created. The chapter that Anne and I wrote (have look at the pre-print here: Sustainability_orientedOpenLearningAlgersWals2020) asks the question of “How can open education play a role in making academia more responsive and responsible in addressing ill-defined and ambiguous, but ever so urgent, sustainable development challenges?”  In our chapter, a case study from the field of sustainable development of food systems provides a narrative that illustrates the possible impact of open education; and the value of a culture of openness to individuals, to a community, and to society.

First, we provide a contextual background on the implications of openness in higher education. Second, we introduce the subject of sustainable development (SD) of our global food systems; and third, we discuss the concept of education for sustainable development (ESD). Fourth, by means of thick description (Geertz, 1973), we report a case study on open education which we discuss in light of learning theory, critical pedagogy, and sustainable development.

In the end we argue for a radical interpretation of open education which we refer to as transformative sustainability-oriented open education, where ”open” refers to inviting and expressing critique and marginalized perspectives in controversial societal issues, while transformative refers to enabling learners to bring about change.

Suggested citation: Algers, A. & Wals, A. J. (2020). Transformative Sustainability-Oriented Open Education. In: Conrad, D. & Prinsloo, P. (Eds.).  Open(ing) Education. (pp. 103-120). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Sense. doi.org/10.1163/9789004422988_006

 

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Groundbreaking Network ENSI hands over the baton with a great collection to accelerate sustainability in schools

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ENSIBook

Last week a wonderful collection of contributions recognizing the work of the Environment and School Initiatives network (ENSI) became available as a free online open-access pdf. In 32 chapters people who have played a role in the network reflect on history, trends and prospects of education engaging with sustainable development in a meaningful way. Below a part of the introduction by one of the editors and driver of ENSI Christine Affolter. Here you find the link to the book.ENSI Final Book

ENSI – 30 Years of Engagement for Education and School Development

by Christine Affolter

ENSI has been an independent, self-managed network of experts drawn from the fields of Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and financed by member countries and individual members. During the life time of the organisation ENSI often anticipated upcoming themes and new demands and through analyses, reflection, and participative debates drew up an annual working programme to meet these needs.

Often ENSI was the forerunner of themes and developments and as a result its work had a significant impact on schools in Europe, Asia and Australia through curriculum development, teacher education, and quality indicators. But having the favourable status of a self-managed network also involved a permanent challenge to find appropriate financing and over three decades ENSI had to find a balance between the professional quality of its work and the available funding resources.

Thanks to the commitment of the ENSI experts the network gained a high international reputation. Initially ENSI was founded by OECD/CERI in 1986 and aimed to respond to two related triggers (Elliott, 2018):

The increasing pressure from ‘grassroot-groups’ concerned about the impact of economically driven developments on the environment that were asking for school programmes to support students and teachers in the development of new competences such as critical thinking, dealing with complexity, and reflectivity.

Governments and schools that had to deal with the educational implications of the increasing social complexity resulting from rapid economic and social change. Schools needed to find answers in their local environment realising that centralized curricula couldn’t completely fulfil the needs of the local communities.

The chapter I wrote (see below) can be found here: Wals_Lessons_from_the_ENSI_Network-split-merge (1).

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