Educating sustainability change agents by design: Appraisals of the transformative role of higher education

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksChapterpeer-review

Authors

While scholars observe positive trends in sustainability education, sustainability education as a field still finds itself mired between institutional inertia and strong drivers for transitions (Jones et al., 2010). As Van der Leeuw et al. (2012, p. 118) describe: Academic institutions remain so inertial because the professoriate remains in familiar and comfortable patterns. This is human nature, but denudes the academy of the energy and passion needed for change. Following form, the next generation of academics learns the habits, practices, and methods of their professors, replicating the status quo. A more bilateral relationship between faculty and students might produce different outcomes. If students played an equal role in the development of curricula, selection of course content, and initiation of applied projects, how different might the impact of the academy become? The vision implicit in this description is of sustainability education defined by innovative, multilateral relationships among faculty, students and surrounding communities. This chapter presents work in progress at three educational sustainability programmes — one each in Canada, Germany and the United States of America — seeking to contribute to transformative change for sustainability by way of educating ‘sustainability change agents’ (Moore, 2005; Svanström et al., 2008).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPalgrave Studies in Global Higher Education
EditorsZ. Fadeeva, L. Galkute, C. Mader, G. Scott
Number of pages34
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
Publication date2014
Pages196-229
ISBN (print)978-1-137-45913-8, 978-1-349-49873-4
ISBN (electronic)978-1-137-45914-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

    Research areas

  • Developmental evaluation, Food waste, Project partner, Sustainability research, Sustainability science
  • Transdisciplinary studies

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Widening the evaluative space for ecosystem services
  2. Governance for urban sustainability through real-world experimentation – Introducing an evaluation framework for transformative research involving public actors
  3. Communications about uncertainty in scientific climate-related findings
  4. Beyond fragmentation: the continuum model for fauna research and conservation in human-modified landscapes
  5. Lebensstrategien
  6. There Is No Alternative (TINA)
  7. Two cascaded and extended kalman filters combined with sliding mode control for sustainable management of marine fish stocks
  8. Messung der Qualität in Dienstleistungscentern
  9. Hierarchie
  10. The adaptive eater
  11. "Der siebente Brunnen". Fred Wanders Versuch einer anderen Darstellung der Shoah in der DDR-Literatur
  12. Wie gesprochen werden?
  13. Umkleidekabine
  14. Management of Biodiversity in Protected Areas with Sustainability Control
  15. Den Alltag auffällig machen
  16. Jungfräuliche Membranen
  17. Diversity matters: the influence of gender diversity on the environmental orientation of entrepreneurial ventures
  18. Innovation by forming technology
  19. "Wie getrennt zusammenleben?
  20. Detection of up to 65% of precancerous lesions of the human colon and rectum by mutation analysis of APC, K-Ras, B-Raf and CTNNB1.
  21. Driving factors for the regional implementation of renewable energy
  22. Die Bewertung des Informationssystems einer Unternehmung
  23. Learning from African entrepreneurship—on the psychological function of entrepreneurial preparedness
  24. Performance Saga: Interview 04
  25. Genotoxic effect of ciprofloxacin during photolytic decomposition monitored by the in vitro micronucleus test (MNvit) in HepG2 cells
  26. Relating to water, spaces, and other agents. On the journey behind Juliane Tübke’s project Weathering
  27. Eine Tür ist eine Tür ist eine Tür
  28. Trade-offs across value-domains in ecosystem services assessment