Abstract
Inspired by the UN decade on education for sustainable development, the Learning City designed an innovative curriculum and pedagogy to enable sustainability learning in a university classroom setting. We provide a brief overview of the project and then detail the classroom in regard to the five features that shape it. We also introduce the two major legacies of the Learning City and detail their relationship to the five features. The relevance of this work extends to many fields beyond sustainability education, including educational research, program evaluation, sustainability, urban policy, social capital, and the emerging field of the scholarship of teaching and learning.
References
Ballantyne, R., & Packer, J. (2009). Introducing a fifth pedagogy: Experience-based strategies for facilitating learning in natural environments. Environmental Education Research, 15(2), 243–262.
Bohm, D. (1996). On dialogue. London: Routledge.
Brown, J. (2002). The world café: A resource guide for hosting conversations that matter. Mill Valley, California: Whole Systems Associates.
Dippo, D. (2013). Preservice teaching and pedagogies of transformation. In R. McKeown & V. Nolet (Eds.), Schooling for sustainable development in Canada and the United States (pp. 69–78). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Gadotti, M. (2010). Reorienting education practices towards sustainability. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 4(2), 203–211.
Garnar, A. (2006). Power, action, signs: Between Peirce and Foucault. Transactions of the Charles s. Peirce Society, 42(3), 347–366.
Gross, N. (2009). A pragmatist theory of social mechanisms. American Sociological Review, 74(3), 358–379.
Isaacs, W. (1999). Dialogue and the art of thinking together. London: Currency Doubleday.
Joas, h. (1990). The creativity of action and the intersubjectivity of reason: Mead’s pragmatism and social theory. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 26(2), 165–194.
Joas, H., & Kilpinen, E. (2006). Creativity and society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Lattuca, L. R. (2001). Creating interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary research and teaching among college and university faculty. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Luke, T. W. (2005). Neither sustainable nor development: Reconsidering sustainability in development. Sustainable Development, 13(4), 228–238. doi:10.1002/sd.284.
Milana, M., & Sørensen, T. B. (2009). Promoting democratic citizenship through non-formal adult education: The case of Denmark. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 53(4), 347–362.
Minguet, P. A., Martinez-Agut, M. P., Palacios, B., Piň ero, A., & Ull, M. A. (2011). Introducing sustainability into university curricula: An indicator and baseline survey of the views of university teachers at the University of Valencia. Environmental Education Research, 17(2), 145–166.
Moon, J. (2004). A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and practice. Routledge Falmer: London and New York.
Moore, J. (2004). Living in the basement of the ivory tower: A graduate student’s perspective of participatory action research in universities. Educational Action Research, 12(1), 145–162.
Moore, J. (2005). Barriers and pathways to creating sustainability education programs: Moving from rhetoric to reality. Environmental Education Research, 11(5), 537–555.
Nicolescu, B. (1997). The transdisciplinary evolution of the university condition for sustainable development. Presentation at the International Congress Universities’ Responsibilities to Society, International Association of Universities, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, November 12–14.
Nolet, V. (2013). Teacher education and ESD in the United States: The vision, challenges, and implementation. In R. McKeown & V. Nolet (Eds.), Schooling for sustainable development in Canada and the United States (pp. 53–67). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Palaiologou, I. (2010). The death of a discipline or the birth of a transdiscipline: Subverting questions of disciplinarity within education studies undergraduate courses. Educational Studies, 36(3), 269–282.
Polk, M., & Knutsson, P. (2008). Participation, value rationality and mutual learning in transdisciplinary knowledge production for sustainable development. Environmental Education Research, 14(6), 643–653.
Reyers, B., et al. (2010). Conservation planning as a transdisciplinary process. Conservation Biology, 24(4), 957–965.
Salo, P. (2007).”On the concepts of the Nordic adult education tradition.” Nordic Con.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency-Doubleday.
UNESCO. (2006). Decade of education for sustainable development. International Implementation Scheme (IIS).
Vanwynsberghe, R., & Herman, A. (2014). Adaptive education: An inquiry-based institution. Manuscript under review.
VanWynsberghe, R., & Moore, J. (2008). Envisioning the classroom as a social movement organization. Policy Futures in Education, 6(3), 298–311.
Wals, A. E. J., & Jickling, B. (2002). “Sustainability” in higher education: From doublethink and newspeak to critical thinking and meaningful learning. Higher Education Policy, 15(2), 121–131.
Waterman, P. (1998). Globalisation, social movements and the new internationalisms. London: Cassell.
Westhues, Kenneth. (1995). The working centre: Experiment in social change. Kitchener, Ont.: Working Centre Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Van Wynsberghe, R., Moore, J.L. UN decade on education for sustainable development (UNDESD): enabling sustainability in higher education. Environ Dev Sustain 17, 315–330 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-014-9606-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-014-9606-x