Education, sustainability and global futures

Future focused research question

What education policies, practices, research, and pedagogies are necessary to reverse the ecological catastrophe trajectory and begin rebuilding resilient and sustainable futures for all?

Description

Efforts stemming from the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, schools and higher education institutions continue to perpetuate the status quo by reproducing the logic of human exceptionalism, liberal individualism, and the hierarchical “man over nature” relationship, fueling infinite economic growth on a finite planet. This Learning Futures Collaborative aims to reimagine and reconfigure education toward the future survival of the planet and people.

Year 1 achievements:

• Learning Planet Festival – Phoenix (Jan 24-28, 2023) – the LFC organized a series of in person and online events for the inaugural LPF- Phoenix. This five-day event was a convening of individuals and organizations in the metropolitan Phoenix area that sought to inspire and enable thought and action at the intersections of sustainability and learning futures. It is connected with and contributes to the 2023 Learning Planet Festival: Learning to Take Care of Oneself, Others, and the Planet. Videos can be accessed https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcUczu4w21onG-IENsoKkCnAaJQt-6_Ot

• A featured event at the LPF-Phoenix was the Reimagining Education for Planetary Futures panel discussion that included representatives from each of the MLFTC LFCs. https://youtube.com/watch?v=uzOsvRFMolU

• Earth Month Speaker Series – The LFC organized an Earth Month Speaker Series, where we hosted one event per week throughout the month of April. This series featured moderated discussions with a set of authors/editors about their newly-released books that engage with the political and pedagogical elements of sustainability education. We invited both educators and researchers, as this series is directly relevant to both due to the books’ direct engagement with both research and practice.
  • A discussion on How to Confront Climate Denial with James Damico & Mark Baildon  https://youtube.com/watch?v=q33__pDm4AM 
  • A discussion on Teaching in the Anthropocene with Alysha Farrell, Candy Skyhar, & Michelle Lam https://youtube.com/watch?v=4_FeP9q0lXc 
  • A discussion with Peter Sutoris on Educating in the Anthropocene with Peter Sutoris https://youtube.com/watch?v=4MbUnA5y5x4&t=1s

Resources

Substack: https://edforplanetaryfutures.substack.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/educ_for_planetary_futures_/

Education and sustainability

Unesco has issued several reports on education & sustainability, outlining the critical need to improve access to education as well as approach education more holistically by carefully balancing three interrelated dimensions of learning – cognitive, socioemotional, and behavioral – to achieve any transformational effects. The following are examples:

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2016). Global Education Monitoring Report Summary 2016: Education for People and Planet: Creating Sustainable Futures for All. https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/taxonomy/term/198

UNESCO. (2020). Education for Sustainable Development: A Roadmap. ISBN: 978-92-3-100394-3

UNICEF (2021). Climate crisis is a child rights crisis: Introducing the children’s climate risk index. New York. United Nations Children’s Fund. https://www.unicef.nl/files/UNICEF-climate-crisis-child-rights-crisis.pdf

Pedagogies/trans learning for sustainability learning and action

Solís, P., & Zeballos, M. (2023). Open Mapping towards Sustainable Development Goals: Voices of YouthMappers on Community Engaged Scholarship. Springer Nature.

Tannock, S. (2021). Educating for Radical Social Transformation in the Climate Crisis (pp. 227-258). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-83000-7

Description: The central aim of this book is to “[bring] together climate change education and radical education to understand how education can be used to support radical social change.” (p. 1)

Jickling, B., & Sterling, S. (Eds.). (2017). Post-sustainability and environmental education: Remaking education for the future. Springer. ISBN: 978-3-319-51322-5

Description: A series of essays that push the reader to (re)consider education for the future, with relevance well beyond its focus on environmental education.

Stetsenko, A. (2016). The transformative mind: Expanding Vygotsky’s approach to development and education. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9780511843044

Description: Stetsenko calls for the development of a transformative activist stance that results in deliberate and goal-directed action toward sought-after futures alongside a commitment to social transformation.

Higher education and sustainability

Description: The following focus on higher education institutions, illuminating systemic and structural barriers to achieving transformation and offering advice on how to position higher education institutions to take a prominent role in grappling with and addressing the world’s pressing issues. McCowan (2020) offers a framework for understanding the impacts of higher education institutions on climate change.

Binagwaho, A., Bonciani Nader, H., Brown Burkins, M., Davies, A., Hessen, D. O., Mbow, C., … & Tong, S. (2022). Knowledge-driven actions: Transforming higher education for global sustainability: Independent Expert Group on the Universities and the 2030 Agenda. UNESCO Publishing. ISBN:978-92-3-100505-3

McCowan, Tristan (2020) The impact of universities on climate change: a theoretical framework. Transforming Universities for a Changing Climate, Working Paper Series No. 1 Institute of Education, UCL https://www.researchcghe.org/perch/resources/publications/final-working-paper-55.pdf

Gardner, C. J., Thierry, A., Rowlandson, W., & Steinberger, J. K. (2021). From publications to public actions: the role of universities in facilitating academic advocacy and activism in the climate and ecological emergency. Frontiers in Sustainability, 42. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.679019/full