Approaches to Sustainability Education

EDUC71342 Approaches to Sustainability Education 15 Semester 2 Postgraduate Taught Level 7 Susan Brown Unit coordinator Sandra Ajaps Unit coordinator 1 FHEQ level (Framework for Higher Education Qualifications) ' Masters/Integrated Masters P4 ' European Credit Transfer & Accumulation System Rating : 7.5 The importance of teaching and learning approaches in developing the values, literacies and competencies associated with sustainability and transformation, is well recognised.This unit explores approaches associated with sustainable education and how they can be realized through teaching and learning.   The course unit explores a range of teaching and learning approaches associated with sustainability and transformative learning, including teaching strategies and theories that encourage:<ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Collaborative/inclusive/participatory learning</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Experiential learning </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Global citizenship, postcolonial and post-humanist learning approaches </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Intergenerational, interdisciplinary and intercultural learning</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Place-based learning </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Play-based and gamified learning </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Service learning</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Situated learning</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Slow learning</li></ul>The course unit’s orientation is practical and theoretical, focusing on ways in which learning approaches associated with sustainability and transformative learning can be realized. To this end it:<ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Encourages experience of and critical reflection on collaborative and interdisciplinary learning, curriculum, pedagogy, and materials design. </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Explores considerations, complexities and challenges in engaging with such approaches in diverse teaching and learning context, and as related to, e.g., cultural/ethical understandings, curriculum constraints, and structural institutional inhibitors. </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">It provides insights into ways of tackling those challenges as informed by the experiences and insights of teacher-practitioners and learners, and the wider literatures on teaching and learning from well theorised and empirical research.</li></ul>Participants will design and/or evaluate a sustainable learning project in ways appropriate to a chosen learning context and in the spirit of transformative sustainability education. They do this in consultation with course participants, tutors, practitioners and other relevant stakeholders.  Where feasible, the course unit offers opportunities to contribute to “live” teaching and learning projects.Participants will engage with a range of relevant literature to inform their activities throughout the course. The unit aims to:<ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Explore diverse teaching and learning approaches to sustainable education and the theories informing those approaches.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Explore the rationale behind those approaches and how they instantiate understandings of sustainable education and transformative learning.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Develop educator competences shaping those approaches. </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Foster understandings of, and sensitivities to, the appropriate use of such approaches in different learning contexts.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Develop skills in researching, designing, realizing and evaluating approaches in different learning contexts and in partnership with relevant stakeholders. </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Develop insights into considerations and challenges in realizing such approaches, and strategies for engaging with those challenges.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Encourage participants to be creative, critically reflective, collaborative and holistic educators and communicators.< <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Demonstrate understandings and knowledge of diverse learning and teaching approaches to sustainability education, the rationale for their use and why they are considered transformative;</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Demonstrate knowledge of theories and systems thinking and understandings of how it can be instantiated in sustainability teaching and learning approaches</li></ul> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Critically reflect on relevant literature on teaching and learning.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Critically evaluate sustainability education design in a variety of learning and teaching contexts.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Critically reflect on their own design, development and collaborative practices in formulating and realizing approaches.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Analyse the impact of these approaches for learners and teachers and how they connect to socio-environmental benefits.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Recognise potential complexities and constraints in realizing sustainability approaches in context.</li></ul> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Research and evaluate sustainability learning and teaching approaches, and their transformative potential.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Design and (where possible) realize sustainable teaching and learning approaches in a specific context.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Collaborate with other students and various stakeholders in designing and evaluating teaching and learning projects.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Effectively communicate and disseminate such approaches to interested people contributing to a rich, publicly available resource.</li></ul> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Practice and value ways of living and relating in the world which are sustainable. </li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Demonstrate enhanced skills in academic literacies including critical reflection and evaluation and academic presentation.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Show an appreciation of the value of reflection and collaboration in professional practice.</li> <li style="margin-bottom:8px; margin-left:8px">Evidence capacities to encourage and enthuse others in their (sustainability related) endeavours.</li></ul> The course unit is conducted in dual-mode including on-campus and remote participants engaging together through interactive technologies.  It employs real-world case studies, learning scenarios and simulations drawn from the (first-hand) accounts and experiences of UK and internationally based practitioners.The course unit uses some of the approaches it explores, including small group and collaborative learning and place-based learning. The emphasis is on knowledge building and collaborative and active learning. All participants are viewed as important contributors and collaborators in building understandings of how to appropriately educate for sustainability. In that spirit, students will be encouraged to contribute their thinking to seminars and relevant (online) communities, including the online community of inquiry space for the programme. 3 Report 30% 6 Project output (not diss/n) 35% 8 Practical skills assessment 35% Formative feedback is offered:At the proposal stage (see below) via tutor, peer and, where possible, expert practitioner feedback via an open poster event and via feedback in a wiki / shared document.As participants refine their ideas for the ‘demonstration of an activity’ (see below) there will be feedback in Microsoft Teams (or similar) from ‘critical friends’.Summative feedback is offered via VLE MA Educ for Sustain Envr MA Ed for a Sustainable Env PGDT Taught Component Mandatory MA Educ for Sustain Envr MA Ed for Sustainable Env (DL) PGDT Taught Component Mandatory MA Educ for Sustain Envr MA Educ for Sustain Envr (Ble) PGDT Taught Component Mandatory MA Educ for Sustain Envr MA Educ for Sustain Envr (PT) PGDT Taught Component Mandatory MA Educ for Sustain Envr MA Edu for Sust Env (PT DL) PGDT Taught Component Mandatory MA Educ for Sustain Envr MA Educ for Sust Env (PT Ble) PGDT Taught Component Mandatory Y Backman, M., Pitt, H., Marsden, T., Mehmood, A., and Mathijs, E. (2019). Experiential approaches to sustainability education: Towards learning landscapes. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education. 20 (1):139-156.Bayley, A. (2018). Posthumanism, decoloniality and re-imagining pedagogy. Parallax, 24(3): 243-253.Blanchet-Cohen, N., and Reilly, R.C. (2017). Immigrant children promoting environmental care: enhancing learning, agency and integration through culturally-responsive environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 23(4): 553-572.Eilam, E. (2022). Climate change education: the problem with walking away from disciplines. Studies in Science Education58 (2): 1-34.Henderson, K., and Tilbury, D. (2004). Whole-school approaches to sustainability: An international review of sustainable school programs. Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability: Australian Government.Gruenewald, D.A., and Smith, G.A. (Eds.) (2014). Place-based Education in the Global Age: Local Diversity. New York: Psychology Press.Gwekwerere, Y. N., & Shumba, O. (2021). A Call for Transformative Learning in Southern Africa: Using Ubuntu Pedagogy to Inspire Sustainability Thinking and Climate Action. In Iyengar, R., & Kwauk, C. (Eds. Lectures 22 Practical classes & workshops 50 Tutorials 4 0 74