Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The growing awareness of climate change, biodiversity loss and the wider global environmental emergency has led to calls for decisive and immediate action from all sections of society. This paper aims to consider the question of how universities should respond and what role they might best adopt in current circumstances.


Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a conceptual framework, the paradox model, which places sustainability within the contradictory, messy and uncertain terrain that characterises higher education (HE). This is derived from the own experience of leading sustainability within one UK university, as well as the continued engagement with educational theory and philosophy.


Findings
This paper identifies two fundamental contradictions or paradoxes facing those seeking to engage in sustainability in HE, namely, how to develop authentic sustainability responses within the context of existing HE structures and processes and how to reconcile the demand for immediate action with the much more gradual processes of education. This paper represents these two paradoxes as intersecting axes on a diagram, which creates four quadrants in which a diverse range of responses can be located. The point where these two axes intersect is particularly significant and provides a place from which to navigate responses both individually, collectively and institutionally.


Originality/value
This paper argues that wisdom provides a guiding principle for discerning which type of response might be appropriate in any given context. It may also indicate a route towards institutional change and underpin the vision of the ecological university of the future based on principles of civic responsibility and social justice.

Foreword / Jeanette Armstrong -- Introduction / Joan Armon -- The challenge ahead : prioritizing sustainability education / Stephen Scoffham -- This is zero hour : students confront educators / Zanagee Artis, Arielle Martinez Cohen, Kendall Kieras, and Ivy Jaguzny -- Opportunities for re-enchantment : exploring the spirit of place / Stephen Scoffham -- An education that heals : purpose and practices guided by the great work / Chara Armon -- Ways of being free : finding 'pulses of freedom' in the border zone between higher and public education for sustainable development / Heila Lotz-Sisitka -- Sustainability education : from farms and intentional communities to the university / Dan McKanan -- Learning from traditional wisdom in Papua New Guinea : the value of indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge in higher education / Sangion Appiee Tiu -- Sustainability education from an indigenous knowledge perspective : examples from Southern Africa / Soul Shava -- Walking mythopoeic landscapes : into the heart of the landscape to find the landscape of the heart / Simon Wilson -- Theravadic Buddhism and sustainability accounting : a Sri Lankan example / Nuwan Gunarathne and Sasith Rajasooriya -- Education for sustainability in early childhood education : sustainability transformation through collaboration / Nicola Kemp, Polly Bolshaw -- Boundary-crossing learning in ESD : when agricultural educators co-engage farmers in learning around water activity / Tichaona Pesanayi -- A future that is big enough for all of us : animals in sustainability education / Patty Born Selly -- Developing a curriculum for sustainability education : lesson planning for change / Mary F. Wright, Florence A. Monsour -- Sustainability role models for transformative change : a great turning in higher Education / Thomas R. Hudspeth -- Education for sustainability and the stories we live by / Arran Stibbe -- Conclusion / Joan Armon.

"Sustainability is a complex concept, and the challenge of understanding it and applying it to a diverse, multi-agent organisational setting with its potentially conflicting priorities cannot be underestimated. Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education provides key learning from the authors' extensive academic, leadership and professional experience in this area, supplemented with reference to key learning from other leaders and institutions. Janet Haddock-Fraser, Peter Rands and Stephen Scoffham bring together a wide range of influences and considerations, including: an understanding of the core constructs of leadership theory and sustainability, the range of perspectives through which to view and value sustainability, successful activities and actions undertaken by sustainability leaders in the higher education sector, models and methods to successfully implement sustainability that are new to the sector, influencers on the sustainability agenda, whether policy- or demand-led, external or internal, barriers to and enablers of success for leaders at individual, institutional and sector levels. These factors all combine to provide a framework for the reader within which to consider leadership for sustainability, both at an individual level and within the higher education culture and organisational norms. The authors provide a theoretical underpinning of key concepts, supplemented by examples of practice across the sector, both within the UK and internationally. Case studies from the UK, Australia, North America and India all bring to life the key opportunities and challenges of leading the sustainability agenda across a range of higher education institutions."--Bloomsbury Publishing