Going “out there”: learning about sustainability in place

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to describe how the authors shifted from teaching about sustainability as though it was fixed and definable, to a way of learning about the multiple ways in which sustainability is contested and understood. This shift involved both an epistemological shift in their understanding of sustainability and a shift in teaching practice. Design/methodology/approach -The paper reflects on the authors' teaching practice and describes a shift from an investigative to an interpretative approach. This shift resulted from taking students out in the field to hear from land managers and community members in regional and rural Victoria about how they understand sustainability. Central to the shift was recognising the value of the learning occurring "out there". Findings -The authors argue that had the students remained in the classroom learning about sustainability with community and its socio-environmental context at a distance the shift that occurred in the teaching and learning experience would have been less likely to occur. The authors now see themselves as facilitating a process where learners (both teachers and students) are exposed to different understandings of sustainability and are able to recognise the messy and complex reality of sustainability on-the-ground. Practical implications -Much of what is going on in sustainability education is prescriptive: environmental targets, audits, energy and water efficiency, sustainable design mapped on to the curriculum of various disciplines and fields. This paper highlights the need to broaden out the sustainability education agenda, to fully examine how it is taught, why and what is its value to learning. Originality/value -This paper describes the development of a course that explores the complexity of on the ground sustainability in regional and rural Australia. Such an approach to teaching about sustainability is innovative in that it challenges taken for granted assumptions about what is and is not sustainable by exposing students to conversations with ordinary people making sense of and attempting to negotiate change in their lives. In this learning experience sustainability becomes a complex set of ...

Educating Students in Real-world Sustainability Research: Vision and Implementation

“…Society is beginning to demand that academic institutions engage on an equal and structured basis with entities outside of academia to address the problems perceived to be most relevant and urgent. Dealing with actual sustainability problems takes students beyond theoretical understanding and helps them develop practical competence, commitment, and the skills needed to disseminate their research (Alvarez and Rogers 2006;Holden et al 2008;Wals and Jickling 2002).…”

Higher education level teaching of (master’s) programmes in sustainable development: analysis of views on prerequisites and practices based on a worldwide survey

“…Mode 2 is quite widely acclaimed and promoted as the way to go in SD research and education (Kates et al 2001;Allen-Gil et al 2005;Alvarez & Rogers 2006;Scholz et al 2006;Brundiers & Wiek 2011). The arguments are the following: (1) the complexity of sustainability issues asks for different types of knowledge and different sources of knowledge (Cash et al 2003), (2) conventional ways of knowledge production prove unsatisfactory in dealing with the full complexity of environmental management (Ludwig et al 2001) and, moreover, (3) do not succeed sufficiently in integrating local stakeholder perspectives into the development of environmental management strategies (Olsson & Folke 2001;Raymond et al 2010;Khan et al 2012).…”

“…Many universities have developed SD master's programmes and added transdisciplinary projects to their curriculums Alvarez & Rogers 2006;Scholz et al 2006;Stauffacher et al 2006;Lang et al 2012;Bootsma et al 2014).…”

Integrative Approaches to Sustainable Development at University Level

“…Sustainability education, it has been argued, is often delivered in a University setting as content mapped onto the curriculum of various disciplines and fields (Alvarez and Rogers 2006;Savelyeva and McKenna 2011). The dominant approach in such education is prescriptive: environmental targets, audits, energy and water efficiency, sustainable design form the focus of an education about sustainability but not necessarily for or through sustainability (Rogers 2013a, b).…”