Search

Nature degradation is rooted in the disruption of the human-land connection. Its restoration requires the regeneration of environmental stewardship as a way to live within environmental limits, especially for younger generations. In this study we used the implementation of a year-round, non-formal environmental education program during COVID-19 times to explore environmental stewardship in adolescents between 14- and 18-years old from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Using a qualitative methodology, we mapped expressions of environmental stewardship among local youth. We found several barriers that can be challenged and levers that can be nurtured through inclusive, place-based and collaborative environmental education strategies to foster youth’s environmental stewardship in Colombian’s high-biodiverse regions.

Advies over de toegevoegde waarde van een eventueel verbod op fossiele reclame voor het bevorderen van klimaatvriendelijk gedrag.

Starting with an argument for a humanistic approach to climate change, this paper discusses the concept of the ‘Collective Artist Residency’ as a practicable means for engaging with complex socio-ecological issues that require collective answers. Through our analysis of the research project ‘Imaginative Disruptions,’ we propose that there is a need for creative spaces that include artists and non-artists alike, and which engender aimless play, inquisitive making and dialogic contemplation in the face of issues which are too painful, overwhelming and complex to rationally comprehend. We further argue that such residencies can generate comfortable, and even light-hearted, spaces in which people can be uncomfortable together. In other words, environments that feel safe and caring but that also encourage us to challenge status quos and experiment with alternatives via emotional, aesthetic, cognitive, somatic and social processing. The paper closes with five (suggested) guiding principles for designing a Collective Art Residency that supports groups of people to co-reflect upon their fragility whilst re-imagining present and future possibilities for being in the world: deeply participatory, balanced between comfortable / uncomfortable emotions, highly experiential, cross-sectoral and intergenerational, place-based.

Educating the public is central to governmental and NGO responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This briefing paper of the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures Network Plus addresses the following topics:What is Transformative Public Education?Why Transformative Public Education matters to the COVID-19 responseWhy Transformative Public Education matters for addressing long-term underlying risks to communitiesExamples of Transformative Public Education responses to COVID-19Suggestions for governments and state welfare actors seeking to work with Transformative Public EducationSuggestions for community leaders working with Transformative Public EducationTransformative Public Education in times of physical distancingKey readings and resources

In times of global systemic dysfunction, there is an increasing need to bridge higher education with community-based learning environments so as to generate locally relevant responses towards sustainability challenges. This can be achieved by creating and supporting so-called learning ecologies that blend informal community-based forms of learning with more formal learning found in higher education environments. The objective of this paper is to explore the levers and barriers for connecting the above forms of learning through the theory and practice of an educational approach that fully engages the heart (feelings), head (thinking), and hands (doing). First, we present the development of an educational approach called Koru, based on a methodology of transgressive action research. Second, we critically analyze how this approach was put into practice through a community-learning course on responsible tourism held in Colombia. Results show that ICT, relations to place, and intercultural communication acted as levers toward bridging forms of learning between participants, but addressing underlying power structures between participants need more attention for educational boundaries to be genuinely transgressed.

This empirical paper addresses the need for more in depth understanding of signs and characteristics of transgressive learning in a context of runaway climate change. In a world characterized by systemic global dysfunction, there is an urgency to foster rapid systemic change which can steer our paths towards meeting the SDG goals. The contention of this paper is that, although there is a need for rapid change, it is fundamental to understand how such change can come about, so as to co-create and investigate learning environments and forms of learning that can lead to a systemic change towards sustainability. Anchored in the emerging concept of transgressive learning, this article employs the innovative Living Spiral model to track critical learning moments by facilitators and participants in multi-stakeholder Transformation Labs (T-Labs), which took place in 2017/2018 in various grassroots sustainability initiatives in Colombia and The Netherlands. The results of the analysis highlight the importance of the values of “acknowledging uncertainty”, “community”, and “relationality” in disrupting world-views through promoting reflexivity in participants and facilitators. This paper concludes that more research on the power dynamics of “absences” in transformative research is needed to better capture the challenges of overcoming sustainability challenges.

This doctoral thesis represents a transgressive journey into the nexus between education, sustainability, and climate change. The point of departure is our shared planetary crossroads: Straight ahead we have the paved path of the status quo, replete with socio-ecological injustice, ephemeral prospects of technological salvation, and impending doom for the human race. Branching off to all other sides, however, are the more overgrown and uncertain paths representing alternative futures. In a world seemingly spinning out of control, the question of our time is whether we have the will and drive to step off the known, but destructive path we are on, and into unknown territory. The contention of this thesis is that, yes, such a collective decision is possible, but it depends on our ability to 'transgress' - move beyond - the structures, paradigms, and norms which sustain the status quo. This thesis argues that learning-based transformations are needed for such transgressions to take place, based on disruptive capacity building and action-based change across diverse sectors of society. Represented as a transformation narrative, this thesis is structured around the innovative Living Spiral Framework, co-designed by the author. This thesis follows my learning journey alongside co-researchers as we delve into the emerging theory of transgressive learning, and bring this theory to life through an action-research methodology encompassing community initiatives across Colombia, South America. Beyond providing knowledge insights into transgressive learning between academia and other actors in society, the intention of this thesis is to transgress the traditional Ph.D. thesis format, providing a useful and inspirational format for fellow early career researchers to represent their research and to promote transformations towards more regenerative worlds.

Evaluating the success or failure of educational initiatives, whether at the level of individual students, teachers and institutions or at national and global levels, relies on a shared understanding of what ‘success’ or ‘failure’ might look like in practice. This, in turn, cannot be defined in an objective way because it depends on the values, mindsets and priorities of diverse stakeholders - which may be very different from one another, or even mutually conflicting. In order to design assessment tools to ‘measure what we treasure’, as called for in the 2015 Millennium Development Report, we must first embark on the challenging task of creating appropriate indicators. In this thesis, I have described four separate research studies conducted as part of the ESDinds project (‘Creating Indicators and Assessment Tools for Civil Society Organizations Promoting Education for Sustainable Development’), which was led by a consortium of two universities and four civil society organizations from 2008-2011. The project aimed to explore inductive ways of developing indicators in the context of non-formal education for sustainability – drawing them out from participants’ comments about what they find valuable, meaningful and worthwhile within a shared context of practical action, rather than deducing a framework from theory. These approaches were also intersubjective, in the sense of seeking to understand and empathise with each other’s perspectives, identify a common core if applicable, and build consensus about how to represent what matters to the group as a whole within the specified context. The indicators created in this way can be described as ‘values-based’. In the first of the research studies presented here, I describe the organisational impacts of conducting field trials with a ‘values-based evaluation’ approach in eight different organisations. These preliminary findings are discussed in relation to wider academic discourse on values communication in organisations. Ha

A responsive curriculum addresses the changing needs of students, bridging the gap between universal knowledge and theories on one hand and contextual, continuously changing realities of everyday life and the world of work, on the other. Though several higher education institutions appreciate the value of making curriculum responsive, how to do this remains a challenge. This paper first identified unique attributes of responsive curriculum development based on literature and assessed their manifestation in the creation of a new Masters curriculum in natural resource and environmental governance in Ghana. The role of actors within and outside academia and its implications, were also investigated. The study was designed as participatory action research. Key process attributes identified include, among others, iteration, built-in learning within the curriculum development process, and the contribution of actors from outside academia to curriculum design and implementation. The study also shows the important role of the so-called champion of the process and the expert facilitators. The paper does not seek to provide a blue-print but rather provides a valuable example for future initiatives at creating curriculum that better responds to current needs of students.

This thesis examines the creation of a university curriculum that responds to the dynamic needs of present day forestry professionals for governing forests responsibly. Such a curriculum is referred to in the thesis as a responsive curriculum: an adaptive curriculum that bridges the gap between abstract theories on one hand and the more contextual, continuously changing and demanding realities of the professional environment on the other. Such curriculum is deemed necessary because of the rapid changes occurring in the forestry arena which defines new roles and put new knowledge, skills, attitudes and thinking capacity demands on the forester. The study pursued four research questions: 1. What are the key challenges for responsible forest governance (RFG) in Ghana and which capabilities do forestry professionals need to address them? 2. What are the characteristics of a responsive curriculum development (RCD) process and how are they demonstrated in the Ghanaian context? 3. How do interactions among lecturers and practitioners facilitate enactment of the responsive curriculum? And 4. How does the integrated approach used in the responsive curriculum satisfy students’ career aspirations? The study was set up within the context of a participatory action research at the Department of Silviculture and Forest Management of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. Responsive interviews, focus group discussions, participant observations and questionnaires were also used. The study identified political culture as the most important challenge to governing Ghana’s forests responsibly. The self-serving power positions of some key actors like politicians, traditional authorities and the timber industry interfere with professional practice. This situation is made worse by the culture of corruption, non-compliance and poor enforcement of rules. The study further showed that capabilities for leadership, authority and autonomy were crucial in equipping the 2

Climate change already affects Vietnam in virtually all sectors. Agriculture in small communities is particularly vulnerable to current and projected climate change impacts. Many of the smallholder farmers in Vietnam have limited adaptive capacity to deal with these impacts. Increasingly social learning is proposed as an important mechanism to build the adaptive capacity of local farming communities. However, little is known about the interplay between social learning and adaptive capacity and how adaptive capacity could be increased in a complex hierarchical governance setting that is typical in a country like Vietnam. The dissertation therefore aims to elicit and explore the ways through which social learning can increase the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in central Vietnam to respond to climate change impacts. Four research questions are addressed: (i) what insights does the existing body of climate change adaptation literature provide into the interplay between social learning and adaptive capacity?; (ii) what do smallholder farmers in Vietnam perceive as their current adaptive capacity and what enables or constrains them in increasing it?; (iii) how can social learning configurations strengthen the adaptive capacity of farming communities?; and (iv) how do different levels of government enable and constrain the process of building adaptive capacity and social learning of smallholder farmers to respond to impacts of climate change in Vietnam? Overall, the dissertation shows that social learning offers many possibilities to help farmers adapt to climate change, but that climate change adaptation in developing countries creates specific contextual conditions that require an adaptive capacity-focused perspective. An adequate learning configuration that can successfully help farmers build their adaptive capacity, considers responsive design, facilitation, monitoring, and evaluation steps. Furthermore, efforts of increasing adaptive capacity should not onl