Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems

The Role of Learning and Education

Marianne E. Krasny, Cecilia Lundholm, Ryan Plummer, Marianne E. Krasny, Cecilia Lundholm, Ryan Plummer

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317966524
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Didattica
• Categoria: Didattica generale

Resilience thinking challenges us to reconsider the meaning of sustainability in a world that must constantly adapt in the face of gradual and at times catastrophic change. This volume further asks environmental education and resource management scholars to consider the relationship of environmental learning and behaviours to attributes of resilient social-ecological systems - attributes such as ecosystem services, innovative governance structures, biological and cultural diversity, and social capital. Similar to current approaches to environmental education and education for sustainable development, resilience scholarship integrates social and ecological perspectives.

The authors of Resilience in social-ecological systems: the role of learning and education present a wealth of perspectives, integrating theory with reviews of empirical studies in natural resource management, and in youth, adult, and higher education. The authors explore the role of education and learning in helping social-ecological systems as they respond to change, through adaptation and transformation. This book also serves to integrate a growing literature on resilience and social learning in natural resources management, with research in environmental education and education for sustainable development.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Resilience and learning: a conspectus for environmental education

Cecilia Lundholm^a,c and Ryan Plummer^b,c

^aDepartment of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden; ^bDepartment of Tourism and Environment, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada; ^cStockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

There has been an increasing interest in how environmental education contributes to sustainability dating from the 1977 UNESCO conference in Tbilisi to the current Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which in 2009, reached mid term. There is also a growing interest and concern in the complexity, uncertainty and changing nature of social-ecological systems and how sustainability is understood. Learning and resilience figure dominantly in both these trends. This contribution to the collection provides a conceptual overview of environmental learning, resilience in ecology and resilience in human development. The manners in which these conceptual areas are beginning to coalesce are discussed and their intersection in environmental education is illustrated in the context of formal schooling, organisations and society. Key research questions for environmental education emerge about its critical role in enhancing adaptive capacity and contributing to the resilience of social-ecological systems.

Introduction

Amid the pedagogies and research of environmental education, there is growing interest about sustainable development and sustainability. This includes defining and conceptually exploring key concepts and interpretations, understanding how environmental education contributes to or may influence sustainability and unsustainability, and larger quandaries about the possibilities of sustaining the prerequisites for human and other-than-human life in ecological, economic and social terms. Environmental education with this purview has broadened considerably to recognise that learning is a continuous process which occurs in different contexts and places, among people of different ages, with different purposes, and facilitated by vastly different institutions. At the Fourth International Conference on Environmental Education (UNESCO), it was observed:

In 1987, the emphasis was on education and training, while discussions in 1997 introduced collaborative learning. Today [2007] the emphasis is on experimentation and broader social and cultural situated learning processes that take account of context. (Fourth International Conference on Environmental Education 2007, 2)

Our understanding of sustainability has also changed. The definition of sustainable development advanced by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987) set forth an ideal or goal. Of particular importance to this paper is the dialogue about the type of science and approach required to achieve sustainable development. Contrary to commonly held optimism about our ingenuity and problemsolving abilities through ‘scientific understanding’, there is now growing recognition that such approaches are inadequate and new approaches (e.g. sustainability science, civic science, etc.) are required which embrace holism or integration and foster coproduction of knowledge (Cortner 2000; Kates et al. 2001; Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2003; Plummer 2006). By extension, the main message conveyed in the WCED's notion of sustainability that ‘better management will save the world’ (Sachs 1995) is being sharply questioned and attention is shifting towards sustainability as ‘a dynamic process that requires adaptive capacity in resilient social-ecological systems to deal with change’ (Berkes, Colding, and Folke 2003, 4).

Environmental learning broadly interpreted and a dynamic view of sustainability create an interesting and important intersection. As Krasny and Roth (2010) observe, it is at this crossroads that important questions about the relationship between environmental education and the resilience of social-ecological systems are emerging. As an important precursor to theoretical and empirical investigations, our paper provides a conspectus of learning and resilience. It then explores how these areas of scholarship are coming together and illustrates their intersection using a variety of environmental education examples. Emerging research questions for environmental educators and the potential roles of environmental education to contribute to the resilience of social-ecological systems are highlighted. In the spirit of synthesis and integration, our contribution to this collection is intended for individuals with an interest in learning, environmental education, natural resource management and social-ecological systems.

Conceptual foundations

Environmental learning

The ‘conceptual landscape’ of environmental learning and different theoretical perspectives on learning is rich and complex and this paper does not attempt to provide the reader with an exhaustive overview. Rather, it aims to communicate the substance, and range of learning theories and their applications in relation to the environment and sustainability. Thereby, the fact that there has been little use of learning theory (Dillon 2003; Rickinson 2006; Rickinson, Lundholm, and Hopwood 2009) is addressed as this has consequences for what we can say about environmental learning among individuals and groups at different levels, in organisations and in society.

Considering learning from a research point of view suggests different theoretical strands within the fields of education, psychology and social psychology. Three mainstream perspectives (Greeno, Collins, and Resnick 1996) include the behaviourist (e.g. Watson 1913; Baum 2005), the cognitive (e.g. Piaget 1926; Vosniadou 2008) and the situative or sociocultural (e.g. Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch and Kanner 1992). These differ in relation to aspects of ontology, epistemology and focus of interest. Learning from a behaviouristic point of view is based on the proposition that actions, feelings and thinking can and should be regarded as behaviours, whereas a cognitive perspective has individuals' conceptions and knowledge structures as foci and unit of analysis (through, e.g., the interpretation of interview or observational data). Learning is hereby seen as a change in the ways individuals perceive the world; thus, the focus is on our constructs and structures. The sociocultural perspective pertains to the interest of how social, cultural and institutional contexts come to influence and change individuals, groups and organisations, the unit of analysis is often talk, and learning is viewed in terms of internalisation and the appropriation of practices and discourses (see special issue in the Educational Psychologist 2007 and Alexander, Schallert, and Reynolds 2009 for recent discussions on the different perspectives and questions of bridging/incommensurability).

When looking at learning, it is important to recognise that learning is a multifaceted process including cognitive, social and emotional aspects. With an interest in understanding individuals' learning (or a group of individuals), whether in a classroom context, business training programme or nature guide tour, cognition and understanding will be influenced by the way an individual perceives the social and institutional setting and relations (‘Is it okay to have divergent views?’, or ‘What is my role as good pupil here?’; see, e.g., Lundholm 2004a; Rickinson, Lundholm, and Hopwood 2009) as well as that of emotions (‘This is a topic too depressing to deal with’ or ‘I am sure this will be impossible to learn since I've failed in this subject so far’; see, e.g., Efklides and Volet 2005; Rickinson, Lundholm, and Hopwood 2009).

Importantly though, an interest in learning has to focus not only on the development of cognition but also on social, emotional and moral development itself, as well as on the development of sensory, motorical and physical skills, and the necessary social, cultural and institutional prerequisites for these processes. This broader view of learning is of particular relevance in the context of learning and sustainability as there is significant breadth of foci and expected outcomes from an educational point of view. Scott and Gough (2003) present different foci (e.g. nature, conservation and social change) and various desired outcomes of learning (e.g. values and feelings, understanding, skills, behaviours, social justice and democratic citizenship skills) associated with different kinds of environmental education. Other writers have distinguished between education with vocational purposes from more general fostering of knowledge and understanding (e.g. Schnack 2008). It is suggested that environmental learning serves purposes of raising awareness, promoting moral understanding and developing metacognitive skills (and systems dynamics thinking), and intellectual developments alongside more activist outcomes, hence aiming at developing students' knowledge and critical thinking so as to enable them to participate and take action as citizens, voters and consumers. Such ideas have, for example, informed Jensen and Schnack's (1997) notion of ‘action competence’. Chawla and Cushing (2007) provide an overview of research on education aiming at enhancing behaviour or action that decrease individual's/individuals' negative impact on nature and increases life-sustaining actions (including new procedures and management), presenting a typology of different foci within this body of research. They conclude with a discussion on the emphasis in environmental education to focus on the ‘private sphere’:

Environmental education, as well as measures of behaviour in environmental education research, typically emphasize private sphere environmentalism at the expense of preparing students for public action, and environmental educators often fail to engage students in a strategic analysis of the most effective way to address problems. Because such an analysis shows that big institutions like Government and industry are major sources of solid waste, pollution and the consumption of nonrenewable resources, as well as structural barriers against more conserving lifestyles, it is critical for schools and out-of-school environmental programs to prepare students for political action. (2007, 448)

Looking in particular at learning and sustainability, Scott and Gough (2003) and Vare and Scott (2007) provide categorisations of environmental learning. The former distinguish between three types of learning based on differing assumptions about the relationships between conceptions of the causes of environmental or social problems and the role of environmental learning in dealing with them. Vare and Scott (2007), meanwhile, identify two complementary approaches to ‘learning for a change’ in education for sustainable development (ESD). The first (ESD 1) promotes learning that focuses on informed and skilled behaviours and ways of thinking in circumstances where needs are clear and agreed. The second (ESD 2) is described as ‘building capacity to think critically about what experts say and to test ideas, exploring the dilemmas and contradictions inherent in sustainable living’ (Vare and Scott 2007, 191). The authors stress that both the approaches are necessary and are not incompatible. Without knowing the facts, we cannot cast value judgements or critically analyse what measures are appropriate to take at a specific time and place. On the other hand, the ‘uncertainty’ of facts in the light of a future that is largely unknown highlights the need for critical thinking and open-ended learning.

With an interest in analysing and understanding the processes and outcomes of learning and of creating linkages between learning, resilience and sustainability, we can also use a set of questions that pertain to the ‘who, where, what, how and when’ of learning (cf. Alexander, Schallert, and Reynolds 2009). Who refers to the individual and biological, cognitive, social, economic and cultural aspects as well as interest and emotion; where means considering the social and cultural context and the physical environment where learning is taking place; what stresses that learning is always the learning of something; how focuses on different ways and means for learning. This framework can be considered in relation to environmental learning, posing questions such as: Who is learning; children, students or adults? Where are they learning; in the outdoors, at university, or at a council meeting? What is being conveyed or discussed, and how? – as in different modes of communication; ‘one-way’ (e.g. information) or ‘two-way’ (e.g. dialogue) and different artefacts used (e.g. text, models, maps, etc.).

Rickinson, Lundholm, and Hopwood (2009) provide in-depth analysis and exclusive focus dedicated to describing students' experiences of environmental education and their environmental learning using the framework introduced above. The ‘what’ of environmental learning shows, for example, that environmental issues often are problems (hence, emotionally charging) and abstract (non-experiential, nonvisible). They are also complex as they encompass both the natural, societal and individual domains and the relationship between these (Lundholm 2008; Rickinson, Lundholm, and Hopwood 2009; Lundholm, forthcoming; Lundholm, Hopwood, and Rickinson, forthcoming). The findings show in particular how environmental learning, including emotions and values in different ways, issues of relevance from the learner's point of view, and the negotiation of viewpoints among teachers and students, are important parts of students' experiences and learning challenges.

Although usually not explicit about the connection to the main learning theories set forth above, the role of learning is increasingly being discussed in relation to natural resource and environmental management. Armitage, Marschke, and Plummer (2008) describe this situation as ‘the paradox of learning’ – a standpoin...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword: learning and adapting – central features of resilience
• Foreword: on learning, resilience and research in environmental education
• Introduction
• 1 Resilience and learning: a conspectus for environmental education
• 2 Social-ecological resilience and environmental education: synopsis, application, implications
• 3 Learning for resilience, or the resilient learner? Towards a necessary reconciliation in a paradigm of sustainable education
• 4 Exploring adaptability through learning layers and learning loops
• 5 Environmental education for social-ecological system resilience: a perspective from activity theory
• 6 Resilience in learning systems: case studies in university education
• 7 Agricultural knowledge in urban and resettled communities: applications to social-ecological resilience and environmental education
• 8 Stewardship, learning, and memory in disaster resilience
• 9 Participatory action research and environmental learning: implications for resilient forests and communities
• 10 Responses to climate change: exploring organisational learning across internationally networked organisations for development
• 11 Learning for resilience? Exploring learning opportunities in biosphere reserves
• 12 Environmental education, resilience, and learning: reflection and moving forward
• Index