Need to mobilise submissions for sustainability in higher education (NZ)

October 17, 2009

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The draft Tertiary Education Strategy is out for consultation.      It gives direction to NZ’s tertiary education for the next five years.   The draft is weak on sustainability: it’s alluded to in the higher level statements but missing in the directions for teaching and learning.   As it stands,  institutions will not see sustainability as an imperative, […]

September 25th should live in infamy

September 25, 2009

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Today is Earth Overshoot Day.  This is not a day to celebrate. Calculated by the Global Footprint Network, Earth Overshoot Day shows the day on which our total Ecological Footprint (measured in global hectares) is equal to the biocapacity (also measured in global hectares) that nature can regenerate in that year. For the rest of […]

Values and hope combine in Earth Charter for teaching

September 25, 2009

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In my getting-so-much-closer book, I examine barriers to integrating Education for Sustainability.   Two of those barriers can be characterised as “My classroom is value neutral” and “Sustainability is too negative, and without vision” Jeffrey Newman addresses both of these barriers in Values reflection and the Earth Charter in the new Handbook of Sustainable Literacy. The […]

Changing habits of thought

September 24, 2009

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Stephen Sterling argues that we need to think ecologically (Ecological intelligence from Handbook of Sustainable Literacy).   He says that this is more than systems thinking, it has an embedded caring: So ecological thinking – reflected in ecophilosophy – is essentially relational or connective thinking, but it’s also more than that: it is ethical, valuative, and […]

Davies stresses urgency of learning society

September 23, 2009

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Quotes from Kate Davies’ A learning society from Handbook of Sustainable Literacy.   The whole book is available online from University of Brighton. On urgency: There is not much time. The task of developing a learning society to facilitate humankind’s evolution towards sustainability is urgent. Given current trends, our species will need to learn and change […]