The UK has one of the most prestigious and established university systems anywhere in the world (Clark, 2023), but are we fully supporting & preparing our students for a rapidly changing world or do we need to refresh, renew and reframe our thoughts on the purpose and possibility of HE, and hence our roles within it?
Responding to Global challenges: ‘Everything, everywhere, all at once’
HE currently sits within an acutely challenging landscape that straddles multiple global issues including rapid global heating, acute biodiversity loss, spiralling inequalities and devastating realities of ongoing conflict and war. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has issued an existential “final warning” confirming “a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all” (IPCC, 2023) while no less than six of the nine planetary boundaries – Earth’s environmental limits – are now well outside “the safe operating space for humanity”(Richardson et al.,2023).The nested interdependencies and tensions between environmental, social and economic challenges, and their related political and cultural permutations, so called ‘superwicked problems’ (Levin et al, 2012) germane to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), pose ‘unprecedented challenges for humanity’ (IPCC, 2024). So, to what extent then is HE responding to this alarming ‘Code Red’ for humanity?
Universities are meanwhile struggling on a number of fronts closer to home post pandemic; shrinking budgets and financial fragility, student engagement and cost of living issues, strikes over staff pay, workload and job security (OFS, 2023) and the challenges of adaptation to AI and technology, to name just a few. A perfect storm of problems, some might say – in a world increasingly ravaged by storms, wildfires, floods and droughts. The HE community is positioned in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world where working towards more just, equitable and sustainable futures presents unprecedented existential challenges – but does our educational thinking, policy and practice take account of this greater reality?
The vast potential and possibility of HE as a key vector to enable the transformative changes so urgently needed through teaching, learning and research is ripe with possibility and remarkable efforts are emerging. Increasingly, individuals, businesses, governments and international organisations are engaging with the Herculean societal transformations required to address these polycrises recognising the need ‘to foster an unprecedented degree of social learning’ (Sterling, 2024). Here, the purpose and potential of HE can be pivotal in responding to UN secretary general, António Guterres’ clarion call to massively fast track action on all fronts, noting we need an ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’ response to the metacrisis. Our core educational focus therefore needs to respond to the question:
“How should – and how can – education and learning be re-thought and re-configured to make a significant and central contribution to achieving a more sustainable and just world?” (Sterling, 2004:4)
Purpose and possibility: HE as chief change vector or driver of ‘unsustainability’?
From a planetary perspective, the steady rise of students entering university and exiting into leadership positions means their potential impacts are considerable. How well primed are these future leaders to ‘significantly contribute’ to the transformations required for a cleaner, greener and fairer future? The American environmentalist David Orr reveals the uncomfortable truth that HE graduates are most likely to lead the highest carbon lifestyles and that “without significant precautions education can equip people merely to be more effective vandals of the earth” (David Orr, 2004) pointing to HE being part of the problem, rather than the solution. It is worth reflecting on Schumacher’s assertion (1997) that “If still more education is to save us, it would have to be education of a different kind” than that which has ushered us into the Anthropocene – the current geological epoch characterised by significant human impact on Earth’s systems.
Yet there are emerging transformations afoot, the student voice is unequivocal; young people are decisively demanding an education fit for purpose. It is, after all, their future.
Students want to see sustainability education woven throughout all their courses and 81% believe ‘places of study should be obliged to develop students’ social and environmental skills’ (SOS UK Survey, 2023). In terms of HE policy drivers, QAA Subject Benchmark statements now all include Sustainability requirements and recently the UKPSF included Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a core dimension in its 2022 refresh, underscoring its importance as a professional development priority. A brave and bold move that unfortunately did not make it through to the final published document but instead was diluted this to “advancing higher education practices to meet the evolving needs of learners and society, ‘such as’ acting in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” in the purpose statement (UKPSF, 2023) (my italics). This provoked exasperation from numerous educational leaders. Too challenging? Too complex? Too radical? Students certainly do not seem to think so, nor the voiceless more than human world or those living in frontline climate communities, it might be fair to assume.
It is not only the student will of note here however, but student wellbeing implications that are prescient. Rising eco-anxiety and distress about the environmental crisis is increasingly concerning for the sector. A recent SOS UK survey found a staggering 85% of students worry about the future (SOS UK Survey, 2023) and The Lancet Planetary Health (Wu et al, 2022) reported a similar percentage (84%) were anxious, suffering increasingly from climate anxiety and reporting disillusionment and dissatisfaction with government responses. From a duty of care perspective, HE must surely respond?
Beyond HE, the world of work also desperately needs those able to contribute to “the work of the world” (Porritt, 2009). Businesses and organisations are struggling to keep up with the pace and requirements of greener, fairer transition and desperately need graduates with critical thinking, cultural competence, collaboration skills, resilience and integrated problem-solving skills (UNESCO, 2018). As HE prepares students for an unknown, rapidly changing employment landscape, employers themselves are crying out for the sustainability competencies and soft skills graduates are often reported as lacking (QS, 2024; WEF, 2023).
Is HE fit for purpose?
Given these and many other compelling rationales for teaching, learning and research in line with a VUCA world, is education mounting a commensurate response? Considerable research in multiple disciplines reveals an increasingly instrumentalized, neoliberal education system (Bourn, 2021, Wals, 2020, Sterling, 2001) with educational policies modelled on serving a market-driven, globalising, high growth-oriented economy. A focus on grades, qualifications and employability is baked into metrics by which we assess the success of HE learning, defining and shaping our HE ‘delivery’ as a consumer product with quantitative metrics that evaluate ‘good value for money’(Neves and Brown, 2022). Educational practice commonly prioritises the measurement of subject content over ontological purpose and accreditation accolades over the application of knowledge to real world challenges. A process Biesta (2009) refers to as ‘learnification’, which he suggests reinforces a culture of competition, homogenisation and standardisation, yet critically, without asking… to what purpose? His provocation that we have ‘multiple theories of learning’, yet need ‘a theory of education’ merits deep reflection here.
These critiques are mirrored in the recent UN Agenda 2030 Transforming Education Summit in its damning evaluation of current education systems – “Study after study, poll after poll, draw the same conclusion: education systems are no longer fit for purpose. Young people and adults alike report that education does not equip them with the knowledge, experience, skills, or values needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world”(TES, 2022). This poses very challenging questions about the wider purpose of education and demands we rethink, reframe and repurpose some fundamental tenets – What is education for? What is its fundamental purpose? What do students, educators and societies need to learn? How can we enable this possibility?
Transformative Learning for paradigm change: transforming the ‘stories we live by’
“If we are to transform our world by 2030 as envisaged by the Sustainable Development Goals…We must respond decisively, with conviction, imagination, and in solidarity to transform education” (TES, 2020).
Transformative Learning (TL) theory (Mezirow, 2000; Taylor and Cranton, 2012) is increasingly recognised as fundamental to achieving the SDGs (see SDG 4.7) to forward a learner-centred, globally contextualised and action-oriented education which “addresses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment… and achieves its purpose by transforming society” (QAA and Advance HE, 2021).
Increasingly institutional strategy, policy, pedagogy and practice documents aspire to transformative learning but often an inclusion of SDGs as content focus or subject knowledge of sustainability issues falls short of the deeper emotional, participatory and applied learning TL requires. TL aims to engage “a process by which we transform problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives) to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective and emotionally able to change ” (Mezirow, 2006:92). The problematic ‘mental models’ that support and enhance ‘unsustainability’ need be examined critically ‘at the paradigmatic level, i.e., the epistemic sets of values and ideas which fundamentally influence purpose, curriculum design, pedagogy, and all other aspects of education’ (Sterling, 2021:3). Sterling goes on to highlight three stages that engage different kinds of learning here: conformative, which equates to efficiency or ‘doing things better’; reformative, which moves from efficiency to effectiveness ‘doing better things’; and finally transformative, learning that fundamentally changes the epistemic view of the learner.
For HE then what are the mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives or sets of assumptions that inform the ethos, purpose, policies and provision of education? In short, hegemonic narratives that present ‘unsustainability’ as normative, accepted and even in some cases desirable (Porritt, 2020, Wals, 2020). Stibbe (2009) helpfully names these as ‘the stories we live by’:
- Economic models that uncritically promote market growth as a social benefit, prioritise profits over people and validate increasing production and consumption.
- Social practices that uphold disadvantage and discrimination, build on historic inequality and lack of inclusivity, diversity, fair representation and treatment.
- Environmental narratives that present humanity as separate from or superior to the natural world. Nature framed as a ‘negative externality’, a financial ‘capital’ or a challenge to be tackled with techno fixes.
- Cultural norms that promote individuals as intrinsically selfish, competitive and self-seeking.
Transformative Learning offers the possibility of addressing this ‘hidden curriculum of unsustainability’ (Wals, 2020), disrupting the normative ‘stories’ HE is nested within and enabling ‘response-ability’ and the will to act, to better address human and planetary needs.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s transgress . . .
Transformative Learning is triggered by reflection on our ways of seeing the world that produces “disorienting dilemmas”, a liminality state characterised by moving from the safety of “established frames of reference” to new experiences or understandings that often involve loss, uncertainty and discomfort (Taylor and Cranton, 2012). It requires that we get uncomfortable about feeling comfortable (as well as getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable!). Transgressive learning is a subset of transformative learning that intentionally uncovers and disrupts dominant narratives such as colonial practices, overconsumption or environmental injustice (ISSC, 2024).
‘There is need of a kind of pedagogy in Hope’ (Freire, 1994:3)
Paolo Freire’s educational work on critical pedagogy and the concept of education as an emancipatory tool, rather than a ‘banking of knowledge’, argued that higher education should empower students through the application of theoretical learning to real world experiences such as inequality, oppression and injustice to empower – giving them the specific capacity to act and solve problems. There are increasing numbers of initiatives and frameworks that can help guide hopeful transformative learning by generating reflective opportunities, thought and discussion on ‘taken for granted’ ways of seeing the world and responding to them. Common to the few examples selected here is an approach to teaching, learning and research that is ‘anti-passive, participatory, and applied’ (Martin, 2018:6):
- The UNESCO ESD competencies champion ‘Ways of thinking, practising and being to empower learners to take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society’(UNESCO, 2019).
- Isabel Rimanoczy’s Sustainability Mindset Principles (2021) embrace a deeper understanding of ‘mental models’ that include spiritual and emotional intelligence elements, alongside systems thinking and ecological intelligence principles.
- Oxford Brookes’ IDEAS framework provides a curriculum travelling toolkit, with prompt question sets, resources and landscaping to support curriculum and pedagogical development on sustainability education.
- The Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) offer the i5 Principles – an innovative and creative set of learning tools designed to question business as usual models and engage sustainability thinking and action.
- Interdisciplinary research networks, such as the Sustainable and Resilient Futures (SRF) and the Young People’s Network (YPN) at Oxford Brookes University that foster collaborative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work.
- The Critical Global Pedagogies Model which outlines specific pedagogic approaches designed to disrupt dominant knowledge systems and enable new voices to be heard (Magne, 2023)
- The Hope Wheel: a model to enable hope-based pedagogy in Climate Change Education provides a visual guide for educators depicting essential elements to include, as well as avoid, in order to engage honest, hope-oriented transformative learning (Finnegan and d’Abreu, 2024)
When thinking about the possibility and purpose of HE we must be mindful of the fact that
‘If education is to be an agent of change, it has itself to be the subject of change’ (Sterling, 2021) inviting us to see ourselves as Changemaker Educators (d’Abreu, 2021) ready to move from safe to brave spaces (Winks, 2017) to challenge a normalised unsustainable status quo.
Reference List
Advance HE, QAA (2021) Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Guidance, Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/education-sustainable-development-guidance (Accessed on 17/02/2022)
Advance HE, GuildHE, Universities UK (2023) Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education 2023. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/uk-professional-standards-framework-ukpsf(Accessed 05/06/2024)
Atherton, G., Lewis, J. & Bolton, P. (2023) Higher education in the UK: Systems, policy approaches and challenges. Commons Library Research Briefing, House of Commons Library Available at:https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9640/CBP-9640.pdf Accessed on 01/06/2024
Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33-46. https://doi-org.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9.
Bourn, D. (2016) ‘Teachers as agents of social change’, International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning Available at: https://doi.org/10.18546/IJDEGL.07.3.05 (Accessed 28/04/2024)
Clark, D. (2023) Higher education in the UK – Statistics & Facts. Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/topics/6938/higher-education-in-the-uk/#topicOverview (Accessed 02/06/2024)
d’Abreu, C. (2022) ‘Educators as Changemakers: Teach the change you want to see’, Brookes Learning and Teaching Conference, 15 June 2022, (Accessed on 20/12/2022)
Finnegan, W. and d’Abreu, C. (2024) ‘The Hope Wheel: a model to enable hope-based pedagogy in Climate Change Education’, Frontiers in Psychology, Educational Psychology section, Volume 15, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1347392
Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of hope. London: Continuum.
hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. Available at: http://www.dawsonera.com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/depp/reader/protected/external/AbstractView/S9780203700280 (Accessed: May 13, 2024).
IPCC (2023) Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report.Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Lee, H., and Romero, J. (eds.) IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 1-34, doi: 10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647.001.
Levin, K., & Cashore, B., & Bernstein, S. & Auld, G. (2012). Overcoming the Tragedy of Super Wicked Problems: Constraining Our Future Selves to Ameliorate Global Climate Change, Policy Sciences (45) 10.1007/s11077-012-9151-0.
Magne, P. (2023). Chapter 13. Introducing “Critical Global Pedagogies” – A Conceptual Model Designed to Rebalance the Power Dynamics of Knowledge Systems in Inamdar, N and Kirloskar, P (Eds) Reimagining Border in Cross-border Education. p260-287. Routledge: Manipal. ISBN 9781003427827
Martin, P. (2018) On the Horizon, Advance HE, Available at: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/advance-he/On%20The%20Horizon-0919-12pt_1568974639.pdf (Accessed 03/06/2024)
Mezirow, J. (2000) Learning as transformation: critical perspectives on a theory in progress (1st edn). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Neves, J. and Stephenson, R. (2022) Student Academic Experience Survey 2023, Advance HE and HEPI, Available at: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Student-Academic-Experience-Survey-2023.pdf Accesses on 01/06/2024
OFS (2023) English higher education 2023 The Office for Students Annual review, Available at: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/051d135d-0bfe-4f8f-bdc7-aeee6d374a2d/2023-annual-review-accessible.pdf Accessed 06/06.2024)
Oxford Brookes University (2022) IDEAS Inclusive curriculum Model, Available at: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/staff/people/ideas-model/ (Accessed on 12/09/2022)
QS Quacquarelli Symonds (2024) Skills gap analysis: What soft skills do employers want from business school graduates?, Available at: https://www.qs.com/soft-skills-gap-2024/ (Accessed 01/06/2024)
Richardson, J., Steffen W., Lucht, W., Bendtsen, J., Cornell, S.E., et.al. (2023) Earth beyond six of nine Planetary Boundaries. Science Advances (9) 37.
Rimanoczy, I. (2020) The Sustainability Mindset Principles: A Guide to Develop a Mindset for a Better World (1st edn.), Abingdon: Oxon
Schumacher, E. F. (1997). ‘This I believe’ and other essays (essay first published in 1974). Dartington: Green Books.
Sterling, S. (2021). Educating for the Future We Want, Available at: https://jussemper.org/Resources/Democracy%20Best%20Practices/Resources/SSterling-Pedagogy-EducatingFutureWeWant.pdf (Accessed 03/06/2024)
Sterling, S. (2001) Sustainable education – Re-visioning learning and change. Schumacher Briefing no 6. Dartington, UK: Schumacher Society/Green Books.
Sterling, S. (2024). Learning and Sustainability in Dangerous Times: The Stephen Sterling Reader. Agenda Publishing. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.13473649
Stibbe, A. (n.d.) The stories we live by. University of Gloucestershire. Available at: https://www.storiesweliveby.org.uk/ (Accessed 05/06/2024)
SOS UK (2023) Sustainability Skills Survey 2022-23, Available at: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6008334066c47be740656954/651d7ed9dca42698cee12509_20230928%20Sustainability%20Skills%20Survey%20Final-%20HE%20only.pdf (Accessed 02/06/2024)
Taylor, E. W. and Cranton, P. (2012) The Handbook of Transformative Learning : theory, research, and practice. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons
UNESCO (2017) Education for Sustainable Development Goals: learning objectives, Available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247444 (Accessed 12/02/2021)
United Nations (N.D.)Transforming Education: An urgent political imperative for our collective future. Vision statement Available at:https://transformingeducationsummit.sdg4education2030.org/system/files/2022-09/sg_vision_statement_on_transforming_education.pdf (Accessed 01/06/2024)
World Economic Forum (2023) The Future of Jobs Report 2023 Available at: https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/in-full/4-skills-outlook/ (Accessed 06/06/2024)
Wiek, A., Bernstein, M.J., Foley, R.W., Cohen, M., Forrest, N., Kuzdas, C., Kay, B. and Withycombe Keeler, L. (2016) “Operationalising competencies in higher education for sustainable development”. In M. Barth, G. Michelsen, I. Thomas and M. Rieckmann (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Higher Education for Sustainable Development. London: Routledge, pp. 241-260.
Winks, L. (2018) Discomfort, Challenge and Brave Spaces in Higher Education, World Sustainability Series, pp. 99–111. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-70281-0_7.
Wu, J., Snell, G. and Samji, H. (2020) Climate anxiety in young people: a call to action, The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(10), pp. e435–e436. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30223-0.
UNESCO (2017 ) Education for Sustainable Development Goals: learning objectives, Available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247444 (Accessed 12/04/2024)
Wals, A. E. (2020) ‘Transgressing the hidden curriculum of unsustainability: towards a relational pedagogy of hope’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(8), pp. 825–826. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2019.1676490.
Wals, A. E. (2021) The Power of Transgressive Learning, contribution to the GTI forum The pedagogy of transition, GTI forum Available at: https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/pedagogy-transition-wals?highlight=WyJ0cmFuc2dyZXNzaXZlIiwibGVhcm5pbmciLCJ0cmFuc2dyZXNzaXZlIGxlYXJuaW5nIl0= (Accessed 02/06/2024)
