Responsibility and Co-Responsibility in Light of COVID-19 and Education for Sustainability through an Aristotelian Lens

Abstract

This article focuses on the two key concepts relevant for today's COVID-19 pandemic: responsibility and co-responsibility, and their relationship to education for sustainability. The two concepts are approached through an Aristotelian lens that opposes the instrumentalist thinking which dominates current discourses in education. Current perceptions of co-responsibility, or collective responsibility, often fail to place these concepts in the ethical context of the common good. The COVID-19 crisis has challenged our ways of being and behaving and at the same time has uncovered many weaknesses, shortcomings, omissions, and vulnerabilities facing humanity, especially in our health and education systems. Exploring the antecedents of responsibility and co-responsibility, such as compassion/empathy, self-awareness, solidarity, accountability, prudence, and locus of control, these two concepts are shown to be two sides of the same coin: without the prefix co-, responsibility is meaningless. In this context, education for sustainability in the post-COVID-19 era is called to play a critical role as an agent of change for building a more sustainable society. It is argued that sustainability is a co-responsibility related to the impact that individuals and collectivities exert on their surroundings in social, economic, environmental, and cultural terms. Building and cultivating responsibility and co-responsibility based on engagement and dialogue is crucial because it not only affects the possible ways to manage pandemic risks, but also enables us to transform current unsustainable practices.

Flipped Classroom in the Context of Higher Education: Learning, Satisfaction and Interaction

“…As can be observed, the participants had a quite positive perception toward the FC model and pointed out concepts to define it, such as: innovating (43), entertaining (30), dynamic (67), positive (32), surprising (133), different (54), creative (2), productive (16), practical (61), interactive (10), novel (39), interesting (38), attractive (7) and motivating (33). On the other hand, there were also negative concepts, such as improvable (11) and negative (6), and some students preferred other methods (2).…”

“…However, there were also some negative emotions, such as effort (24), intrigue (13), nervousness (11), frustration (8), confusion (1) risk (1), patience (1), sadness (3), distress (1), desperation (2), disappointment (2), irritation (6), laziness (2) and anxiety (6), due to the lack of knowledge about this methodology.…”

“…I thought it was strange to watch videos at home and then comment them in the class and do the tasks" (MET_DIF, GA, p12). These different opinions highlighted that the main difficulties they found were related to the expansion of the content (7), problems with "Kahoot" (6), negative involvement of some classmate (7), or the way of learning the subject matter (11) and having to study it without receiving a previous explanation (14). Thus, some of them preferred a traditional teaching method and a theoretical explanation in the classroom ( 9): "I think that it would have been better to have a normal lecture and then do the activities at home, because they were not difficult activities, and we could have completed them without much explanation" (PRAC_CLAS, GC, p68).…”

“…Thus, some of them preferred a traditional teaching method and a theoretical explanation in the classroom ( 9): "I think that it would have been better to have a normal lecture and then do the activities at home, because they were not difficult activities, and we could have completed them without much explanation" (PRAC_CLAS, GC, p68). Some of the propositions for improvement provided by the participants to favor their learning process were related to the methodological design and the role of the teacher, such as: more active participation from the teacher (10), increasing the explanations of the teacher with the most important aspects of each topic (11), more feedback and doubtsolving (10), greater involvement in the management of the groups (16), improving the content of the activities and the theory (30) and expanding the time to perform the activities in the classroom (10).…”

“…During the last few decades, higher education (HE) institutions tried, with varied degrees of success, to incorporate the use of technological devices to university teaching, by redesigning and optimizing the learning experiences through a mixed teaching model [3,[7][8][9][10]. In this sense, the COVID-19 crisis revealed many weaknesses, deficiencies, omissions and vulnerabilities that the educational scope faces [11], such as the need of training in the use of ICT for teaching and for the total availability of and access to technological resources for both teachers and students [1,2,5].…”