Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Teaching Sustainability: The Critical Need for Head, Hands, and Heart - By William Benjamin Rogers

 





                                                    Teaching Sustainability:
The Critical Need for Head, Hands, and Heart
                                                     William Benjamin Rogers
“All parts of the university system are critical to achieving a transformative change that can occur only by connecting head, heart, and hand” – Anthony D. Cortez




Abstract
            A shift towards sustainability in higher education has begun, built largely on efforts to reduce the ecological impact of college campuses and offer interdisciplinary environmental courses. These efforts are vitally important to the creation of a sustainable campus, yet they do not comprise a complete solution to the challenges of unsustainable development that threaten our common future. In that universities are self-replicating entities (Sipos, et al., 2008), a failure to redesign pedagogy and curriculum will result in no change to the historically unsustainable trajectory of higher education. Thus, to achieve campus wide sustainability, new pedagogies must allow for students’ transformative acquisition of sustainable environmental, economic, and social principles (Moore, 2005). To this end, experiential learning is vital to the success of sustainability education. Through case studies of service learning for sustainability and experiential learning for sustainable agriculture, the present analysis will demonstrate the efficacy of integrative pedagogies in generating of affective, process, and cogitative knowledge.

Background
            In 1987, a report from the Brundtland Commission warned members of the United Nations (UN) that, in the past century, “the relationship between the human world and the planet that sustains it has undergone a profound change” (UN, 1987, p.230). Its authors underscored the gravity of ecological and climate degradation, noting that these problems were of human origin. More than a mere alarm bell, the report offered a path forward: for the world to renew its intergenerational contract, economic growth, environmental stewardship, and social equity should comprise the goals of sustainable development.
            Missing from Brundtland was a blueprint for sustainability. If global patterns of human settlement, agricultural production, manufacturing, trade, economic development, and environmental management were to shift, what would replace them? Who would design these systems? Lacking a template for what Senge (2010) describes as the ‘sustainability revolution,’ world leaders found need for a cohort of sustainability scholars. Two decades after Brundtland, UN representatives met in Bonn, Germany for the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development. There, signatories to the Bonn Declaration agreed: “we need a shared commitment to education that empowers people for change” (UNESCO, 2009, p.1-2). Institutions of higher education were identified as laboratories for sustainability education, thereby emphasizing their importance in the coming revolution.
            In both curricular design and pedagogical approach, universities have historically been ill suited for the production of sustainability leaders. As educator Anthony Cortese (2003) notes, “it is people coming out of the world’s best colleges and universities that are leading us down the current unhealthy, inequitable, and unsustainable path” (p.16). Campuses have failed to mass-produce sustainability champions, in part because knowledge is organized into ‘traditional,’ specialized disciplines. Courses emphasizing sustainability rarely fit within these ‘traditional’ structures, requiring “a paradigm shift toward a systemic perspective emphasizing collaboration and cooperation” (Cortese, 2003, p.16). Thus systems-thinking—a common approach within sustainability—demands a radical change in the disciplinary structure of higher education.
            Dismantling the heuristic of academic disciplines is not enough to secure high-quality sustainability education. In addition to restructuring the scaffolding of education, academics must work to reformulate its pedagogy (Moore, 2005). Whereas the ‘traditional’ paradigm of education often involves surface-level learning, meaning the rote memorization of specialized knowledge, sustainability education demands greater breadth of content and depth of analysis (Warburton, 2003). This may be achieved through deep learning: a reflexive process of examining the key principles and paradigms of a system (Warburton, 2003).
            Shifts in pedagogy must also be accompanied by the recognition of multiple learning outcomes. Surface-level learning places emphasis on cogitative outcomes, such as the recall of memorized facts and statistics (Warburton, 2003). In contrast, depth learning surpasses surface-level learning, producing affective outcomes in addition to cogitative gains (Shephard, 2008; Sipos, et al., 2008; Warburton, 2003). Affective outcomes may include new values, ethics, and commitments to the subject matter being analyzed (Shephard, 2008). Applied to sustainability, affective outcomes encompass a person’s internalized sense of environmental justice, value for sustainable living, and commitment to environmental stewardship.
            If a learner can achieve such affective outcomes, she or he has engaged in transformative learning. Transformative learning is defined as “a process of affecting change within a frame of reference” (Moore, 2005, p.82). As outlined by Moore (2005), this process involves the critical examination of one’s habits of mind and point of view, which together comprise an individual’s framework for understanding. Extending this to sustainable education, transformative learning might involve reflections about consumerism (a habit of mind) and the products one purchases (a point of view) within a broader global context (Moore, 2005). By connecting the individual to a larger problem, transformative learning has the potential to change an individual’s behavior (e.g., less consumption) while conferring knowledge of sustainability.
            To understand transformative sustainability education, it is helpful examine successful programs from higher education institutions. A search for experiential sustainability education yields seven possible examples of transformative programs (Battisti, et al., 2008; Brundiers, et al., 2010; Crowfoot & Santone, 2004; Domask, 2007; Fourie, 2003; Parr & Horn, 2006; Santone & Crowfoot, 2004; Sipos, et al., 2008). From these programs, three are profiled to demonstrate the geographical and pedagogical diversity of integrative sustainability education.

Case Studies
Service Learning for Sustainability
            Service learning is a pedagogy connecting classroom-based learning with community service through structured research, dialogue, and reflection (Fourie, 2003). Though numerous models of service learning exist, they share in common the opportunity engage in hands-on learning. Here, I describe two such programs for sustainability: the Michigan Community Scholars Program in the United States and the Mangaung University Community Partnership Program in South Africa.
             The Michigan Community Scholars Program (MCSP) comprises a residential living-learning community, wherein participating undergraduates elect coursework from a variety of service learning seminars (Crowfoot & Santone, 2004). One such seminar, titled “Environment, Sustainability, and Social Change,” is the product of student recommendations for undergraduate sustainability education. Offered only to freshman, the course seeks to identify ‘unsustainability’ and teach sustainable living to oftentimes environmentally-naïve students. This is, necessarily, a transformative learning process, wherein participants engage in critical reflection about their own privileges and lifestyles (Crowfoot & Santone, 2004). Through classroom dialogues, field trips, presentations from local sustainability practitioners, and service learning, students are immersed in experiences that place sustainability within a community context (Crowfoot & Santone, 2004).
            As a course capstone, MCSP seminar participants elect a community-based project. Santone and Crowfoot (2004), the instructors, outline a particularly successful project below:
Working with middle school students in her hometown, [an art] student combined an in-class quilt-making project on the local importance of the Great Lakes with research and presentations on related local and global water issues. Her project included an on-campus display of the quilt and how it was created, followed by a display at the school where it was done. To conclude the project, she donated the quilt to a museum in her hometown focused on the Great Lakes. (Santone & Crowfoot, 2004, p. 156)

In this example, the student’s quilt connects campus and community as a tangible representation of sustainability. Course feedback confirms that students enjoyed this creative mode of self-directed, transformative learning (Santone & Crowfoot, 2004). Through reflection and service, MCSP students glean knowledge of environmental issues and commit to sustainability.
            Whereas the Michigan seminar emerged from student interest, the Mangaung University Community Partnership Program (MUCCP) in South Africa responded to community demand for medical services (Fourie, 2003). Formed in 1991, the MUCCP initially offered healthcare (provided by student volunteers) to communities near the university (Fourie, 2003). The project was initially limited to medical and nursing students, but it later grew to include students studying psychology, entomology, agricultural management, and leisure science (Fourie, 2003). Today, it extends even further, reaching undergraduate and postgraduate students from eight university departments.           
            Under the guidance of faculty, students complete projects of high priority to the Mangaung community. These include efforts to increase vegetable production, provide family planning education, change health behavior, prevent HIV/AIDS, and promote child health, all within the framework of sustainable development. As university and community stakeholders, educators focus on community needs and foster “integrated and iterative processes of learning by and from the community” (Fourie, 2003, p.35). Environmental issues are a lesser focus of the MUCCP, whereas elements of social sustainability (including health and social security) compose its largest impact. Students, responding directly to community need, report a greater understanding of challenges to sustainable development after serving and learning from their community. Thus, bridging academics and action, MUCCP students and their MCSP counterparts learn sustainability through direct community service.
Experiential Learning for Sustainable Agriculture
            Another model for sustainability learning can be found in university sustainable agriculture programs, which have a long history of experiential learning (Battisti, et al., 2008). In that modern farming practices take root in industry, not nature, students of sustainable agriculture must challenge their worldview and engage in transformative learning (Battisti, et al., 2008). The Student Experimental Farm (SEF) at the University of California, Davis, formed in 1977, was an early source of transformative learning opportunities in agriculture (Parr & Horn, 2006). Over time, SEF participants formed community action projects, helping organize a rural apprenticeship program and providing farmer outreach (Parr & Horn, 2006). The farm gave students the opportunities to model and teach sustainable agriculture:
In the larger-scale market garden, students grew organic vegetables for sale to an on-campus student-operated restaurant, and collected and composted the kitchen waste from the restaurant. Through the children’s garden program, students provided grade school classes from the region with hands-on farm and garden tours focusing on agricultural and environmental topics. (Parr & Horn, 2006, p.427-428).  

Involvement with the closed-loop, zero-waste market garden and similar projects enabled SEF students to engage both their heads and hands in the realization of an ecologically sound system of agriculture.
            Today, students may elect a new major in sustainable agriculture. Following faculty recommendations, the major is specifically designed to allow for the “inclusion of social sciences, field-based experiential learning, and a systems-orientation within the curriculum” (Parr, et al., 2007; Parr & Horn, 2006, p. 428). Guiding the curriculum are seven pedagogical principles that underscore the vital need to connect classrooms, farms, and communities for sustainability education (see Table 1). Indeed, agro-ecological educators rank this tripartite interaction as the most important cogitative outcome for students of sustainable agriculture, which is on par with their ranking of farming experiences (process knowledge) and social awareness (an affective outcome) as essential learning objectives (Parr, et al., 2007).

Table 1: Seven guiding principles of sustainable agriculture education at the University of California, Davis (adapted from Parr & Horn, 2006, p.429)
Principle
Definition
1.     Interdisciplinarity
“Integrating natural and social science knowledge, skills, and understanding through interdisciplinary coursework”
2.     Experiential learning
Learning through “purposeful activity, integrating theory and practice.”
3.     Systems thinking
Discovering “connections between agriculture, social institutions, and the environment.”
4.     Skill development
Cultivating among students “a broad range of practical and social skills, in addition to knowledge and theory.”
5.     Linking the real world with classroom
Providing students with “real-world contexts and engagements”
6.     Community building
Reaching out to form “healthy rural and urban communities” while creating “communities among the program’s students, staff, and faculty.”
7.     Adaptive curriculum management
Modifying the curriculum “via formal feedback processes involving students, alumni, staff, and faculty.”


Recommendations
            The aforementioned programs—in Michigan, South Africa, and California—demonstrate sustainability on campus and in the community. Shared among them is the notion that cogitative, process, and affective outcomes can be cultivated through transformative learning. Students from each program emerge with personal knowledge of sustainability after careful introspection and hands-on practice. Such learning need not exclusively take place in one’s own community; rather, at the core of transformative education lies experiential learning that engages and empowers students in any setting (Domask, 2007).
            The future of sustainability education requires higher education leaders to dismantle the constraints of disciplines and pedagogies that privilege surface-level learning and exclusively cogitative outcomes. While students must still master knowledge of environmental science to understand sustainability challenges, they must also look within themselves for unsustainable behaviors. Through critical dialogue and reflection, students can identify the paradigms that breed unsustainability and propose an alternative. Moreover, students may develop what Donella Meadows (1999) describes as the most important leverage point of all: the power to transcend paradigms. Last, provoking affective outcomes in the classroom helps facilitate students’ long-term commitments to sustainability, a paramount goal of sustainability education.

Conclusion
            From Brundtland to Bonn, global actors have placed pressure on institutions of higher education to lead the sustainability revolution. To do so, universities must complement changes in campus operations with revisions to the organization and delivery of knowledge. Transformative learning via experiential sustainability education offers students the opportunity to study and create change. In so doing, students rehearse skills with their hands, envision solutions with their heads, and deepen environmental commitments with their hearts.
References
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