Education for Sustainability
I am a Masters of Education graduate (University of British Columbia) specializing in Education for Sustainability.
Find out more about the program here.
Read more about my EfS journey with CityStudio here.
Definitions
Sustainability:
Sustainability describes an equilibrium and harmony; it is a balance in which we use only what we need and treat the Earth as a partner rather than just a resource. To maintain a sustainable lifestyle is to value simplicity, to do more (and better) with less, and to build community. Building community is important because it helps us realize that everything is interconnected, and that small actions can cause a cascade of more actions (good or bad). Sustainability is realizing that there is a flow that exists – it is a cycle, which we as humans are just a part of and do not control.
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Education:
Education should entail constructing meaningful knowledge, skills, attributes, and worldviews. It should help people learn how to think, rather than what to think. We should focus less on fact memorization and more on teaching real world skills. The experiences that change us and that we remember often don’t happen within a classroom, and much of our learning takes place in the world. When gaining new knowledge is done actively rather than passively, it tends to resonate more. I recall facts from UBC field courses where we went birding at Jericho Park or learned about glaciers while standing on one in Iceland, but I don’t think I could recall all of the amino acids I spent countless hours memorizing. Finally, I believe that education should be done through dialogue. Collaborating with others can test our assumptions and help bring us to a common understanding.
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Therefore, education for sustainability exists as a conversation between these two concepts; it the fluid act of teaching and learning between instructor and student, where the teacher can be a place or a community, or the learner can become the teacher. It is an action that hopes to echo into the real world and facilitate positive change.
Inquiry
Questions that guide my education, work, projects, etc.
How can we co-create a city that can work in tandem with the natural world? What actions must be taken to facilitate large-scale behavioural change towards a sustainable well-being society? How does the built environment affect our cultural narrative and vice versa?
Who is ‘sustainability’ for? How can we make sure all voices (genders, socio-economic statuses, cultures, etc.) are heard in this conversation?
What are schools for? Which key ideologies are invisibly woven into curricula? How can we integrate concepts of sustainability across all disciplines? How can we structure education so as to cultivate self-motivated change agents?
Key Sustainability Competencies
What is education for?
As a Graduate Research Assistant for my professor Rob VanWynsberghe, I did a literature review of an ongoing conversation around Key Sustainability Competencies. An overarching question that often comes up is “what is education for?”. At present, education works to produce excellent additions to the workforce. My research explores how education might change in order to foster future change agents who will make moves towards creating sustainable well-being societies. Here, I present some of my key findings from my research.
What are the key sustainability competencies?
“A constellation of abilities, attitudes, knowledge, understanding, skills, and habits of mind that are functionally linked to support both problem- posing and problem-solving and evoke purposeful behavior toward particular end goals” (Glasser & Hirsh 2016). They include social skills & agency (e.g. empathy and compassion), knowledge & understanding (e.g. systems thinking, future thinking), and values & commitments (e.g. affinity for all life, caring for others). There are many different frameworks proposed in the literature, but they are all variations of the same themes.
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Why competencies?
In a nutshell, the competencies can act as an adaptive framework that guide students towards being self-empowered critical thinkers. In light of today’s wicked and complex sustainability problems, this is necessary to disrupt destructive narratives that guide society.
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Competencies for who?
A lot of the competency literature points to the Western developed world and those with a certain degree of privilege. My research aims to apply the KSC conversation to marginalized or otherwise not-written-about groups (i.e. blue collar workers, women, other cultures, etc.).
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Next steps:
In my next paper, I connect the KSC with transformative learning. I also investigate pedagogies and assessment methods that could support these two themes.
Transformative Learning
Learning to change by changing how we learn
During the EfS program, I also worked on a paper that links my previous work on Key Sustainability Competencies with the idea of transformative learning. This concept builds upon Harold Glasser’s idea of “learning to change by changing how we learn” (2017). Transformative Learning is a process of critical reflection, shifting lenses, and finding a new way of being in the world. Essentially, it is a way that education could help people change their behaviours to build new, sustainable habits.
Glasser, H. (2017). Toward robust foundations for sustainable well-being societies: Learning to change by changing how we learn. In J. Cook (Ed.), Sustainability, Human Well-Being, and the Future of Education. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmllan.