Programme 339, Sustainability and Disruption in Education (31-10-18)

 Presented and produced by Seán Delaney

Theme music composed and arranged by David Vesey.

On this week's programme I speak to Arjen Wals from the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands where he is Professor of Transformative Learning for Socioecological Sustainability/UNESCO Chair. He was a keynote speaker at the 2018 annual conference of the Association for Teacher Education of Europe, which was held in Gävle in Sweden in August. Among the topics we discussed were the following:

• Why a sustainable approach to teaching is important
• Why teachers alone cannot bring about sustainable living
• How to promote sustainable choices in education
• How sustainable choices may vary from one place to another
• Why making teachers more accountable discourages them from taking risks
• CSI – Critical Sustainability Investigations (example with old mobile phones)
• Students taking photos of things that bother them in their environment and sharing them
• “Alternative” pedagogies (experimental learning, embodied learning, place-based learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning)
• The risk of having future people in power acting in an eco-totalitarian manner if sustainability issues are not addressed while time is available
• What Policymakers can do to make education more sustainable

During our conversation Professor Wals referred to Fairphone.