This new paper – based on Natalia’s PhD-work – is quite different in that it explores the utilisation of dialogic practices, site-specific theatre and a project conducted in a British village to generate processes of “context-based meaning finding”. It concludes that Education for Sustainable Development essentially starts with and revolves around re-embedding sustainable development in life and the act of living, engaging people in place through processes in which communities yield their own, context and time specific interpretations of sustainable development. The paper was published in ‘open-access’ journals Sustainability and can therefore be downloaded and shared for free! One interesting feature f the paper is that the some of the conversations with the participants in the study as they took place during walks in through the land(scape) can be accessed and hear. The editors insisted the links to the date were put in the notes in the end instead of as hyper-links in the text – which is regretable in my opinion. But here they are the links to the two excerpts provided (which make more sense when engaging with the full text first): “in the woods” (with Natalia narrating first about how she engaged the participants and used “walking” as a way to dig for meaning) and “on the bridge”

The full paper reference is: Eernstman, N. and Wals, A.E.J. “Locative Meaning-making: An Arts-based Approach to Learning for Sustainable Development”, Sustainability 2013, 5, 1645-1660; doi:10.3390/su5041645 It can be downloaded HERE. sustainability-05-01645

2013 marks the year in which the world’s largest and most diverse educational research organization – the AERA – jointly with Routledge, published the International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education (Stevenson, Brody, Dillon & Wals, 2013). The field of Environmental Education has roughly existed for just under 50 years and has over time developed its own research, research networks and research journals. The AERA commssioned the editors in 2009 to compile this Handbook as a part of AERA’s Handbook Series on Education Research.

The International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education describes the important concepts, findings and theories developed by the research community and examines the historical progression, current debates and controversies, missing elements from EE research agenda, and the future.
The environment and contested notions of sustainability are increasingly topics of public interest, political debate, and legislation across the world. Environmental education journals now publish research from a wide variety of methodological traditions that show linkages between the environment, health, development, and education. The growth in scholarship makes this an opportune time to review and synthesize the knowledge base of the environmental education (EE) field. The purpose of this 51-chapter handbook is to illuminate the most important concepts, findings and theories that have been developed by EE research and critically examine the historical progression of the field, its current debates and controversies, what is still missing from the EE research agenda, and where that agenda might be headed.

You can find the orginal proofs of chapter 1 here: Stevenson, B., Brody, M., Dillon, J and Wals, A.E.J. (2012). International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education_Ch01_1pp In: Stevenson, B., Brody, M., Dillon, J. and Wals, A.E.J. (Eds.) (2012) International Handbook of Environmental Education Research. London: Routledge, 1-12

The Handbook can be order through Routledge or any on-line bookseller. Here’s a link to the Routledge Handbook page which also contains the Table of Contents. Should you be working for a university you may want to recommend the Handbook for you library.

Recently Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) launched the website for its new Centre for Sustainable Development & Food Security. This Centre seeks to link education, research and community-engagement in innovative ways to help achieve sufficient, healthy and enjoyable food for all now and in the future without compromising the carrying capacity of the Earth’s ecosystems. Food is considered an inter- and transdisciplinary theme that includes aspects of production, consumption, quality, safety, nutrition, waste, ethics, land-use, watermanagement, energy and culture, to name a few key essential vantage points that cannot just be studied or addressed in isolation. Below you find the basic information about the Centre from the new website:

Our mission

The Centre for Sustainable Development and Food Security (CSD&FS) seeks to accelerate sustainable global food security by facilitating and linking ground-breaking forms of research, education and societal engagement.

What do we do?

We initiate, connect and support innovative research, education and societal engagement in food-related challenges. We connect and strengthen networks and initiatives that work in the same vein as the centre but are presently operating in relative isolation, lacking synergy and mutual learning. We develop, support and share exemplary sustainable food security practices. We create an international platform for trans- interdisciplinary research on sustainable food security.

How do we do this?

By creating a space both virtual and real where people working on sustainable food security can be inspired, challenged and connected. By providing a window to sustainable food security for a range of stakeholders from outside and within Wageningen University & Research centre (Wageningen UR). By becoming a key innovation node in the international food security landscape by participating in and organizing networks and Centre’s of Excellence.

Our perspective

The Centre for Sustainable Development and Food Security:

• considers food security broadly to include issues related to food production, availability, access, safety, nutrition, consumption, waste, equity, health and enjoyment;
• promotes trans- and interdisciplinary perspectives to include social, ecological, economic, environmental and ethical aspects of food;
• believes that a sustainable development perspective requires that different spatial (local to global) and temporal (past-present-future) scales need to be considered when seeking to address food security challenges;
• finds that cutting edge approaches involving boundary crossing between sectors, disciplines, values and interests, requiring dialogue, interaction, reflection and the transformation of prevailing unsustainable practices are urgently needed.

The Centre for Sustainable Development & Food Security (CSD&FS) is hosted by  the WUR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI), with a mandate from the Netherlands’ Ministry of Economic Affairs and Wageningen UR’s Executive Board to accelerate sustainable global food security.

Please find below the introduction to an article that appeared earlier this week on the CTA website that I co-authored with two of my colleagues. The full paper contains some useful links and can be found here in English and here in French.  Some of the resources referred to are available via the Share Box of this blog.

How to educate in a changing world? Towards competence-based tertiary agricultural education

Authors: Arjen Wals, Martin Mulder and Natalia Eernstmann,  Education & Competence Studies, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands

Introduction:

Continued globalization and digitalization are not only affecting how we think, what we know, who to believe and how we act, they also affect the role of education in society’. In this regard, they attempt to answer ‘what do we educate for in such a world when things change so fast and knowledge becomes obsolete before you know it?’ For example, Wageningen University started changing their identity by positioning themselves as life science universities, which aspire to contribute to a better world and improved quality of life. Is that the way to go for agricultural universities?

Photo:  Jimma University Agricultural College (JUCAVM); source: https://plus.google.com/107229457994018982305/photos?hl=en

In this feature article we provide a brief review of some trends in Tertiary Agricultural Education (TAE) within Europe and examines the world-wide shift from traditional transmissive to emerging transformative development of more dynamic competencies in a real-world setting. A number of new competencies are required including: interdisciplinary problem-solving, addressing multiple stakeholder interests, participatory approaches in innovation, interactive methods in conflict resolution, responsive actions regarding community needs, critical media literacy, and social responsibility in entrepreneurship, to name a few, along with those that still connect to specific content areas (e.g. animal science, plant science, environmental science and agro-technology).

This overarching innovation taking place in tertiary agricultural education in Europe is referred to as Competence-based Education and Training (CBET). A synthesis of the requirements for new graduates as defined by the public and the related competencies that are considered relevant is presented. A case study of the ten-step re-design of the MSc curriculum in horticulture at the Jimma University Agricultural College (JUCAVM) in Ethiopia is showcased.

Go here for the full article!

The monograph was edited by Professor Heila Lotz-Sisitka of Rhodes University and the result of collaboration between Wageningen University and Rhodes with support of SANPAD (the South Africa – Netherlands Partnership for Development funded by the Dutch government) and the UNESCO Chair on Social Learning and Sustainable Development. The full report can be downloaded here: Reviews on Social Learning Literature

The excerpt below comes from the foreword I was asked to write.

How can learning not be social? Isn’t all learning social? These are often the kinds of questions I get when I share my fascination with social learning. Arguably all meaningful learning is inter-relational (with others, including other species, with place and, indeed with oneself) and requires some level of reflexivity by mirroring the significance of one’s encounters with the inner sediments (frames, values, perspectives and worldviews) of prior experiences. The result tends to be a process of further solidification (freezing) or a loosening (unfreezing) or a modification (re-framing) or even the parallel occurrence of all three. So yes, the ‘social’  as inter-relational is crucial in most, perhaps all learning, that we engage in, but even though this is emphasised in social learning, this is not what sets it apart from related learning concepts such as collaborative learning, participatory learning, group learning, and so on.

It appears that in the context of working on inevitably ill-defined and ill-structured issues and situations (e.g. natural resource management issues or sustainability issues) there is an increased awareness that there is no one single perspective that can resolve or even improve such issues. Much social learning literature therefore refers to the importance of bringing together multiple perspectives, values and interests, including marginal and marginalised ones in order to be able to creatively and energetically break with stubborn routines that led to unsustainability in the first place. Despite the range of views on social learning that currently exist, the utilisation of pluralism and/or diversity in multi-stakeholder settings is often referred to as a key component of social learning. Now it would be naïve to think that just by putting people with different backgrounds, perspectives, values and so on together, this creative and energising process would automatically start. This is where another form of ‘social’ comes in: social cohesion, sometimes referred to as social capital. In order to be able to create a constructive dynamic that allows diversity to play its generative role in finding routine-breaking solutions to sustainability challenges, there needs to be sufficient social cohesion between the participating actors, even between those who don’t seem to care much about each other.  In much of the social learning literature stress is placed on things like: investing in relationships, deformalising communication, co-creation of future scenarios and joint fact-finding. The idea is that when people who don’t think alike, or even disagree, engage in a common task in a pleasant and safe environment, they will find their common humanity (which is considered a first step in developing the empathy for the other) needed to open up and engage with the other’s perspective. Creating such an environment is an art in itself and requires careful facilitation – another key topic area in social learning literature.

In the open-access publication acoustics-digital acoustics-digital(which appeared at the launch of the Wageningen University UNESCO Chair on Social Learning and Sustainable Development (Wals et al., 2009) we used the metaphor of an improvising jazz ensemble to capture the essence of social learning.

“Chaos frequently emerges in an (improvising) jazz ensemble, but structure rules. Everyone makes up part of the whole and that whole is, if it sounds good, more than the sum of the parts. Every musician has his/her own experiences and competencies, but also intuition and empathy. The ensemble doesn’t know how
things will sound ahead of time, but its members instinctively know when things sound good. They have faith in one another and in a good outcome. Leadership is sometimes essential and therefore provided by one of the musicians or a director, or it sometimes shifts and rotates. The music is sometimes written down, though this is often not the case, and everyone simply improvises. If it sounds good, then the audience will respond appreciatively, that is to say, those who enjoy jazz music (and not everyone does…). People from the audience sometimes join in, changing the composition of the ensemble. The acoustics of the hall in which the music is played is important as well: not all halls sound alike and some have more character. A concert may also be recorded to serve as inspiration elsewhere, though this does not happen often…” (Wals et al., 2009, p.3).

Indeed social learning processes remind one of an improvising jazz ensemble. They too are intangible in a certain sense, and are therefore not easily controlled. Success often depends on the people concerned and on the manner in which they became involved. There are ideas regarding which direction the participants want to go and there are even recurring patterns, but the ultimate result comes about little by little. Sometimes, but certainly not all the time, the conditions are quite optimal and the process brings out the unique qualities and perspectives of everyone and results in surprisingly novel solutions and actions. Indeed, in social learning too the whole is more than the sum of its parts.This monograph, consistent with some key ideas underpinning social learning, brings together and confronts different views on social learning, in order to arrive at a better understanding of the potential and the limitations of social learning in the context of natural resource management, environmental management and sustainability.  The monograph represents one of the fruits of a collaborative effort between Wageningen University in the Netherlands and Rhodes University in South Africa. It represents a wonderful entry point into social learning for (young) academics not only in The Netherlands and South Africa, but all around the world, as some of the literature reviewed and the issues raised clearly transcend these two countries.

The full report can be downloaded here: Reviews on Social Learning Literature

Reference

Wals, A.E.J., van der Hoeven, N. & Blanken, H. (2009). The Acoustics of Social Learning: Designing learning processes that contribute to a more sustainable world. Wageningen/Utrecht: Wageningen Academic Publishers/SenterNovem.

Although the articles fail to recognize that the study was conducted by a team of researchers consisting of Marlon van der Waal and Dieuwke Hovinga (OVC-Advies & Lector Hogeschool Leiden) – who both did the bulk of the research – and Kris van Koppen (Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University) and myself, the message shared with a wide audience is important. Below I have pasted the English Executive Summary of the report. For the full report please click the link just above the photo of the report’s cover which is shown below as well.

Please note that the report itself and the articles are in Dutch

Toen ik er meer over ging weten werd het leuk Compleet(3)inclUKabstract

The impact of educational nature immersion programme’s on child development

Connecting Children to Nature through an Educational Nature Immersion Programme

Full citation in Dutch:

Van der Waal, M.E., Hovinga, Wals, A.E.J en van Koppen, C.S.A. (2012) “Toen ik er meer over ging weten werd het leuk”: Onderzoek naar de meerwaarde van het educatieve natuurbelevingsprogramma ‘NatuurWijs’ in vergelijking met regulier natuuronderwijs. Rapport, Wageningen: Educatie & Competentiestudies, Wageningen Universiteit, 116 p.

Full citation in English:

Van der Waal, M.E., Hovinga, Wals, A.E.J en van Koppen, C.S.A. (2012) “Once I started to get to know it better, it became fun”: A study of the added-value of an educational nature-immersion programme ‘NatureWise’ in comparison with standard nature education in Dutch Primary schools. Research Report, Wageningen: Education and Competence Studies, Wageningen University, 116 p.

Executive Summary

Most of the world’s children grow up in urban areas with little access to the natural world. Presently there is a renewed interest in The Netherlands but elsewhere as well, in the provision of educational experiences that can help children connect with the natural world.  This interest is fuelled by an increased concern about the decline in (young) people’s health (e.g. the rise of obesity in many parts of the world), their understanding of how nature works (e.g. in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss), their ability to concentrate and engage in deep thinking, as a result of the rapid rise of digitally mediated interaction, Around the globe school-based programmes have been developed that immerse children in nature-oriented experiences near (e.g. on school grounds) and not so near places (e.g. in a natural area driving distance away from the school). The programmes vary in intensity (from once a year to periodically throughout the year), educational approach (from more cognitive and understanding oriented to more whole person-oriented) didactical orientation (from show and tell modes of instruction to more free flowing, experiential and discovery-based approaches), and the role of outside experts (from low involvement of outside expertise to high involvement of outside expertise.

Little research has been done on the impact of such programs on children’s development, learning and their understanding of and connections with nature. Longitudinal studies where children are followed over a longer period of time are even scarcer. This study reports on a three year longitudinal study of children (age 8-10) who participated in NatureWise, a nature immersion programme that takes children into the forest under the guidance of a forest ranger three times a year. NatureWise (NW) is a carefully designed programme that requires school-based preparation for each of the so-called forest days as well as school-based reflection on the significance and lessons learnt of each on those days. The programme seeks to develop ‘head’ (development of cognitive understanding of ecological principles and life in and management of the forest), ‘hart’ (development of affective, emotional bonding with nature and associated values) and, ‘hands’ (development of psycho-motor skills needed to care for nature).

An experimental design was created that included 6 primary schools, 3 from urban areas and 3 from more rural areas. In each school for each participating grade a NatureWise-class was followed as was a control class which did not participate in NW but followed the normal nature education programme that can be considered typical for most Dutch primary schools. Most Dutch primary schools at present allocate limited time to both nature-oriented and experience-oriented education mainly because of pressure to increase the scores on standardized tests in reading, writing, general sciences and arithmetic. In the worst case schools only provide 30 minutes weekly of a school television programme called ‘News from Natural World.” Within each class a group of eight pupils was followed more intensively to obtain a deeper understanding of the children’s development. Children’s concept-maps and activity booklets (in year 1 and year 3 of the study) were analysed as well as interviews with the eight focus children from each class. In addition all participating teachers (n=24) were interviewed about their understanding of nature education in general and NW in particular (for those who participated in NW) as well as about the changes they observed in the children and about the influence of the children’s home-situation on their exposure to and connection with nature. In addition classes were observed periodically during lessons about nature. In total 185 children between the ages of 8 and 10 participated in the study. Methodologically the study can be classified as a phenomenological study in that as much as possible the researchers tried to capture children’s understanding of and connection with nature, and the teacher’s understanding thereof, through their own eyes by trying to minimize the influence of the researcher’s own preconceived notions about what to expect while trying to maximize the opportunities for children and teachers to express themselves freely, undistorted by expectations about what is ‘right’.

The relationship between children and nature, according to this study, is in its essence mostly playful and animal-oriented. The children are not always conscious or aware of this relationship but the relationship becomes stronger and more explicit when given the opportunity to explore nature in their own life-world. The children’s relationship can be classified as pluralistic and culture-bound. In highly urbanized settings the relationship appears weaker as the opportunities to explore and connect with nature, both in the home setting and the neighbourhood, are rather limited. The role of the parents and the school in fostering children’s connections with nature is quite significant. A nurturing home and school environment, enabling children to have multiple and idiosyncratic experiences in nature or nature-like areas, can help create conditions that allow children to develop a stronger and more meaningful bond with nature. Such experiences include:  discovering new things and pathways in nature, seeing how others respond to experiences in nature, learning to cope with anxiety, overcoming challenges, learning how to ‘observe’ and developing a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings, storing of memories both mentally and physically (e.g. by taking home artefacts from nature, and, finally, by sharing experiences in nature in conversation and through other forms of expression (e.g. arts) at home and at school with parents, care-givers, siblings, peers and teachers.

For the pupils it is important that they learn to know and to identify nature – or what is seen as nature or green in a country where nature arguably hardly exists in in a ‘pure’ and overwhelming sense – in their own neighbourhood. This knowing and identifying makes it possible for them to shape their own meaningful relationship with nature.  This connects with the general interest most children display in nature: they want to know how nature works, how they can be good for nature and environment, how they can survive in nature, what they can find in nature, and how animals live. Given the somewhat impoverished state of nature (conservation) education in most Dutch schools, addressing these questions and building up ecological literacy must not be rushed but rather needs to be done gradually. One difference between the children growing up in the heavily urbanized environments and the children growing up in more rural environments is that the urban children also display a keen interest in cultural aspects and are more pre-occupied with the human-nature relationship.

When considering the regular nature education ‘taught’ to the control groups in the participating schools it can be concluded that there is quite a bit of variation in between the schools and even within the schools.  This leads to great differences in the ways children are exposed to nature in the school setting.

In some classes the occasional watching of ‘News from the Natural World’ on school TV is all that is offered. In other classes teachers do their utmost to develop knowledge and literacy in connection to the natural world and seek to extend this to also develop positive attitudes towards nature and the skills to care for nature. But there are many other differences: some schools have a specific nature education method or text book others do not, some schools make an effort in getting students outside of the classroom, others do not, some schools bring plants and animals to the classroom, others do not, some schools do classroom experiments, others do not, some schools bring in outside experts to talk about nature, others do not, some schools have special projects weeks, others do not…

Clearly, the children participating in the NatureWise programme do so within different contexts, some being more conducive to nature education than others. The research shows that most children, not all, benefit from participating in NW frequently over a 2-3 year which is expressed in an increase in knowledge of nature, deepened sensory and affective engagement with nature, and more sensitive behaviour towards nature. The added value of NW lies is multiple: children are in a position to establish direct contact with nature, children gain more confidence and interest in nature which helps them understand information about nature that comes to them through the media, children are better positioned to develop empathy towards another species, children come to see the importance of caring for nature, children are given hands-on opportunities to care for nature, and, finally, children get to enjoy being in nature aesthetically, psycho-motorically and intellectually. All this combined makes children more inclined to actively seek nature. The research therefore confirms the key premises of experience-oriented nature education programmes, although it should be noted that not all participating students display such a development and that in the control group some students display a similar development under favourable conditions in the school and/or home environment.

Participation in NW also results in a number of positive spin-off effects among the teachers, especially among those who already have some affinity with nature and nature education and/or are at least open to it from a professional development perspective and/or are part of a school characterized by a positive pedagogical climate emphasizing continuous improvement. Where these conditions or a subset thereof, exist, it turns out that teachers come to view their pupils differently: they discover qualities that they failed to see before or only moderately recognized in a regular classroom setting. In addition they come to appreciate the value of emotions, the affective domain and using all the senses for children’s personal development but also for teaching and learning in general.   As a result these teachers are better positioned to see the educational potential of the green outdoors, even in highly urbanized areas, and seem more capable in connecting learning outside school with learning inside school. Another spin-off effect concerns the children’s parents.  The anecdotes and narratives provided by both the teachers and the pupils suggest that NW, at least in some instances, also positively influences the parents when the outdoor experiences are shared at home.

Although these findings can be considered positive some cautionary remarks need to be made. The impact of NW is highest when a number of factors help enhance the NW-experience. These factors are:

1. The geographical location of the school – NW at present has more impact on children growing-up in city environments.
2. The pedagogical climate at school – NW has more impact when there is space for experiential and discovery-based learning but also when a school dares to abandon the standard curriculum at times.
3. The teacher’s attitude towards nature and nature education – NW has more impact when a teacher has affinity with Biology, nature and the outdoors.
4. The educational qualities of the outdoor guide – NW has more impact when the outdoor guide understands the world of a child and possesses didactical and pedagogical qualities.
5. The involvement of parents and/or care givers – NW has more impact when the home environment engages with the children’s experiences.

When all or even a sub-set of these factors work in the right direction, these positive impacts are more likely to occur, even in children who do not participate in NW. At the same time, when most of these factors work in the other direction these impacts are less likely to occur, even in children who do participate in NW.

Overall, the potential added value of participating in an educational nature immersion programme such as NW, is highest in urban settings where the challenge to (re)connect children with nature appears greatest. In order benefit from a programme such as NW the most it is recommended that before implementing the programme an inventory is made of the five factors listed above.  A first analysis or quick-scan of these factors can help reveal areas that require attention before implementing NW or can give cause to adapt the NW-programme in such a way that it is likely to resonate better with the school, the children, the teachers and the wider community. As such this research provides an argument for more tailor-made programmes but also for policies that support these factors.

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INTERVIEW Algemeen Dagblad 02/01/13

Julie Davis of the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia and I were asked to provide input for the workshop by providing a ‘provocative’ introduction. Mine was titled: Why sustainability cannot and should not be taught: a call for reflexivity, transformation and deep learning in turbulent times

Needless to say that the title raised some eyebrows. But here’s what I tried to say. We cannot know what sustainability is. We don’t live long enough to be able to say that what we consider to be sustainable today turned out to be sustainable in the end. Also, what might be sustainable in Gothenburg, Sweden might not be sustainable in Kampala, Uganda. To complicate things further even when considering all the (scientific) knowledge available today there is no universal agreement about what, given what we know today, might be the most sustainable way of living.

So how then can we educate for sustainability? – a question already raised 20 years ago by my Canadian colleague and friend Bob Jickling.  In my contribution I problematized this dilemma from an education perspective by arguing that even though we do not and cannot know what sustainability is we have a moral responsibility to always be looking for ways of living that are more sustainable than our current ways.The current state of the Planet demands this. Given this dilemma it would be inappropriate or at least un-educative to use education to prescribe learners how to live their lives or to condition them to behave in a certain way.

Rather than focussing as educators on sustainability as a ‘destiny’ or an ‘end point’ it may be more fruitful and certainly more educational, to focus on the type of learning and the type of capacities that are needed to break away from unsustainable routines which are all around and generally known. Using concrete examples, I proposed strenghtening social and transformative learning in ‘cross-boundary environments’ seeking to develop people’s sustainability competence as an alternative. Some of these ideas can also be found in my inaugural address of a few years ago: Message-in-a-bottle-Learning-our-way-out-of-Unsustainability(pdf connected to the hypelink). I have attached the slides I used here: ESD-TE Workshop Gothenburg U November2012.

Julie Davis talked about: Working the system: Taking a systems approach to embedding education for sustainability in teacher education in Australia

Here’s how here contribution was listed in the workshop outline: Much has been written about the need to ‘re-orient teacher education towards sustainability’. Yet, research indicates that, generally speaking, teacher education institutions are not preparing pre-service teachers to teach education for sustainability. This presentation reports on a staged study that commenced in 2006 in Australia that has sought to understand how change is implemented and becomes ‘mainstreamed’ within teacher education institutions. Stage 1 involved an international literature review and interviews to examine efforts to re-orient teacher education towards sustainability; consequently, a systems-based model for change was developed. In Stage 2 (2008), this model was piloted across 5 teacher education institutions in Queensland, Australia, aimed at engaging teacher education institutions and a range of stakeholders within a teacher education system to work simultaneously to bring about change. Findings indicated that systemic change is enabled if there is both conceptual and personal capacity for change, and that trust, respect and ownership are central to re-orienting teacher education systems. Stage 3 (2009) involved another 5 teacher education institutions that used the model to begin the task of reorienting their teacher education systems. This stage identified 5 enabling actions: collaborative curriculum change; building a sustainability ethos; connecting disparate sources of sustainability education content; better support for integration between programs; and utilising experiential teaching and learning approaches. Stage 4 (2011) is underway, aimed at deepening and extending the change experiences, with an emphasis on building a national network to drive systemic change for education for sustainability.

Irvine Berlin, 1936

“There are three people in a vehicle. In this story, they all seem to have a foot on the accelerator. Not too far in the distance, and clearly coming into view, there is a noticeboard. It reads: ‘Brake hard or change direction! – Abyss ahead!’.  As the vehicle continues speeding forward, the occupants react differently to the noticeboard.  One has seen it coming for some time; in fact, she anticipated it. Her optician told her she had good foresight. ‘For goodness sake’, she says, ‘we must slow down and change direction while we can’. A second one, who has also been aware of the notice for some time, says ‘It’s certainly an interesting notice. Let’s deconstruct its meaning exactly, then we can develop our critical awareness and understanding, and decide what to do.’ The third person, who was much later in recognising the sign than the other two says, I don’t think there’s any danger ahead, and if there is – which I doubt – we’ll deal with it  then’.   Meantime, the vehicle is still getting closer to the notice, and stays on track….”

A metaphor of course, but perhaps illustrative of our collective predicament.  We all – or nearly all – have a bit of our foot on the accelerator, whilst at the same time, increasing numbers are aware that braking, changing direction, and learning ‘our way out’ is critically important. At the same time, a significant proportion of the population and vested interests drive forward regardless, albeit with a growing suspicion that, in the words of the old Irvine Berlin song, ‘there may be trouble ahead’.”(Sterling, 2012 p. 511)

The above excerpt is the opening of Stephen Sterling’s wonderful Afterword to “Learning for Sustainability in Times of Accelerating Change”. The Afterword is one of the contributions that has been made open-access via Wageningen Academic Publisher’s website. Along with Juliet Schor’s Foreword and the Introductory Chapter to the book, some authors have paid the publisher a fee to unlock their chapter to allow everybody with access to the Internet download it for free for their own use. You can find the full pdf of the Introductory Chapter here: Introduction to L4S in Times of Change Wals&Corcoran

The book can be ordered at a discount when going to ‘books’ in the menu bar on top of this page.

Environmental psychology studies the ways in which people perceive and respond to the physical environment, whereas conservation psychology  tends to refer to psychological research on the need and ways to protect the natural environment. What is conservation psychology, and what is its relationship to environmental psychology? This new Handbook answers those questions. From the Oxford University Press website:

“The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Conservation Psychology includes basic research on environmental perceptions, attitudes, and values; research on specific environments, such as therapeutic settings, schools, and prisons; environmental impacts on human well-being; and ways to promote a more sustainable relationship between people and the natural environment. By presenting an extensive review of current research, the handbook serves as a thorough guide to the state of knowledge about a wide range of topics at the intersection of psychology and the physical environment. Beyond this, it provides a better understanding of the relationship between environmental and conservation psychology, and some sense of the directions in which these interdependent areas of study are heading. Research on the human-environment relationship is increasingly relevant to understanding and addressing the environmental challenges society is facing. This handbook should serve as a resource for professionals both within and outside of psychology who are trying to comprehend the human implications of environments, and to design programs, policies, and environments that are cognizant of human psychology.”

Here’s some background inforrmation about the chapter I contributed (for a full Table of Contents please go to the publisher’s website).

Wals, A.E.J. (2012) Learning our way out of un-sustainability: the role of environmental education. In: Clayton, S. (Ed.) Handbook on Environmental and Conservation Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 628-644. (by clicking on the title you can get to the proofs of the chapter).

Abstract

In this chapter the role of education in creating a planet that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect will be discussed from two vantage points: an instrumental one and an emancipatory one. The instrumental perspective emphasizes the potential of education in changing human environmental behavior in predetermined and more or less agreed upon directions. The emancipatory perspective, on the other hand, emphasizes the potential of education in strengthening people’s capacities and confidence to enable them to help determine how to live together in ways that do not further undermine the carrying capacity of the earth. Whereas the former, more behaviourist vantage point tends to have more support among environmentalists with a strong concern about the rapid loss of biodiversity, climate change, depletion of natural resources, and so on, the latter, more human development–oriented vantage point, tends to have more support among educators with a strong concern for self-determination, agency, and democracy. The chapter ends with the introduction of “post-normal” environmental education.

Key Words

environmental education, sustainable development, nature conservation education, emancipatory learning, instrumental learning, agency, participation, post-normal science

Admittedly I have not read the book but the title, and the fact it went viral, might inspire: “Fifty shades of green”. This book – which also was part of a conversation at the last Frankfurt Book Fair between a representative of Wageningen Academic Publishers (publisher of Learning for Sustainability in Times of Accelerating change – see below – and a representative of KNNV-publishers, a Dutch nature publisher) – would critically analyse the green-inflation, green populism and green rhetoric that is going on. It also, perhaps more importantly, would help people differentiate between what might be called deep green (suggesting a genuine transition to a more sustainable world built on principles, values, lifestyles and systems that are more sustainable than the ones currently demanded by the current dominant economic thinking) and shallow green (more of the same but with a nice green gloss that will make every-body feel good but doesn’t fundamentally change anything in the end and, in fact, amplifies unsustainability in disguise).

“Fifty shades of grey” apparently succeeds in what seems to be somewhat of a taboo, accessible to a huge audience and leads, in some ways, to a different conversation. Perhaps “Fifty shades of green” could accomplish that as well.

This morning, in a Skype meeting with Swedish Education for Sustainable Development teachers, I suggested such a book and people immediately seemed to start thinking about what such a book could be about. Please submit any ideas you may have about this in the comment box at the end of this post!

Below a wonderful cartoon by Singer that illustrates what might be called shallow green.

Green energy, green incinerators, green cars, green growth, green airplanes, green nuclear, green economy, plant bottles… , green growth, green mind-sets?

For those of you who are a bit concerned or skeptical about the green economy (a wolf in sheeps clothes?) and wonder whether education, learning and capacity building should be re-oriented towards such an economy – as if education only serves the economy… - I am inserting a link to a talk that was pre-recorded recently which was shown at The Swiss Sustainable Development Forum. Here’s the link which works with all main browsers I’m told. If it works well you can see both the talk and the slides used.

For those of you who would like to read about this I can refer to “Learning for Sustainability in Times of Accelerating Change” – of which some chapters are now open-source including the introductory chapter co-authored with Peter Blaze Corcoran. You can click on the picture below – offering another peak into the green economy –  to get to the book.

Green Economy for All? (Source: google images)