Learning in Global Settings: Developing Transitions for Meaning-Making

Abstract

Global teaching and learning for sustainable development reaches from the classroom to the world outside, and is therefore a particularly interesting setting for practising transition skills. The article suggests a number of features perceived as crucial in developing young people's capability to act in a changing world and under circumstances that are difficult to predict. The suggestions are based on an empirical study of the Lund Calling project, which aimed at implementing a web-based international programme for teaching preventive environmental strategies in Swedish secondary schools. The article first presents some of the conditions in Sweden that particularly impact on young people's transition to adulthood. Related research in sustainability education is also briefly outlined. Knowledge capability theory is used to discuss results from the empirical study of the Lund Calling project, where interviews were conducted with secondary school students, teachers and headmasters. Based on these interviews, features that appear to be particularly relevant as transition skills in global learning for sustainable development include transdisciplinary action, democratic collaborative action, as well as self-directed and independent initiative. The article concludes that young people today cannot, as in earlier periods of history, base their actions entirely on the traditions of the family or community. Instead, they also need to learn to form their own communities, capable of acting at both local and global levels. Education here plays an important role in developing the necessary transition skills that enable young people to be prepared for a rapidly changing and uncertain world.

Learning and teaching sustainable development in global–local contexts

“…In a context of 'teaching for learning ' (p. 20) a professional competence (cf. Nordén, Avery & Anderberg, 2012) has "to do with knowledge, understandings and dispositions associated with teaching and learning, that is, the teacher as a professional". //...there is also a need to develop conceptual understanding, skills in the synthesis of ideas from a number of discipline areas, and dispositions to want to take social and environmental action.…”

“…Thanks to networked learning and collaboration in the global settings, young people were positioned and received recognition as practitioners and stakeholders in society (Nordén, Avery & Anderberg, 2012). The pragmatic and holistic approach contributed with an epistemological interest for authentic and important matters that affected young people's lives.…”

“…Students' critical knowledge formation could thereby involve and integrate a complexity of demands that they recognised in society (cf. Karlsson, 2008), in ways that could be useful for them beyond the school walls and in their future lives (Nordén, Avery & Anderberg, 2012). Transition skills were developed as a consequence of the various new, unpredicted and in many respects inconvenient situations that they were exposed to in the extended learning environment within a local-global context.…”

“…It further is important to differentiate between personal and social transformation, which could be recognised as a sort of transition (cf. Nordén, Avery & Anderberg, 2012).…”

“…Considering the increasingly complex issues that students address, it has been argued that a shift towards transdisciplinary teaching in subject-integrated teacher teams is called for (Scholz and Marks 2001;Nordén, Avery, and Anderberg 2012). The discussion on transdisciplinarity also draws on experiences of teaching ESD in a variety of contexts (see for instance Paige, Lloyd and Chartres 2008;Hoare et al 2008).…”