Topic 5c.Learning for change

Topic 5. Table of contents Transforming education for sustainability Overview [+] a. Sustainability framework for higher education [+] b. Educating for living with the earth [+] c. Learning for change. d. Knowledge for a new paradigm [+] e. Research and teaching for sustainable livelihoods [+] f. Open to society: building sustainability together [+] g. Universities in transition [+]

New approaches for learning based on dialogical, co-learning, participatory and problem-oriented methods are also required. Disciplinary studies that fail to make connections or links with real-world and real-time challenges and problems appear unlikely to support useful learning in the future. New, critical and reflexive learning systems need to be designed to meet the challenges of the new modernity. Learning by doing is seen now as a vital tool for understanding sustainability.

A key learning need is the ability to make connections between many types of knowledge, and to do this in a way that places equal value on the nature and quality of our relationships with the world at large, along with the need of transdisciplinary skills as a tool for overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge. Learning for change requires that we use strategies to change ourselves. These strategies strive to address questions such as the following: What are the procedures that can be used to bring about the change we wish to see in the world and in ourselves?

Organize studies, departments and areas of knowledge from the commonplace of complexity and interdependence, overcoming hyper-specialization by creating bridges between knowledge areas and by opening the language to social uses, seeking further commitments with everyday reality. These changes involve a deep transformation of the curriculum that takes into account the contextualization of knowledge.

Back to topic index.