Arjen E.J. Wals

1. Interdisciplinarity and transboundary thinking as a pre-requisite for learning our way out of unsustainability Arjen E.J. Wals

2. Today • Unsustainability & urgency • Learning our way out? • Redesigning education, learning & research

3. 60.000/5sec 2.000.000/5min www.chrisjordan.com

6. www.chrisjordan.com

9. “The conventional wisdom holds that all education is good, and the more of it one has, the better.… The truth is that without significant precautions, [it] can equip people merely to be more effective vandals of the Earth” (D. Orr).

10. Who knows? Who cares? • Deepwater horizon • Nuclear radiation in Japan • Increased infertility in men • Calcium supplements for women • Runaway (?) climate change • Organic – sustainable – for all? • Paper or plastic? • …. ‘ We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom’E.O. Wilson, 1998, p. 300)

11. Post-normalism • Complexity • Uncertainty and indeterminacy • Contestation and controversy – extinction of ‘truth’ • Shallowness and hyper-connectivity – erosion of meaning • Emergence - reflexivity

13. 426.000/day www.chrisjordan.com

14. What’s it made of? Where does each component come from? How does it affect our lifes? How does it affect the lifes of others? Is there a future for cell phones?

15. Mireille Faist Emmenegger, et al, “Life Cycle Assessment of the Mobile Communication System UMTS: Towards Eco-Efficient Systems,” International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 11, 4, (2006): 265 – 276.

18. Chromium: Production and Consumption emissions in Sweden

24. Lessons learned & competencies developed • Local and global issues are connected • Information is everywhere, how to choose? • Sustainability is multi-dimensional: ecological, economic, ethics, environment, etc. • Becoming critical of consumption & consumerism • Alternatives are possible! • Interviewing, presenting, reporting, listening, googeling, critiquing…

25. An Education for Sustainable Development Lens • Integrative – not only the ecological and the environmental, not only the present, not only the local, not only the human world • Critical - questioning continuous economic growth and consumerism and associated lifestyles • Transformative – exploration of alternative lifestyles (e.g. ‘voluntary simplicity’), values and systems that break from existing ones that are inherently unsustainable

26. Blinding insight - intermezzo • If you have done it before – don’t say a thing! • In the short movie you will see a small group of boys and girls wearing black or white shirts that are playing with two balls. • Your goal is to count how many times the ball is passed by those wearing white shirts. It’s that simple. • Remember, count just the passes of the ball by those wearing white shirts! • Write down the number of passes.

30. Trans-cultural Gestalt Trans-spatial Gestalt Transformative learning Trans-temporal Gestalt Trans-disciplinary Gestalt Sustainability Competence (1)

31. Sustainability competence (2) • Competence to think in a forward-looking manner & to deal with uncertainty • Competence to work in an interdisciplinary manner • Competence to achieve open-minded perception, transcultural understanding and cooperation • Participatory competence • Ability to feel empathy, sympathy and solidarity • Competence to motivate oneself and others • Competence to reflect in a distanced manner on individual and cultural concepts • Sources: de Haan (2006); Michelsen and Adomssent (2007)

32. 3rd generation university

33. Thank you!