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Rethinking Education for Sustainable Development: Interdisciplinarity, Community and Environmental Justice

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The Contribution of Social Sciences to Sustainable Development at Universities

Part of the book series: World Sustainability Series ((WSUSE))

Abstract

As a perspective on education for sustainable development at universities, the purpose of this Chapter is to explore a reconceptualization of education for sustainable development through Stephen Sterling’s conceptions of education as an agent of change, and alternatively, as a subject of change. This study is a personal point of view that is speculative and limited to sustainability programs and curricula at Canadian universities with implications for the role of education for sustainable development within the realm of the prospective contribution of the social sciences to the study and practice of sustainability.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In 1973, the State of North Carolina made plans to build a landfill for soil contaminated by 31 thousand gallons polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB); the site of the landfill was Shocco, a small town in Warren County that was 75 % African American. Local leaders organized protests against construction of the landfill, and their protests attracted support of civil rights groups across the United States that turned national attention to the issues of institutionalized environmental racism. After several lawsuits, public hearings, and scientific studies, Warren County commissioners reached a compromise with the State government in 1982, with the promise by the North Carolina State government that the landfill would not be expanded and that Warren County would not become a waste county; however, water was later discovered under the landfill, revealing contamination. Finally, in 2003, North Carolina started a program to actively destroy the PCB contamination. (http://sites.duke.edu/docst110s_01_s2011_sb211/what-is-environmental-justice/history/).

  2. 2.

    Sterling (2003, p. 327) proposes the evolutionary (Wilberian) view of paradigm change in concert with Bateson’s (1972) levels of learning and change; this is in contrast to Thomas Kuhn’s perspective of incommensurable paradigms, where “the partial validity of earlier paradigms becomes lost in a dualistic attempt to distance the advocated paradigm from the old, and prove the validity of the new.”

  3. 3.

    The United Nations’ Rio+20 Conference recognized the importance of not endangering the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/culture-and-development/the-future-we-want-the-role-of-culture/); consequently, the concept of sustainability is now comprised of environmental, economic, social, and cultural dimensions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Regina, 3737, Wascana Parkway, Regina, SK, S4S 0A2, Canada

    P. Kolenick

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  1. P. Kolenick
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Environmental Science, HAW Hamburg and Manchester Metropolitan University, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

  2. School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Michaela Zint

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Kolenick, P. (2016). Rethinking Education for Sustainable Development: Interdisciplinarity, Community and Environmental Justice. In: Leal Filho, W., Zint, M. (eds) The Contribution of Social Sciences to Sustainable Development at Universities. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26866-8_1

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