Abstract: The paper presents DICA4Schools, an education initiative of Politecnico di Milano aimed at disseminating scientific knowledge on environmental sustainability to primary and secondary schools. The program emphasizes an inclusive and engaging pedagogical approach that leverages the Kolb Cycle, Problem-Based Learning, and Inquiry-Based Learning methodologies. By incorporating peer education activities, the program also fosters critical thinking and collaborative skills. DICA4Schools promotes sustainability and resilience through interactive and hands-on learning experiences (i.e., lab experiments, games, and technological tools). These activities are planned and tailored to students’ ages and their prior knowledge and aligned with the SDGs identified as relevant by the school teachers. Preliminary impact assessment indicates that DICA4Schools has been successful in enhancing students’ knowledge and awareness of environmental sustainability. The program has also stimulated interest in STEM disciplines among both female and male students, demonstrating the potential of academic institutions to play a vital role in education for sustainable development starting from early years education.
Continue ReadingAbstract: Collaborative, team-based research can provide unique educational opportunities for students while supporting faculty research goals. Increasingly, universities are developing programs to allow undergraduates to participate in team-based research on sustainability topics. In this paper, we outline a case study of a collaborative active learning exercise that supported an interdisciplinary project on governance and nutrient management. Students were asked to conduct research on behalf of a fictional “Office of Phosphorus,” which helped illustrate the real challenges that public administrators face when they must collaborate across levels of government or agencies to address sustainability challenges. The exercise also functioned as a diagnostic tool for faculty to identify where students needed more guidance, training, or support. By closely mimicking the experience of open-ended research, the exercise helped calibrate student expectations. Finally, we offer suggestions for how this type of exercise could be used to encourage collaborative research on other, related topics in sustainability.
Continue ReadingAbstract: This literature review delves into the intricate relationship between community gardens and the enduring legacy of colonialism. While community gardens offer numerous benefits, such as increased food security and building community connections, there is a gap in inquiry around their historical and cultural context, especially relating to colonial legacies. This review explores postcolonial theory and decolonization frameworks through key contributors such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Frantz Fanon, to understand the power dynamics of land access, knowledge systems, and cultural representation within community gardens. It examines the potential of community gardens to spur cultural revitalization, ecological sustainability, and decolonization while considering and discussing the challenges and necessary considerations for achieving these goals. This inquiry is timely, along with other broader decolonization movements, and it discusses the importance of centering Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK). After reviewing the existing literature, gaps were identified for further inquiry to be proposed. That contributes to the ongoing conversation of decolonization as a method to address social change and environmental concerns within community gardens.
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Abstract: Monitoring the health, abundance, and phenology of bees requires extensive resources and personnel. Citizen science can relieve this burden by summoning the public to contribute to data collection. Citizen science also affords opportunities for experiential learning, contextualizing participants’ experiences in the real world. At Bee Campus USA certified colleges, citizen science projects can engage community members in bee-focused research benefiting key conservation efforts and educational outreach. Such projects transcend academic disciplines, uniting the community in a common cause. A genuine appreciation for bees in their role as pollinators is a key motivating factor in participating in citizen science projects and aiding in bee conservation.
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Abstract: Sustainability education (SE) is a transdisciplinary field. Diverse disciplines support behaviors that consider interrelationships among our environmental and social systems, including our educational systems. Educational systems are complex systems and should be considered as such to promote SE and to understand the nature of complexity and the learners themselves as living systems. One such example is higher education. Supporting SE in higher education involves considering all the components within the system, including the educator as they design their approach. Teaching pedagogy should be holistic and experiential to engage learners in different sustainability learning paradigms. Learning about sustainability content (learning about sustainability), putting learning into practice (learning for sustainability), and having a sustainability mindset (learning as sustainability) are all features of such a system. These learning paradigms and teaching approaches help to support the knowledge and skills necessary to build sustainability literacy. Along with defining these components of a SE system, consideration should be given to the competencies that support sustainability literacy. The sustainability teaching-learning system can be organized into categories of foundational sustainability competencies: intrapersonal, knowledge, skills, and behavioral. Connecting these competencies to sustainability content and concepts allows flexibility and emergent learning for educators and learners alike in higher education settings.
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Abstract: This article provides a process-based model of embodied practice to broaden the discourse regarding somatic sustainability. The article provides background regarding the rise of somatic studies in university dance programs and delineates resources that embodied perspectives and somatic concepts can offer. The article provides an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable education and outlines the development of a new curriculum for a university minor in Somatic Sustainability. A common question throughout the minor is: How can we bring about sustainable and positive social change using body-based perspectives and practices? A guided, experiential session is outlined for educators to help students recognize their sense of embodied resiliency. From the Somatics and Sustainable Practices course, an example of a small shifts and quiet practices project is presented. The intersectionality of somatics and sustainability informs the dialogue in each of these fields and offers resources from the often-overlooked body perspective.
Continue ReadingAbstract: In this essay, I discuss the important objectives for education for sustainability, given the challenges that we face, and the serious shortcomings in our knowledge systems. I stress the need to consider sustainability as if both the environment and people matter. I argue that, because a deep understanding of the sustainability challenges can lead to despair, it is important to provide grounds for realistic hope, by showing how positive change is possible, and is being made to happen, across the world. Addressing the sustainability challenge will depend on our ability to enhance human well-being while minimizing material and energy resource flows. Fortunately, the science of well-being shows that, while wealth and consumption contribute to happiness and well-being, rich social relationships, treating everyone with dignity and compassion, and a meaningful, purposeful life, are as important.
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Abstract: Universities are sustainability trailblazers, achieving a more sustainable future through research, community, and education. Critical to their pursuit of sustainability is ensuring that university stakeholders are supportive of university sustainability priorities. As a large stakeholder group, undergraduate students can exert a significant impact on sustainability priorities at the university and thus play a pivotal role in its sustainable development. However, research finds this group is often underutilized in university sustainable development. This paper accordingly examines opportunities to enhance student involvement in university sustainability. Over two research phases, the inquiry explores student evaluations of university sustainability initiatives through a classroom assignment and focus group interviews. Findings reveal that students’ perspectives of the university’s sustainability priorities do not align with what they feel is essential for the student experience. In the focus groups, students provide insight for how to create “buy-in” for university sustainability. The final phase of the inquiry applies the research findings in a service-learning consulting experience. Student teams work on a sustainability consulting project to implement suggestions for connecting university sustainability initiatives to the student experience. The service-learning consulting project allows students to apply their knowledge and skills to real sustainability challenges and, in turn, helps the university connect important sustainability initiatives to the student experience.
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Abstract: Economic globalization has led to the seemingly unstoppable spread of a culture of exploitation and consumption; and both people and planet are suffering as a result of its unintended consequences (Böhm et al. 2015). In light of increasingly startling statistics on climate change, resource depletion, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, we are starting to see a global shift towards conservation and restoration. As more research reveals the complexity of these ecological problems and demonstrates their inextricable connections to socioeconomic instability and poor public health (Cross et al., 2019), practitioners are beginning to employ community- and place-based approaches to restoration and conservation. With a growing consensus in the global conservation community that the participation of local communities is essential for the success of conservation initiatives (United Nations, 2021), there remains a large knowledge gap in how to integrate conservation and community well-being. I propose that a series of community characteristics and project design factors grounded in a biocultural approach can help guide this integration. I present ethnographic and ecological evidence from four communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica. My main finding was that while each community operates within its own unique social-ecological context, communities engaged in conservation share notable similarities in community characteristics and project design.
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