31 IMPLEMENTING EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH STUDENT-CENTRED PEDAGOGIES (original) (raw)
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European Journal of Educational Sciences
Large classes on sustainable development present certain challenges. Often high student to instructor ratios encourage passive learning pedagogies. However, because sustainability education seeks to increase awareness and help students shift to more sustainable behaviors, more active learning is often prescribed by pedagogical experts. This study provides analysis of four out-of-classroom activities undertaken by students in recent offerings of an experimental course on sustainable development taught at Sonoma State University in California, USA. Those activities, innovated specifically for this course, attempt to increase learner centered activities in large classes that averaged 124 students. Analysis of open-ended reflections indicates that many students experienced raised awareness of sustainability issues. Beyond aspirational statements, student reflections and actual behavioral tracking indicate some shifts to lower carbon food choices in just four weeks.
This is a study on the nature of learning, particularly the emergence of active learningprocesses in the case of an environmental education teacher professional development programme – the Eastern Cape Border-Kei cohort of the 2008 Schools and Sustainability Course. This was a part-time, one-year course supporting teachers to qualify, strengthen and deepen opportunities for environmental learning in the South African curriculum. An active learning framework (O’Donoghue, 2001) promoting teaching and learning with information, enquiry, action and reporting/reflection dimensions was integrated into the Schools and Sustainability course design to support these environmental learning opportunities. In this study, the notion of active learning is elaborated as a situated, action-oriented, deliberative and co-engaged approach to teaching and learning, and related to Bhaskar’s (1993) notion of transformative praxis. The study used a nested case study design, considering the case of six Foundation Phase teachers in six primary schools within the Border-Kei Schools and Sustainability cohort. Interviews, observations (of workshops and lesson plan implementation in classrooms) and document review of teacher portfolios (detailing course activities, lesson plans, learners’ work and learning and teaching support materials) were used to generate the bulk of the data. A critical realist theory underpinning the methodology enables a view of agency as emergent from social structures and mechanisms as elaborated in Archer’s (1998b) model of morphogenesis and Bhaskar’s (1993) model of four-planar being. The critical realist methodology also enables a view of emergent active learning processes as open-ended, responsive to particular potential, but dependent on contingencies (such as learning and teaching support materials, tools and methodologies). The analysis of emergent active learning processes focuses particularly on Bhaskar’s (1993) ontological-axiological chain (MELD schema) as a tool for analysing change. The MELD schema highlights1M ontological questions of what is (with emphasis on structures and generative mechanisms) and what could be (real, but non-actualised possibilities). It enables reflection on what mediating and interactive agential processes either reproduce what is or have the potential to transform what is to what could be (2E). Thirdly, the MELD schema enables reflection on what should be – this is the 3L “axiological moment” (Bhaskar, 1993: 9) where questions of values and ethics in relation to the holistic whole are raised. Finally, the schema raises questions (4D) of what can be, with ontologically grounded, context-sensitive and expressively veracious considerations. The study describes the agency of course tutors, teachers and learners involved in the Schools and Sustainability course, as emergent from a social-ecological context of poverty and inequality, and from an education system with a dual transformative and progressive intent (Taylor, 1999). It uses a spiral approach to cluster-based teacher professional development (Janse van Rensburg & Mhoney, 2000) focusing on the development of autonomous (Bernstein, 1990) and reflexive teachers. With teachers well-disposed and qualified to fill a variety of roles in the classroom, these generative structures and mechanisms had the power to drive active learning processes with potential for manifestation as transformative praxis. Through the analysis of the active learning processes emergent from this context, the study shows that the manifestation of transformative praxis was contingent on relational situated learning, value-based reflexive deliberations, and an action-orientation with an emphasis on an iterative relationship between learning and doing. These findings enable a reframing of an interest in action in response to environmental issue and risk, to an interest in the processes that led up to that action. This provides a nuanced vision of active learning that does not judge an educational process by its outcome. Instead, it can be judged by the depth of the insights into absences (2E), the ability to guide moral deliberations on totality (3L), and by the degree of reality congruence (1M) in the lead up to the development of transformative agency (4D). The study also has a methodological interest. It contributes to educational and social science research in that it applies dialectical critical realist philosophy to a concrete context of active learning enquiry in environmental education. It reports on the value of the onto-axiolgical chain in describing a diachronic, emergent and open-ended process; in providing ontological grounding for analysis (1M); in understanding relationality in situated learning processes (2E); in focusing on value-based reflexive learning (3L) and in understanding transformative learning as “tensed socio-spatialising process” (Bhaskar, 1993: 160) where society is emergent from a stratified ontology, and agency and change are open-ended and flexible processes not wholly determined by the social structures from which they emerge (4D). Considering the knowledge interests defined in the 2011 South African Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education (South Africa. Department of Higher Education and Training, 2011) and the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) which were implemented in South Africa from 2012 (in a phased approach), the study concludes with recommendations for exploring environmental learning in the CAPS. The study proposes working with a knowledge-focused curriculum focusing on the exploration and deepening of foundational environmental concepts, developing relational situated learning processes for meaningful local application of knowledge, supporting transformative praxis through the “unity of theory and practice in practice” (Bhaskar, 1993: 9), and implementing a spiral approach to cluster-based teacher professional development.
In this paper we present our rationale for using an active learning constructivist approach to teach sustainability-related topics in a higher education. To push the boundaries of ecological literacy, we also develop a theoretical model for sustainability knowledge co-creation. Drawing on the experiences of faculty at a major Southeastern University in the United States, we present case studies in architecture, engineering, geography, and marketing. Four Sustainability Faculty Fellows describe their discipline-specific case studies, all of which are project-based learning experiences, and include details regarding teaching and assessment. Easily replicated in other educational contexts, these case studies contribute to the advancement of sustainability education.
Disrupting Traditional Pedagogy: Active Learning in Practice (Co-Editor)
University of Sussex Library , 2019
Ever wondered what ‘teaching outside the box’ looks like? Disrupting Traditional Pedagogy: Active Learning in Practice answers this question by sharing real stories of innovation in active learning from a variety of contexts and disciplines. The central premise of active learning is that people learn best when they are actively involved in constructing, modelling or representing knowledge and skills, rather than being passive recipients of content as was commonplace in traditional top-down approaches to teaching. This book is packed with practical ideas which are directly applicable to classroom instruction. However, it also challenges us to think honestly and critically about the successes and challenges of each approach. Every chapter contains a step-by-step guide on how we, as teaching practitioners, can develop similar tasks and environments in our contexts. Drawing on the University of Sussex’s ‘disruptive by design’ philosophy, this book provides an eclectic anthology of real-life experiments in disrupting outmoded pedagogy. We have explored beyond the perimeters of teacher-centred learning and returned with maps that detail tested routes through the territory of active learning, but also pitfalls to avoid on your own journey. What does ‘teaching beyond the box’ look like? Step outside with us and see for yourself.
Active learning based sustainability education: a case study
The fundamental role of engineering in modern societies demands not only technically specialized engineers, but also global cultural cognizance, personal and professional ethics, together with sound transversal skills and responsiveness for sustainability issues. An enriching learning context provides engineering students with opportunities to proactively seek knowledge and technical proficiency at their unique pace, and monitor and master their own learning process. Active Learning undoubtedly enables an enriching learning context, where technical and transversal competences can be widely exercised and developed. However, when looking at the development of sustainability competences within engineering degrees, they can be: (1) straightly patterned into the curricula; (2) loosely coupled or arbitrarily schedule amongst a number of degree courses; or (3) essentially absent. This paper provides an analysis on the development of sustainability competences in the Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) programme of the University of Minho, Portugal. Supported by student report content analysis, this paper explores the widely documented IEM interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology, at University of Minho, which has been applied over a long timeframe, and denotes, at least to a certain extent, to be a suitable learning methodology for the development of technical and transversal competences for the envisaged professional profile. Fink's Taxonomy was used in the discussion and reflection of the reports results relating to the sustainability issue.
Active Learning in Higher Education
This article revisits the notion that to facilitate quality learning requires teachers in higher education to have pedagogical content knowledge. It constructs pedagogical content knowledge as a teaching and learning space that brings content and pedagogy together. On the content knowledge side, it suggests that threshold concepts, akin to a portal that opens up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about a subject, are useful in quality learning. On the pedagogy side, it employs student engagement as a useful proxy for identifying what happens in a learning environment to achieve quality learning. This article asks what fresh insights might this particular conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge afford teacher education and teacher development in achieving quality learning in higher education. After outlining characteristics of threshold concepts and student engagement, it brings together the contributions these concepts make to pedagogical content knowledge before detailing some fresh insights afforded by the synthesis.
Extending the constructs of active learning: implications for teachers' pedagogy and practice
The Curriculum Journal, 2011
Active learning is a pedagogical construct widely appealed to within the global discourse of lifelong learning. However, an examination of the literature reveals a lack of clarity and consensus as to its meaning. This paper provides a critical analysis of a range of dimensions underpinning the concept of active learning including policy discourses, definitions, interpretation and enactments in educational settings, and resultant pedagogical implications. A more robust theoretical framework is presented to support educator understanding which synthesises and extends current constructs and which bridges the divide between active learning considered as either theory of learning or pedagogical strategy.