Teaching Sustainability
Book (italiano):
<div>The essays in this volume represent grassroots restoration work in higher education<BR> for sustainability. Over the last five years, faculty in the humanities and social sciences<BR> at a wide range of institutions across North America have individually and together<BR> begun to do what David Orr called for in the 1990s in Earth in Mind. They have<BR> gone back to their respective disciplines and, with intellectual agility, courage, and a<BR> sense of adventure and responsibility, begun to rethink old assumptions, ask the big<BR> questions, and readjust their own narratives about what it means to educate, to learn,<BR> and to know - with the challenges of sustainability in mind.<BR> Sustainability educators have had to engage entirely new disciplines, work<BR> closely with non-academic institutional and community partners, take pedagogical<BR> risks, invent new courses and entirely reconfigure old ones, and learn anew how to<BR> draw on cultural wisdom from their own experience and disciplinary training. They<BR> have inspired, cajoled, and tended individual change, institutional change, and social<BR> change. They have come together in conferences, working groups, and networks to<BR> reflect on pedagogical theory, learning outcomes, and assessment for sustainability.<BR> The curricular innovation these essays describe, then, is restoration - not as refurbishing<BR> an older reality - but as restitution and renewal of teaching that requires creativity,<BR> intuition, constant negotiation, and thoughtful, sustained cooperation between diverse<BR> partners.<BR><br> The main purpose of this volume is to provide a snapshot of this curricular<BR> restoration for sustainability within U.S. higher education. The impetus behind this<BR> collection of essays was the sense, gathered from regional and national conferences<BR> and networks, that descriptions of ?brown” curriculum lagging behind ?green”<BR> building and infrastructure miss out on the range of innovations and the institutional<BR> significance of sustainability curricular change currently underway.<BR> Sustainability education is, in fact, increasingly taking a lead role in transforming<BR> the landscape of higher education, serving as a catalyst for the integration of cutting<BR> edge pedagogical practices, including project and problem-based learning, multidisciplinary<BR> learning, and transformative and collaborative education. If, as Arjen<BR> Wals and John Blewit have suggested, we are in what could be called a ?third wave”<BR> of sustainability in higher education, curricular innovation is key to the movement of<BR> this wave.<BR> As institutions reorient teaching, learning, research, and university-community<BR> relationships to make sustainability ?an emergent property” of their ?core activities,”<BR> sustainability’s place in higher education curricula is ?shifting from one of campus<BR> greening and curriculum integration to one of innovation and systemic change across<BR> the whole university” (56, 70). As these essays make clear, curriculum, rather than<BR> lagging behind, is often driving these ?third wave” efforts.<BR> A second major impetus behind this collection was the desire to capture the<BR> distinctive flavor of sustainability education in the humanities and social sciences.<BR> Our answers to the challenges of sustainability cannot be primarily data-driven,<BR> technological, or resolved from within current perceptions or paradigms. To sustain<BR> what is worth sustaining we must re-examine values, draw on cultural wisdom, and<BR> re-energize spiritual and philosophical traditions.<BR> The essays in this volume represent creative answers to these calls for nontechnological<BR> solutions. They attest to the enormous fruit borne from intersection<BR> of problem-based, project-based interdisciplinary learning and liberal arts reflective<BR> practices. As Neil Weissman has suggested, sustainability and the liberal arts are natural<BR> partners. The
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