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(Be)Coming and (Re)Membering Through Kitchen Based Learning as Sustainability: An Innovative Living Learning Systems Model for Higher Education

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Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education

Part of the book series: World Sustainability Series ((WSUSE))

Abstract

Higher education tends to situate sustainability epistemologically as transmissive education about and/or transactional education for sustainability. Sustainability educators argue that these approaches remain part of the dominant dualist and reductionist way of teaching and learning—a weak sustainability. What is needed is a transformative learning process as sustainability. Numerous sustainability educators and practitioners propose a strong sustainability supported by ecological relationality. In this chapter, I draw from ecological living systems principles (Capra in The hidden connections: a science for sustainable living. Anchor Books, New York, 2004) and relational agential realism (Barad in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 10: 87–126, 2007) to illustrate an innovative pedagogical approach of the environmental sciences. Calling it kitchen-based learning it uses cooking, eating and sensing as a relational transformative learning process towards (be)coming and (re)membering social and ecological sustainability. A vision for tomorrow’s campus in higher education is to include innovation in pedagogy giving attention to how students learn as a process of educating as sustainably.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

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Correspondence to Joy Kcenia O’Neil .

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O’Neil, J.K. (2017). (Be)Coming and (Re)Membering Through Kitchen Based Learning as Sustainability: An Innovative Living Learning Systems Model for Higher Education. In: Leal Filho, W., Skanavis, C., do Paço, A., Rogers, J., Kuznetsova, O., Castro, P. (eds) Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47889-0_23

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