Interviews:
- Jaimie Cloud on Education for Sustainability in our schools
- Stephen Sterling on the origins of Sustainability Education
Opinions:
- Dave Tomkins and Peter Tsigaris on how statistics tells us we must address climate change
- Peter Papesch and colleagues on buildings, climate change and education
Media Reviews
- Randall Amster on climate justice
- Laura Henry-Stone on the Handbook of Sustainability
Features:
- Dilafruz Williams and Jonathan Brown on Living Soil and Sustainability Education
- Adrienne Cachelin, Jeff Rose and Dan Dustin on Sustainability in Outdoor Education
And much, much more…
Thanks to our sponsors: Center for EcoLiteracy, BioPhilia,
INTERVIEW
How our Teaching Changes our Thinking, and How our Thinking Changes the World: A Conversation with Jaimie Cloud
In this insightful, foundational and wide-ranging interview, Jaimie Cloud makes the case…and defends it…for the prime importance of Education for Sustainability (EfS). Her ground-breaking work and years of experience bring an authoritative voice to this nascent field and give confidence that, as she says, “it all begins with a change in thinking” and “we just have to educate for it.” Her impressive accomplishments and the examples she brings to the interview are a must-read of inspiration for anyone involved with sustainability education.
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OPINION
Bomb Threats, Global Warming and Decision Making: An Educational Experience
Dave Tomkins and Panagiotis Tsigaris focus their fine analytical stats skills on how to not to make the wrong kind of error…yes, that should be the right logic…regarding global warming. They elegantly lay out the math behind what we all know intuitively…nothing is to be lost from taking precautions regarding global warming, or avoiding Type II statistical error, which comes, not from assuming that humans caused global warming, even when we didn’t, but rather being unable to prove that humans cause global warming, when in fact we are causing it. They present the statistics in the context of a course case study and make it clear that we have no reason to wait on the data since the potential for this type of error is already with us and the actions to be taken are probably beneficial in other areas as well.
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JOURNEY
How Do We Really Make Change Happen?
In this inspirational presentation, Gibrán Rivera talks of how we work within the “tribe” to make change happen. He speaks of how we use stories to create our future as “ancestors in training” and this is the way that epiphanies which lead to real change will be incorporated into the community base.
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REPORT
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CONTINUE READINGJSE will feature logo, slogan or any other text/image that sponsor suggests. Rates are from $50 for footer text, $100 per inch in the right column, and $1000 for a 6-month banner placement.
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OPINION
Spare Changing the World: The Inner Challenges of New Paradigm Organizations
Timothy Clayton looks at the internal workings of NPO’s (New Paradigm Organizations) to see how they might respond to the experiences of operating in a world structured by capitalism and traditional business practices. His insights produce an impressive and thoughtful list of ways in which some NPO’s, despite a flashy mission statement, might not practice what they preach, and can fall into traditional modes of operation.
This essay explores the challenges facing organizations intent on fostering peace, justice, and sustainability when incorporating traditional business practices into their operational modeling. The implications of these practices on internal organizational community conditions are examined, as are the possible impacts on mission-intended transformational capacities.
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OPINION
Teaching Sustainability in Graduate Education: A Call to Leadership Development
The generic definition of sustainable development involves using resources to meet current needs without forfeiting those of future generations. Though this definition has been criticized for being vague and vulnerable to misinterpretation, it has evolved into a paradigm that confronts the way we exist, including how we educate. I became personally acquainted with the [...]
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JOURNEY
Let Us Learn Again to Nourish a Gifted Subsistence
In this fascinating personal and educational journey, Terril Shorb asks us to look locally and look at our own subsistence first when we consider sustainability. While acknoledging a role for large-scale efforts based on technology, he believes in the inward solution that relies on relationships, being resourceful, working reciprocally, and finding a way of living in gifted subsistence.
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INTERVIEW
Sustainability Education Invites Learners to Anticipate and Shape the Future: Terril Shorb interviews Stephen Sterling
In this wide-ranging interview, author and professor Stephen Sterling brings forth a good case for how academic can work to see collaborations that bring policy into practice, especially at a local level.
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OPINION
People, Society and Sustainability
Introduction – The Human Factor
When discussing “a sustainable future” most writers expect we will be using “renewable energy”, driving more efficient cars and be far more efficient in our use of resources. Those are items they recognize will have to change, (a good step) but it appears they expect the rest of [...]
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OPINION
Buildings, Climate Change, Education and Action: The role of the building sector systems in climate change mitigation
In this clarion call for broad-based change in the way buildings are designed and built and occupied, Papesch and his colleagues bring attention to the broad swaths of society that are involved in this fundamental aspect of our daily lives. While bringing into play diverse groups of lay people and professionals, from poets to engineers, with a focus on architects and designers, they call for changes at every level, from the development of a Green Mindset among the population at large, to local governmental code changes to, as they argue most importantly, fundamental changes in design curricula that lead to the primacy of an interdisciplinary approach to climate change mitigation in building design.
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CASE STUDY
Sustainability Education in the Interior Design Curriculum
Nichols and Adams show how central design must be to sustainability by showing the numerous ways and multiple disciplinary perspectives that allow sustainability to be incorporated into the design curriculum. The program described goes far beyond a nod to “green building” technologies and shows how design is at the root of the ecological, economic, social and transformational aspects of sustainability.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Northwest Earth Institute’s Discussion Guides Enhance Sustainability Education at University of Michigan
Mike Shriberg shows the power of implementing a true discussion-based curriculum in his sustainable campus course at the University of Michigan.
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CASE STUDY
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Teaching the Marketing of Sustainable Products
Kaufman and colleagues at Illinois State University provide us with a dynamic example of how their students work with real companies in designing marketing strategies for green products, combining both the technical development of the product with a consideration for how to bring it into the marketplace.
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CASE STUDY
Trash Talk: A case study of waste analysis at Pomona College
In this well-formulated case study, Miller and Close show us how student involvement and action through a group independent study course led to sophisticated analysis and real change in the handling of waste at Pomona College. They make a good case for student analysis to have equaled or better what experts might have done, with the added benefit of giving students an impactful, real-life experience with practical solutions to sustainability education problems.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Toward climate justice: Perspectives on the climate crisis and social change, by Brian Tokar, Communalism Press (2010), 137 pp., $14.95, ISBN 9788293064015.
In this insightful review of Brian Tokar’s book, Randall Amster hails the work as a hopeful response to climate change that, rather than playing off of apocalyptic scenarios, envisions a future where society is re-structured not only in technological and economical terms, but also towards a more socially equitable way of life.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Review of The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World
In this detailed and insightful review, Laura Henry-Stone admires the breadth and cohesiveness of this edited volume from mostly European sustainability educators. She makes a good case for bringing this wide array of pieces under one cover, for avoiding static definitions of sustainability, even the traditional “triple bottom line”, and rather looking outside reductionist approaches to find integration, inter-relation and the kind of broad strokes that the chapters in this book propose for educating and solving for sustainability.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Can Uncertainty Lead to Sustainability? Review of Science, Society and Sustainability: Education and Empowerment for an Uncertain World, edited by Donald Gray, Laura Colucci-Gray and Elena Camino
In this insightful review, John Gist gives us some perspective for thinking about science education and its potential for framing the sustainability debate. This is a brief introduction to Gray et al.’s fascinating book Science Society and Sustainability: Education and Empowerment for an Uncertain World. Gist presents the issue of uncertainty in science, in all its complexity, and finds value in the book for addressing deep understanding in a comprehensible and useful way.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Primary care—what it should embrace. A review of “A World of Health: Connecting People, Place and Planet”
In their review of the Northwest Earth Institute’s A World of Health, the Frolich brothers look to place the wide-ranging issue of environmental health concerns into the every-day framework of so-called “primary health care.” They see value in the book where it addresses what can really be done, through action, and through a guided study group, to confront and change the way our interactions with the environment affect our every-day health.
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REPORT
The Heart of Sustainability: Big Ideas from the field of Environmental Education and their Relationship to Sustainability Education or What’s love got to do with it?
Two northwest naturalists offer a critical perspective on sustainability education by suggesting that, in order to inspire people enough to make changes in their perceptions and behaviors, sustainability education must embrace the central role of acquiring ecological knowledge through direct and shared experience in the natural world.
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OPINION
Supporting Generation “E”: Teaching and Research is Not Enough
The students are ramping up sustainability as they dial down consumption and their environmental impact. As faculty, we are role models, and it’s time to step up and join the student body in the sustainability movement.
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OPINION
The Many Faces of Sustainability
In this broad overview of where sustainability curricula in higher education currently stands and where it might go, Paul Rowland covers the bases of how the varied and diverse institutions of higher learning are integrating or incorporating sustainability ideas. He concludes that, while currently standing outside the status quo, sustainability proponents and their ideas are increasingly accepted and should, ultimately, hope to become part of the cultural norm. He compares this process to what has occurred with diversity studies and technology studies.
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OPINION
Why All Colleges & Universities Should Join the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment
Anthony Cortese and Richard Cook’s clarion call for colleges to join the Presidents’ Climate Commitment lays out the stakes in no uncertain terms. They succinctly define what sustainability education really means in terms of every-day concrete changes for which every institution of higher learning should strive.
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INTERVIEW
The President’s Interview: Two college presidents speak out about sustainability from the perspective of their unique institutions.
Jim Horton, President of Yavapai College, and Dan Garvey, President of Prescott College, share the stage in this forum focusing on how they and their institutions respond to the demands for sustainability within our current social, economic and ecological context. What unique challenges do a community college and a private liberal arts college face? What shared visions emerge? What unique roles do each of these institutions play in fostering sustainability for themselves, and for the community that they serve?
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OPINION
Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability
In this inspiring essay, Capra and Stone take us beyond the trite use of the word “sustainability” to an operational way of applying it in the educational setting. They outline four universal principles that should guide sustainability education, each with a profound implication for how learning occurs. They then show how the principles can be applied through a “curriculum that is anywhere learning occurs,” including lunchtime in the cafeteria and the design of the school campus. Their book Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability expounds on the principles and learning-anywhere ideas laid out in brief here.
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OPINION
Protecting What We Love: Ideas for Systemic Problem-Solving
Riki Ott uses “ultimate civics” to inspire students to take action and make a change. Here, she puts forth the foundation for her curriculum that brings students out of the classroom and into the political arena, with the goal of eliminating our addiction to petroleum.
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OPINION
Using SPIRALS as a Lens to Envision the Next Economy
In this short succinct and insightful piece, Andres Edwards elegantly pushes for moving beyond “green” economics into a solution-based approach to sustainability issues. He calls for a view that puts humans and their economics squarely back into nature in a way that will lead to “reliable prosperity” through “SPIRALS” initiatives that are: Scalable, Place-based, Intergenerational, Resilient, Accessible, Life-affirming, and involving Self-care
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MEDIA REVIEW
Review of Andres Edwards’ Thriving Beyond Sustainability
Rick Medrick gives context for Andres Edwards’ new book that takes us beyond sustainability to thriveability. The book suggests that, as the sustainability movement gathers force in the realm of all 3 “E’s” (ecological, economic, social equity), we are at a point of moving towards establishing a newly organized social and ecological environment. Strategies that will allow this to be a thriving environment, according to Edwards, are “SPIRALS:” Scalable, Place-making, Intergenerational, Resilient, Accessible, Life-affirming, and Self-caring.
Rick Medrick nos da un marco de referencia para el libro de Andres Edwards que nos lleva mas allá de la sustentabilidad a la “thriveability.” El libro propone que, mientras el movimiento de sustentabilidad gana fuerzas en el área de los tres “E’s” (ecológico, económico, equidad social), estamos al punto de establecer un ambiente social y ecológico mejor organizado. Las estrategias que nos permita crear este ambiente de superarse, según Edwards son “SPIRALS”: Escalable, Del Lugar, Intergeneracional, Resiliente, Accesible, Afirmando la Vida, y Auto-Cuidando.
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REPORT
The Role of the Architect in Sustainability Education
In this thoughtful, and fundamentally practical, down-to-earth essay, Christopher Haines puts architects squarely on the front-lines of sustainability education. He shows us, with real applications based on thoughtful inter-disciplinary analysis, how the complexities an architect faces in designing a building extend their tentacles into every aspect of sustainability—from environment to economics to social and psychological considerations.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Review of Sharon Astyk’s Depletion and abundance: Life on the new home front or, one woman’s solutions to finding abundance for your family while coming to terms with peak oil, climate change and hard times
Dennis Lum helps put Sharon Astyk’s book in a historical context and brings forth its pessimistic premise along with its optimistic prescription. While accepting that the crisis is here, and the oil reliance has reached its peak, Astyk sees a special place for the role of women in providing food security while re-inventing a truly productive home environment.
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OPINION
The Value of Indigenous Ways of Knowing to Western Science and Environmental Sustainability
In this deeply articulate analysis, Dennis Martinez argues that Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of indigenous communities can be complementary to Western science, but“ bridging” or “integration” with Western Science will inevitably lead to second-rate status for TEK. The unique and powerful, place-based and ancient, traditional ways of knowing are based on the same fundamental human ways of analyzing the natural world. But the language used to conduct, express and translate indigenous understanding is in danger of loss to oppression and assimilation.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Who is TED, and Why Can’t I Talk for More Than 18 Minutes at a Time?
The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) website brings videos of world-class TED conference talks to everyone’s finger-tips. Something about the website gets us hooked, and the daily inspiration for ourselves, and our students, keeps us coming back for more.
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CASE STUDY
Sustainability and Economics 101: A Primer for Elementary Educators
Susan Santone simply and elegantly tells us how sustainability, or ecological, economics can be made real for K-12 education. She shows us how easy it is to bring the very real, and fundamental, conceptual breakthroughs offered by sustainability economics to a grade-school curriculum through simple applicable exercises that children will easily relate to.
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CASE STUDY
Reflections on Teaching the Course “Curriculum Reform in an Era of Global Warming”
Chet Bowers case study course pushes the envelope of curriculum reform by challenging our “taken-for-granted” thinking. His students are first encouraged to confront the innate assumptions in traditional curricula and then asked to seek ways in which a true cultural commons can be brought into a fundamentally reformed curriculum that profoundly addresses sustainability issues.
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OPINION
First, Do No Harm: The Role of Sustainability in the Education of Health Professionals
Whoever would study medicine aright must learn of the following subjects. First he must consider the effect of the seasons of the year and the differences between them. Secondly he must study the warm and the cold winds, both those which are in common to every country and those peculiar to a particular locality. Lastly, [...]
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CASE STUDY
Catlin Gabel School—a Focus on Food
In this case study at Caitlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, Eric Shawn and George Zaninovich present a comprehensive, integrated and hands-on curriculum that has used food sustainability issues to transform the school campus and cafeteria. They provide simple, interesting and apt curriculum project examples for all grade levels from K-12.
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REPORT
Essential Ecoliteracy, or “earth smarts”: Defining and validating a pragmatic educational construct based on quality of life.
Bryan Nichols calls out to JSE readership to get involved in defining what essential ecoliteracy includes. His comprehensive, interactive methodology has worked from a literature search-and-survey analysis to create a mind-map of the domains and components of essential ecoliteracy. Readers can find out more here; then play with the mind-map online and send Nichols an online or print survey.
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CASE STUDY
Higher Education for Sustainable Consumption: Concept and Results of a Transdisciplinary Project Course
In their action project seminar course, Daniel Fischer and Marco Rieckmann show how students applied the principles of sustainable consumption while initiating several impressive on-campus programs to help the community obtain food, clothing and transport in a sustainable fashion. Using a solid theoretical foundation, the course shows how to integrate the formal and non-formal aspects of sustainability education.
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REPORT
Un Nuevo Concepto Dentro Del Derecho Ambiental: “Los Derechos de la Naturaleza”
Carla Cardenas brings a startlingly significant feature of the new Ecuadorian constitution to our attention—rights for nature—and provides a thought-provoking analysis of the legal implications. She makes a good case for these kinds of rights as a driving force for real change in our overall societal relationship—at its core based on legal constraints that take their roots in a country’s constitution—with nature.
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CASE STUDY
Sustainability and Schools: Educating for Interconnection, Adaptability, and Resilience
Greg Smith shows us, through his numerous interesting real-life educational stories, how place- and community-based education can bring a true spirit of opportunity to public school students. He argues that true sustainability will come about through local efforts of the current generation of students to guide and form our future.
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MEDIA REVIEW
Review of Split Estates
Mark Seis brings the important messages of the film, Split Estates, to our attention in this interesting review. He sees four important warning messages from the film regarding the development of natural gas, what is so commonly viewed as the “cleanest” of fossil fuels.
Mark Seis nos llama nuestra atención al mensaje importante de la película Split Estates, en este análisis interesante. El ve cuatro mensajes importantes de la película en referencia al desarrollo del recurso del gas natural, lo que tan frecuentemente se llama el mas “limpio” de los combustibles fósiles.
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CASE STUDY
Education for Sustainability in Washington State: A Whole Systems Approach
Nolet and Wheeler make the case for a shift from environmental education to sustainability education in K-12 curricula. They provide the legislative and policy details for that shift in Washington State and discuss some of the current curricular initiatives that meet the mandate for sustainability education.
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CASE STUDY
Teaching Sustainability As If Your Life Depended on It: A Photo Essay of Fort Lewis College’s Ecology and Society Field School
In this inspiring photo essay, Rebecca Clausen demonstrates the power of being in the field and learning sustainability in a holistic, hands-on way that starts students down the road to primary production, upon which our future will depend.
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OPINION
The Importance of Controversy: Is Education for Sustainable Development Too Nice?
The Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) community, argues Robert Bray, is shy to confront controversy. In this quick review of three controversial issues—population control, the role of science, and limits to growth—he quickly points out how important it is to embrace controversy as a way to arrive at sound policy.
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MEDIA REVIEW
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Review of Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, & Planetary Crises: The Ecopedagogy Movement by Richard Kahn
Beth Pollock provides the historical roots and inspiration of Kahn’s Ecopedagogy in Freire and Illich, giving us a good pre-view of what to expect in the book. She finds Kahn’s call for a new kind of pedagogy, founded in these greater thinkers, timely as we work towards establishing educational processes that provide the necessary literacy to face ecological and sustainability issues now and in the future.
Beth Pollock nos indica las raíces históricas y la inspiración por la formulación del “Ecopedagogía” de Richard Kahn, basado en Freire y Illich, dándonos un buen previsto de que los se espera en el libro. Ella encuentra algo pertinente en la llamada de Kahn para una nueva pedagogía, fundada en estos grandes filósofos, mientras trabajamos hacia el establecimiento de un proceso educativo que provee el entendimiento necesario para enfrentar los asuntos ecológicos y de sustentabilidad actualmente y en el porvenir.
CASE STUDY
Celebrating their watershed: A stormwater education project on Oahu, Hawai‘i
John Cusick reports on the compromises needed to bring place-based and hands-on sustainability curricula into at-risk schools where teachers and administers feel constrained by No Child Left Behind. The local Festival and Science Fair exhibits he describes help meet this challenge, for the theme of watershed education in Hawai‘i.
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REPORT
At Home in Prescott: Confluence of Streams in my Journey as an Interdisciplinary Sustainability Educator
Pramod Prajuli takes down the ten streams of his life journey that brought him to Prescott Arizona and a life dedicated to sustainability education.
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VISION FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
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Sustainability Education and Transformational Change
With elegant simplicity, Rick Medrick makes the case for the importance of transformational change as part of our education process to bring about sustainability. He brings forth the need for creating learning environments where real, transformational change, can happen. And he invokes the role of the “servant-leader” in establishing those environments as part of an organic and evolutionary change process that we can help to generate.
Con una sencillez elegante, Rick Medrick hace el caso por la importancia del cambio transformacional como parte de nuestro proceso educativo para llegar a la sustentabilidad. Trae al frente la necesidad de crear ambientes de aprendizaje a donde el cambio verdadero transformacional puede ocurrir. Y el invoca el papel del “líder-sirviente” en establecer estos ambientes como parte de un proceso de cambio orgánico y evolutivo que nosotros podemos ayudar en generar.
VISION FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
Visions of Sustainability: A Dream for My Students
Kathy Lamborn shares her profound wilderness moments with us, much like she does with her middle school students in the classroom. But she goes on to make the case that the value of wilderness is not just for its own sake but for its power to elicit these moments and thereby bring us “to our knees with reverence,” helping us to recognize the call for a just and compassionate—“sustainable”—life.
Kathy Lamborn comparte sus momentos profundos en la naturaleza con nosotros, justo como ella hace con sus estudiantes del colegio en la aula. Pero ella lleva mas allá la idea de que la naturaleza no tiene valor solo en si, sino por su poder de inspirar estos momentos y así llevarnos a “nuestras rodillas con la reverencia,” ayudándonos a reconocer la llamada para una vida justa y compasionada—así “sustentable.”
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VISION FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
Organic gardening: Sustainability Education From Within
In an insightfully pragmatic way, John Gookin shows us how we can incorporate sustainability concepts into an innovative curriculum like that of NOLS without forcing the issue. He espouses the NOLS “organic” approach to curriculum design, where each taught element serves a real purpose, while finding great instances for including sustainability theory and practice.
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VISION FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION
What Sustainability Education Is to Me
In this convincing argument, Tina Evans makes the case for both social and ecological components to sustainability that each of us realize, individually and in community, in the context of our own “lifeway.” She also portrays, in concise terms, the transformational process that she incorporates into her own lifeway as a college professor.
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