We are continually confronted with facts about the rather daunting ecological threats facing humanity. Yet does having this knowledge automatically translate into acting more responsibly? Asked in another way, does personal awareness of sustainability issues lead to the ability to respond appropriately to the challenges at hand?
It is assumed through education campaigns that presenting the facts about the human impacts on our social and environmental support systems will shock people into changing their behaviour. The same goes in the classroom. Environmental and sustainability education makes students aware of the real world problems that exist in and beyond the student’s community. However, does teaching about sustainability issues prompt students to take responsibility in their personal and professional lives in the long term or do students continue through life with old habits?
For educators, generating awareness is a valuable start. Increased public awareness gives government a mandate to respond to sustainability issues. Take water restrictions for example. Where I live, in Australia’s South East, the public might not enjoy water restrictions, yet due to well-organised government information campaigns they generally understand that the region is running out of water and that water can’t be used like it has in the past.
The public understanding and acceptance of water restrictions, is just that: an acceptance of regulation that is at best a quick fix to our serious long-term water woes. Policies such as building dams and pipelines offer equally superficial ‘solutions’. Awareness in the absence of critical thinking and systemic problem solving skills will only lead to short term ‘fixes’ to problems rather than long-term systemic solutions.
The need here is clear: to develop the ability to respond in innovative ways which systemically tackle complex problems. Building this capacity in the next generation of professionals should be a key focus. This is where awareness focused education falls short. There’s a clear need to go beyond ensuring that graduates are aware of sustainability challenges and emphasise building the capacity to undertake complex problem solving.
Teaching systemic interconnections between the physical, social and cultural or, the environmental, social and economic spheres, may indeed prove an invaluable insight for learners. However, without a curriculum geared towards making decisions and implementing actions within a sustainability framework, students are likely to enter careers with little more than an awareness of what is going on and an understanding that ‘someone’ needs to do something about it.
For undergraduate students who will soon be entering the professional world where decisions and actions on these issues are developed and implemented, nurturing the capacity to innovate through systemic problem solving will help nurture our society’s ability to respond in new ways. While building the capacity to act or take responsibility within society is a complex task, educators can make changes to university curriculum that strategically target the next generation of professionals to think and act on problems in a systemic way.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | awareness, education, responsibility, students, sustainability, systems
