Education for sustainable development,governmentality and Learning to Last

As Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) slowly moves up the UK Government's policy agenda, practical implementation issues are increasing in significance. This paper offers a retrospective reflective account of a major national ESD initiative, Learning to Last, funded by the Quality and Standards Directorate of the Learning and Skills Council. At the centre of the Learning to Last experience was a tension between a managerialist approach to project development, common within the Learning and Skills sector, and an ecological, networked and synoptic methodology more in keeping with and sympathetic to the values of ESD. Applying the concepts of ‘governmentality’ and new public management, Learning to Last is viewed as a target and output driven initiative offering restricted opportunities for creative development and conceptual learning. Only with a more reflective and reflexive engagement with sustainability and learning will the possibilities of achieving a more sustainable future and of negotiating our ‘society of government’ be realised.     

Teacher Education for Sustainability. II. Two Teacher Education Projects from Asia and the Pacific

Our schools and educators face a compelling responsibility to serve society by fostering the transformations needed to set us on a path to sustainable development in the 21st century. Education for sustainability is a new paradigm for a life long learning process that leads to an informed and involved citizenry having the creative problem solving skills, scientific, technological, and social literacy, and commitment to engage in responsible actions that will help ensure an environmentally sound, socially just, and economically prosperous future for all. This paper and the preceding paper, from a soon to be published book, Education for a Sustainable Future: A Paradigm of Hope, edited by Keith A. Wheeler, focus on the need to have science imbedded at the core of the education for sustainability paradigm and the need to increase and enhance teacher education to better be able to develop the necessary interdisciplinary thinking and transformative learning for the new millenium.     

Designing a Utopia: An Architectural Studio Experience on David Harvey's Edilia

The design of a utopia was devised as a studio project in order to bring critical thinking into the design studio and to stimulate creativity. By suggesting a utopia, the pedagogical aim was to improve progressive thinking and critical thought in the design education of architectural students — and also future architects. From this perspective, the utopia called Edilia, from the book Spaces of Hope by the critical geographer David Harvey, was taken as a basis for the students to design a utopic environment. In addition to Harvey's book, students were not only challenged by the idea of an alternative society but also by the idea of a different space. Utopia, as an inter‐disciplinary subject, brought various issues and different perspectives into the design studio such as public and private realms, everyday life, work, leisure, nature, technology and sustainability. With the help of the concept of utopia, a theoretically‐informed design studio enabled students to criticise the existing world, dream about an alternative one and make the design of their dreams in a creative way.     

Toward a Typology of Business Education in the Internet Age*

Many diverse forces are motivating institutions of higher education, particularly business schools, to develop and deliver education via the Internet. As higher education institutions explore this opportunity, the question of how courses and degree programs should be designed for effective online delivery via the Internet is a nontrivial concern and challenge. To address this concern and challenge, this paper articulates, defines, and justifies a typology consisting of four types of online distance education that can be pursued by institutions of higher education. The four online distance education types—Overview Model, Overview Model with Feedback, Technical‐Skills Model, and Managerial Learning Model—can be differentiated along a number of content‐related, delivery‐related, and learning‐related issues and have applicability at various educational levels. In addition, the paper highlights and discusses five key lessons for institutions to consider in their desire to launch online distance education initiatives. These lessons provide insights not only for launch success but also for the ongoing sustainability of online distance education.     

Handing Each Other Along: Developing Leadership in Kinesiology

Developing and sustaining quality leadership is imperative for the overall health of our discipline. Part of our responsibility as educators is to think about how best to encourage this ongoing process. This article examines strategies for fostering disciplinary leadership, handing each other along, and being handed along, in various ways. One aspect is quality mentorship—developing relationships built on discernment, responsibility, and trust. This means the mentor and mentee spend time setting goals and assessing progress. The second aspect involves a broad understanding of human movement and a commitment to critical thinking. The mentor promotes an interdisciplinary understanding of kinesiology, as well as cultivates a reasoned and creative thought process. By working proactively to develop leadership through these means, we increase our chance of improving our discipline for future generations.     

Big brother or harbinger of best practice: Can lecture capture actually improve teaching?

Lecture capture is used increasingly in the UK, and has become a normal feature of higher education. Most studies on the impact of lecture capture have focused on benefits to student learning, the flipped classroom or student non‐attendance at lectures following its introduction. It is less clear how the use of lecture capture has impacted on lecturers’ own academic practice. In this study, we use a mixed‐methods approach to explore the impact of this intrusive yet invisible technology on the quality of teaching. We have mapped our findings to the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF). In doing so, our data paints a mixed picture of lecture capture's Janus‐faced reality. On the one hand, it enhances lecturer self‐awareness, planning and conscious ‘performance’; on the other hand, it crushes spontaneity, impairs interaction and breeds wariness through constant surveillance. While the Teaching Excellence Framework rewards institutions for providing state‐of‐the‐art technology and lecture recording systems, our findings pose awkward questions as to whether lecture capture is making teaching more bland and instrumental, albeit neatly aligned to dimensions of the UKPSF. We provide contradictory evidence about lecture capture technology, embraced by students, yet tentatively adopted by most academics. The implications of our study are not straightforward, except to proceed with caution, valuing the benefits but ensuring that learning is not dehumanised through blind acceptance at the moment we press the record button.     

Preparing Students for Lifelong Learning: A Review of Instructional Features and Teaching Methodologies

Lifelong learning is intentional learning that people engage in throughout their lives for personal and professional fulfillment and to improve the quality of their lives. In today's climate of continual change and innovation, lifelong learning is a critical educational goal. In order to prepare people for lifelong learning, educational opportunities must develop their capacity for self‐direction, metacognitive awareness, and disposition toward lifelong learning. Several instructional features facilitate the development of metacognitive and self‐directed learning skills, and the disposition to lifelong learning: (1) student autonomy, responsibility, and intentionality; (2) intrinsically motivating learning activities; (3) enculturation; (4) discourse and collaboration among learners; and (5) reflection. This article describes and presents examples of how three teaching methodologies—problem‐based learning, intentional learning environments, and cognitive apprenticeship—employ these instructional features.     

Has John Hattie really found the holy grail of research on teaching? An extended review of Visible Learning

In this article the author reviews and discusses John Hattie’s book Visible Learning. In this book Hattie presents the results of a meta‐meta‐analysis on the conditions of successful teaching and learning in schools. Hattie’s work is based on more than 800 meta‐analyses, and these meta‐analyses are substantiated by more than 50 000 empirical research studies. Among the six groups of factors influencing successful learning in schools—student, home, school, teacher, curricula, teaching—the factor ‘teacher’ seems to have the strongest effect. Hattie not only evaluates empirical research but also places the results in a theoretical context of a theory of teaching and a certain concept of teacher professionalism. The author discusses Hattie’s approach to combine empirical research and conceptual work on teaching and on teachers’ work. The limits of meta‐analyses and future meta‐meta‐analyses are pointed out.     

Learning to Be. A Perspective from British Columbia,Canada

This article describes how learning to be, with a specific focus on social-emotional competencies, has become part of the educational mindset — and educational policy — in British Columbia, Canada. The development of a set of learning progressions for social responsibility, an emphasis on social emotional learning in the new curriculum framework, the recognition of the importance of the First Peoples Principles of Learning and a disciplined approach to inquiry through school-to-school networks are strengthening the focus on learning to be across schools and communities.     

Teacher education for rural–regional sustainability: changing agendas,challenging futures,chasing chimeras?

Rural schooling has remained a concern for policy‐makers, employers, teacher education providers and schools throughout our recent history. In particular, the allegedly variable quality of teaching and learning in rural Australia is a major concern for teacher educators and educational leaders alike, with the provision of quality services for rural Australians a major equity issue in social as well as political terms. Working from an explicitly situated perspective, this paper explores these issues in relation to a set of current and recent research projects and government reports, with particular reference to a study currently exploring the articulation of teacher education and rural schooling in New South Wales. This is contextualized within a larger agenda of national and environmental sustainability which raises the key issue of social policy and educational priorities as we look forward into a radically uncertain future for teacher education, rural schooling and rural‐regional sustainability.     

Measuring the educational impacts of a graduate course on sustainable development

While university‐level education is increasingly recognized as an important component of sustainable approaches to development, little empirical research has been done on the impact of sustainability education on student behavior. This study relies on an evidence‐based research approach to better understand how graduate coursework on sustainable development can facilitate learning and transform the perceptions and reported behavior of class participants. Specifically, the authors use ecological footprint analysis in an interdisciplinary graduate‐level course on sustainable development to make statistical conclusions about the degree to which education on sustainability influences students’ daily consumption patterns. The results of this study suggest that graduate‐level education can significantly increase the degree to which students behave in a sustainable manner as measured by their ecological footprints.     

A learning progression for energy in socio‐ecological systems

This article reports on our work of developing a learning progression focusing on K‐12 students' performances of using energy concept in their accounts of carbon‐transforming processes in socio‐ecological systems. Carbon‐transforming processes—the ecological carbon cycle and the combustion of biomass and fossil fuels—provide all of the energy for living systems and almost 90% of the energy for human economic activities. Energy, as a crosscutting concept across major disciplines, is a tool for analysis that uses the principle of energy conservation to constrain and connect accounts of processes and systems. Drawing on ideas from cognitive linguistics, the history of science, and research on students' energy conceptions, we identify two crucial practices that both scientists and students engage in when accounting for carbon‐transforming processes: association and tracing. Using association and tracing as progress variables, we analyzed student accounts of carbon‐transforming processes in 48 clinical interviews and 3,903 written tests administered to students from fourth grade through high school. Based on our analysis we developed a Learning Progression Framework that describes a progression from accounts that use energy as an ephemeral “force” that enables actors to make events happen to energy as a scientific tool for analysis. Successful students developed a sense of necessity with respect to accounts of carbon‐transforming processes—a sense that energy MUST be conserved and degraded in every individual process and in the system as a whole. This level of success was achieved by <3% of the students in our sample. Implications for science standards, curriculum, and instruction are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 1149–1180, 2012     

Smart Training and Development: A Learner‐Guided Approach

There is great support for the research that says that how one uses knowledge is linked to how and where that knowledge is acquired—especially, knowledge that is connected directly to performance. This how and where approach is rooted in time‐tested and research‐supported learning strategies. Key emphasis is placed on competency identification, maximum use of the work environment for learning, self‐directed learning activities along with a contracting structure that allows self‐pacing, mastery, individualization, and various feedback options. This article describes how to combine these learning strategies so that training and development (T&D) costs, time to train, and employee performance and retention are improved. This learning model is called learner‐guided training and development—a smart, highly leveraged design model.     

Critical Thinking and Community Engagement through Artistic Actions

In a society that strives for sustainability it is important to observe and value different forms of knowledge. Creating art is not a meaningless exercise. Instead, one might say that works of art serve as a window that interprets the world. In the article it is argued that artistic actions can offer a combination of critical and creative thinking reflecting on the types of knowledge and experience that count as valuable for sustainable communities. The article reflects on the participatory installation Colours of Rovaniemi and how ABER was used in the creation process. The methodology focused on the transformative power of community engagement when creating artistic actions that engage with sustainability. The installation provoked critical thinking and encouraged the participants to take a stand on the issues discussed. Artworks of this kind are well suited to help us understand the issues we face regarding sustainability. The work raised questions of who we are, what we prioritise in our lives. It initiated discussion of the connection between man and nature, attitudes, values and national self‐identity, challenging the participants’ perspectives.     

Environmental education in television narratives: a Brazilian case study

Abstract

This article discusses recent Brazilian research on the relationship between environmental education and cultural studies. Television narratives about the environment and/or sustainability in our everyday lives are used to pose some initial questions about this relation. First, culture is discussed briefly showing how it potentially relates to teaching and informs our role as environmental educators. We argue that culturalist perspectives on research in environmental education politicise teaching practices, even though they are in a context that strays from prerogatives that envisage a future world marked by sustainable development and a green economy. We investigate the impacts of television narratives and images on our everyday lives wherein we are consistently taught particular written and visual messages about how to plan for our future. Examples are draw from the teaching effects of a Brazilian television programme called Repórter Eco, broadcast on a public television network, including the sustainable management of the baru (a typical tree from the Brazilia Cerrado). We argue the educational aspects of television programmes should receive critique, as the relationships established between people and various media artifacts produce particular meanings and ways of seeing the world. This presents a challenge for teachers as examining these subjective ways carefully requires critical examination, not only in terms of education for sustainability or environmental preservation, but also teaching using media.     

Power and representation: A postcolonial reading of global partnerships and teacher development through North—South study visits

This paper critically analyses the neo‐liberal discourse informing global education policy and practice. We use postcolonial theory to deconstruct the contexts for global educational partnerships, highlighting how issues of power and representation are central to their development and the learning that takes place within them. Teacher development through North—South study visits is one way of challenging teachers’ worldviews, but these are not always effective. We argue that study visit courses, where learning is facilitated by differently knowledgeable others, have the potential to be more effective, but only if the courses are underpinned by postcolonial theory and informed by socio‐cultural pedagogy.     

Developing,testing and refining of a model to understand the relationship between peer interaction and learning outcomes in computer‐mediated conferencing

Our pervasive adoption of CMC in higher education has far outpaced our understanding of the nature of CMC and, accordingly, how this medium should best be used to promote higher‐order learning (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, American Journal of Distance Education, 15(1), 7–23, 2001). Therefore, this study examined the relationship between peer interaction and learning outcomes by creating and testing through structural equation modeling a model of five variables—learner characteristics measured by self‐construal, perceived teaching style, task design, course requirements, and prior CMC experience—that influence self‐reported peer interaction and self‐reported learning outcomes. The results showed that perceived teaching style had a small direct effect (0.23) and prior CMC experience had a moderate direct effect (0.31) on self‐reported peer interaction; self‐reported peer interaction had a strong direct effect (0.66) on self‐reported learning outcomes.     

Dimensions of personalisation in technology‐enhanced learning: A framework and implications for design

Personalisation of learning is a recurring trend in our society, referred to in government speeches, popular media, conference and research papers and technological innovations. This latter aspect—of using personalisation in technology‐enhanced learning (TEL)—has promised much but has not always lived up to the claims made. Personalisation is often perceived to be a positive phenomenon, but it is often difficult to know how to implement it effectively within educational technology. In order to address this problem, we propose a framework for the analysis and creation of personalised TEL. This article outlines and explains this framework with examples from a series of case studies. The framework serves as a valuable resource in order to change or consolidate existing practice and suggests design guidelines for effective implementations of future personalised TEL.     

Like a swallow,moving forward in circles: on the future dimension of environmental care and education

After the moral framework of sustainable development, the focus on climate change appears to take a lead in the practice and theory of environmental education. Inherent in this perspective is an apocalyptic message: if we do not rapidly change our use of energy resources, we will severely harm the life conditions of our children and grandchildren. In this article we argue that environmental educators should liberate us from this highly instrumental dictate by taking their cue from our daily care for our environment as revealed in child’s play in nature. Inherent in the interaction of the Homo ludens with nature is a spiral time experience. This time condition elicits a particular responsibility: rather than calculating which means are necessary to prevent future disasters, we should respond with care to the concentric circles of an open and indefinite future. Therefore, environmental education should not aim to prevent future disasters, but foster anticipating care for nature.