What is Sustainability Literacy?

Dr. Laura Colucci-Gray

University of Aberdeen Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability (IRIS)

Glasgow School of Art, Thursday 26th June 2014Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education Topic support network

A recent document has just been published by the Higher Education Academy and the Quality Assurance Agency

Education for sustainable development:

Guidance for UK higher education providers

June 2014

“... is intended for educators working with students to foster their

knowledge, understanding and skills in the area of sustainable

development” (p. 4)

An authoritative document

Mapping sustainability literacy against four dimensions:• Global citizenship• Environmental stewardship• Social, justice, ethics and well-being• Future-facing outloook

But sustainability is a contested concept – fraught with contradictions, fuzzyness and uncertainty: of language, aims, values and practices.

Perhaps we need to inquire into the philosophical and relational basis of our current ways of knowing the world? Facts, values, experience and

perspectives are inextricably interwoven.

“Aims to prepare graduates to be able to lead the debate on

complex issues such as what constitutes global citizenship and good governance, sustainable

resource use, and the determination of ecological

limits.” (p.7)

Outline of this talk

• Knowledge and development in the 21° century: key forces key actors

• Describing or Inhabiting the Planet? Risk, Uncertainty and Ignorance

• Towards a sustainability literacy: Understanding the role of language as a technology for

sustainability Education and the dialogical experience

Education in STEM - June 2013 Foundations partnered in stem cell research

Picture of embryonic human stem cells, with added colours. (Image: Miodrag Stojkovic/Science Photo Library)

Ethical issues

David Cyranoski reports on biotech industries proposing therapies which are not being sufficiently tested.

Stem cells in Texas: Cowboy culturehttp://www.nature.com/news/stem-cells-in-texas-cowboy-culture-1.12404

Regulation faces legal challenges

STEM celle research

What expectations are being met and satisfied? How does it sit in with global priorities in healthcare? To what extent will the therapies be financially sustainable? Why so much support given by both the public and private enterprises? How to do we ensure safety and how do we measure effectiveness of these new treatments? Will it provide a ‘better alternative’ to other treatments?

Social and Environmental questions

Many EVENTS around the country:Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are a core sector of techno-scientific innovation; According to many researchers they are destined to change many aspects of our everyday life.

Shift from ‘science’ to ‘techno-science’

NETWORK OF ACTORS: Scientists, technical staff, financial agencies; industry; citizens; consumers...

POWERFUL FORCES: economic, political and financial interests;

mechanical, electrical and computing power to support global research and impact.

Some important implications...

Big Science Research (50’s onwards)

(nuclear bomb; aviation; nylon industries)

• There is no longer a neat separation between ‘description’ and ‘application’: the Earth is the laboratory for innovation.

• All inhabitants of the Earth are relevant ‘stakeholders’; who participates in decisions? Whose views are heard? Who takes responsibility?

• Technological innovation appears to increase complexity and interdependency across systems: are we able to regulate appropriately?

Genetic manipulation overrides the

fundamental biological principle of co-evolution

organism/environment;

Genetic manipulation is driven by immediate

concerns and interests

Genetic manipulation is operated in a short time-span;

many variables: flows of $; chemical reactions; physical

variables….

Who pays? Who benefits?

The laboratory of post-normal science

Certainty, control, domination… … or…

…unpredictability, precaution, humility?

TECHNO - SCIENCE is driven towards the development of instruments to determine outcomes for the future (revenues; products; goals); to minimise possible pitfalls and to maximise expected, positive results.

the objective is the modification of the outside world, developing and maintaining power and control over natural phenomena.

SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE is founded upon the preservation and refinement of the abilities of human beings - and more generally, of all living creatures - to respond and to adapt. aims to sustain and imprpove individual and collective resilience.

An example from NANOTECHNOLOGIES

• The applications of nanotechnologies will contribute positively to the quality of life thanks to the production of light and durable materials, cleaner energy, production of pure water; they will also offer beneficial medical applications, like the ‘smart drugs’. The science community needs to act now if strategic research is to support sustainable nanotechnologies, in which risks are minimized and benefits maximized (Maynard, A.D. et al. Safe handling of nanotechnology. Nature 444, 267–269, 2006.)

• With the increasing use of engineered nano-materials the workers’ exposure to these materials will also increase significantly. We know very little about the risks of these sub-cellular, high reactive materials for human health. (Savolainen et al. Risk assessment of engineered nanomaterials and nanotechnologies—A review, Toxicology 269 (2010) 92–104)

According to some authors, we are now able to model also the living systems, and entire ecosystems, just like climatologists do (Purves, 2013). The world described

quantitatively becomes predictable.

According to others, the complexity generated by our techno-science is such that we are not only unable to control it but not even to understand it (Harris & Sarewitz, 2011).

The evolution of complex systems in which we are included is unpredictable.

Two different VISIONS….

And their different NARRATIVES

Trust in scientific progress and economic growth. The secrets of nature will be unveiled and humanity

will dominate the Planet. The intelligence and human power will overcome

the biophysical limits of the Earth, and everybody will benefit

from the benefits brought by innovation.

Science is only one of the ways we can look at the world and understand its complexity.

Beneath every problem there are values, beliefs, interests and conflicts. Equity and democracy require

to put limits upon innovation.

The learning perspective:

A growing field of analysis agreeing that much of our problems with education and action are to do with our ways of thinking…

Difficult to solve a problem, if we do not realise that we are part of it! (Sterling, 2002)

INHABITING THE ENVIRONMENT

The mind is a biological system rooted in bodily experience and interconnected with the bodily actions and interactions with other individuals

Acting and interacting in the world, representing it, perceiving it... Are different levels of the same relational link which exists between organisms and the local environment in which they think and live

Garbarini & Adenzato, 2004

Embodiment

• Recognising that we exist as a nexus of interactions between energy, matter and information

• We are part of the global fluxes of the biosphere• Our cognition is distributed across the mind-

body system, and develops from action and perception.

• Our language is the expression of our biophysical and relational positioning in the fabric of Life on the Earth (E.G. METAPHORS).

Language and literacy

There is an implicit relationship between signifiers and signifieds in different forms of language, and the underlying representations of reality:

The Junk DNA

The ‘killer’ cells

The ‘building’ blocks

Need to promote a dialogue between experience and knowledge!

Problematic aspects

The rapid shift from a situation of total dependency from Nature to a partial and relative autonomy

has led to a break, a rift, a discontinuity

Language, self-consciousness, neuro-motor system structures, artistic expressions

which evolved slowly within a variety of ecosystems

have been projected onto an artifical environment, which is no longer in continuity with the energy flows of Nature

HIGH POWER CIVILIZATION

year activity POWER

produced

1900 A U.S. Farmer with 6 working horses

5 KW

2000 A U.S. Farmer with a tractor

250 KW

1900 A U.S. Train master with a steam engine (at 100 Km/h)

1 MW

2000 The pilot of a Boeing 747 (at 900 Km/h)

120 MW

VISIONS and ideas of SCIENCE: how do we make decisions?

The ‘normal’ model•Science describes and presents the facts as they are •Uncertainty is only temporary•Experts speak truth to power: from the ‘truth’ of science derives the ‘right’ of politics; •Technological power and human creativity produce innovation which will solve the problems and overcome the biophysical limits of the Planet.

Risk is ‘managed’A focus on what is known and can

be determined•Short-term framing

•Quantitative mesures•Specialised language

•Ignoring the unknown unknown (Jasanoff, 2003)

Epistemic and normative black box (Harding, 2004)

VISIONS and ideas of SCIENCE

The ‘post-normal’ model•Many sciences interpret the facts with different methods and perspectives, which change over time. •Uncertainty is integral to life and cannot be eliminated; •Decisons require democratic dialogue amongst different points of view and value-systems; •Humanity needs to accept its dependency from the natural systems and adopt ‘humble’ technologies.

Risk is intrinsic

•High complexity•Values in conflict

•Multiple ‘framings’•Open dialogue

(Funtowicz and Ravets, 2003)

Sustainability = Life on the Planet

Life is a creative force…

It transforms and transfers chemical states of matter. And so do human beings… al the time…

“Life in other words is like us. Or, rather, we are just life doing what comes naturally to it. Our genius follows the lines of the ancestral genius of life” (Volk, 2003, p. 170)

Human societies as part of life, continuously transforms, develop and respond to the environment around them.

Knowledge and learning

• Curriculum is not given but continously changing as the environment around us changes...

• Knowledge is not simply ‘acquired’ but produced in contexts of action and interaction...

‘Teaching and learning do not exist and cannot be identified separately from the networks through which they are themselves encted’ (Fenwick, Edwards and Sawchk, 20111, p. 6)

Battaglia, M. in Gray, D., Camino, E., Colucci-Gray, L. (2009) Science, Society and Sustainability. Education and Empowerment for an Uncertain world. Routledge, New York,

Variety of relational

competencesEveryday topics

What bodily experiences?

The post-normal laboratory

What journeys are made possible?

Sustainabilty literacy

• It is embedded in our experience of the natural world: biographical literacy

• It is based on awareness of prejudice and expectations, of ourselves and other people

• It engages with the relationship between people and the land

• It interrogates power relationships• It develops from ongoing encounters with the

natural environments• It interrogates the quality of the tools and

conditions for dialogue (contextual literacy)

The world can be narrated many times and in many different ways

•Re-formulation of the University as a place where students-citizens are both critics and creators;

The teacher has the important role of facilitating dialogue, bringing forth a plurality of epistemic positions in an educating community…

How does this change professional expectations of university

graduates?

It is important to become awareof the visions

which underlie individual and collective choices!!

Visions for Sustainability IRIS – Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainabilitywww.visionsforsustainability.netvisions@iris-sostenibilita.net

Selected references• Siegel, D. (1999) The developing mind. New York, Guilford Press. • Condit C.M., Bates B.R., Galloway R., Brown Givens S., Haynie C.K.,

Jordan J.W., Stables G. & Marshall West H. Recipes or blueprints for our genes? How contexts selectively activate the multiple meanings of metaphors Quarterly Journal of Speech Volume 88, Issue 3, 2002 pages 303-325

• Fox Keller E. Making sense of life. Explaining biological development with models, metaphors and machines. Harvard University Press, 2002.

• Fox Keller E. Refiguring life. Columbia University Press, 1995.• Gitelman L. “Raw data” is an oxymoron. The MIT press, 2013.• Harris P. & Sarewitz D. Destructive creation and the new world disorder.

Current History pag. 29-33 January 2012.• Hauskeller C. & Weber S. Framing pluripotency: iPS cells and the shaping

of stem cell science New Genetics and Society Volume 30, Issue 4, 2011 pages 415-431

• Hellsten I. From sequencing to annotating: extending the metaphor of the book of life from genetics to genomics New Genetics and Society Volume 24, Issue 3, 2005 pages 283-297