New CFT Guide on Sustainability and Pedagogy
As part of the CFT’s ongoing work on sustainability across the curriculum (including a fall workshop, “Sustainability in the Classroom: Ecological Footprints“), we’ve developed a new teaching guide titled “Sustainability and Pedagogy.” The guide includes a discussion of the environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainability, as well as strategies and resources for teaching issues particularly relevant to teaching sustainability, including interdisciplinarity, place-based and project-based learning, and relationships between the classroom and the community. The guide also includes links to local and national resources of potential use to faculty and graduate students interested in teaching sustainability.
Here’s an excerpt:
The scope of sustainability is frequently described as including three spheres – social, environmental, and economic. To use an accounting metaphor, sustainability projects must be evaluated according to a “triple bottom line” of social, environmental, and economic responsibility…
Sustainability is at once an integrative discipline and a multidisciplinary project; it has statistical, scientific, and humanistic dimensions. With its focus on specific problems and particular solutions, sustainability suggests place-based and project-based approaches to student learning. Teaching towards sustainability also reminds us that pedagogy is a civic project; there are important ties between classroom and community.
Leave a Response