W4: Tired of all this talk about sustainability and equality? A workshop on action for educational transformation
Background and Purpose
Our contemporary ways of life are violating planetary boundaries, and modern societies are unjust and inequitable, built upon gendered, classed, and racialised hierarchies (Stein et al 2022). We are in urgent need of unprecedented change in all aspects of society towards more sustainable ways of living, and education is widely recognised as having a great potential to promote such change (IPCC 2018). Already in 2004, the United Nations launched its decade of education for sustainable development, providing a roadmap to integrating principles, values and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning. Since then, key competencies for sustainability have been developed to advance educational transformations for sustainability (Wiek et al. 2011). Existing approaches to education for sustainable development are still limited, locking society into existing unsustainable practices (cf Stein et al 2022).
This workshop is about action for change. The aim is to share already ongoing initiatives and to explore new ideas for change in education. The purpose of this workshop is to take ideas for action further, to explore the implementation of actions and necessary support. We will invite participants to bring their ideas for action and change into conversation.
Work done / work in progress
Especially regarding environmental sustainability, some progress has been made across educational programmes at KTH. However, at times, we still find ourselves in a position to argue for the importance of sustainability. More efforts are needed, both in general and in particular in relation to social sustainability (Hermansson & Rosén 2021). An aim of the workshop is to discuss what these efforts may consist of. As a starting point for the workshop, we present concrete examples of working towards transformative education:
- Developing education on “smart activism": In the SoTL workshop, we will discuss the possibility and place of activism in education offered to students and teachers at KTH, as well as what “smart activism” could consist of
- Developing educational change for equality, diversity, equal conditions and sustainability
- “Emergentist approaches”, i.e. less instrumental approaches to education for sustainability, e.g. in workshops on anti-oppressive education
Our approach is inspired by the method of a “pro-action café” (Schwartz 2016), exploring calls for action as well as what is missing for the implementation, e.g. in terms of knowledge, courage, resources, collaborators or other forms of support.
Results/observations/lessons learned
We observe that change at large is slow. We see that sustainability and equity or equal opportunities typically are integrated as an afterthought or a quick fix. More “emergentist approaches” to change in education that go beyond instrumental approaches to change and injecting predefined ideas of sustainable development seem difficult to implement (Mendy, Barrineau, Peters forthcoming).
In this workshop, we are exploring possibilities to rebuild education with HU and JML as starting points. Macy and Jonstone (2012/2022) argues for embracing activism as a form of active and not passive response. But what sort of legitimacy exists for activism in higher education? Do we perhaps need other words to talk about and engage with activism? This and related questions will be raised in a workshop that will be co-constructed with the participants.
Take Home Messages
With this workshop we seek to bring together people interested in action for change. We will explore and develop further existing initiatives and ideas seeking to transform education and society towards sustainability including equality, equity, and justice.
References
Hermansson, H. & Rosén, A. (2021). ”Uppföljning av KTH:s hållbarhetsmål för utbildning 2016-2020”. V-2021-0365, KTH.
Macy and Johnstone (2021/2022) Active Hope. New World Library
Mendy, Barrineau, Peters (forthcoming) Emergentist education and the opportunities of radical futurity. Futures
Schwartz (2016). Evaluating participatory facilitated conversations within the art of hosting framework. In Fierro, Schwartz, & Smart (Eds.), Evaluation and Facilitation. New Directions for Evaluation, 149, 95–106.
Stein et al (2022) From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it”, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54:3, 274-287
Wiek et al. (2011). Key competencies in sustainability: A reference framework for academic program development. Sustainability Science, 6(2)
