From knowledge to action—a field report, moving from traditional to transformational teaching and learning. A pilot model for education for sustainable development at Freie Universität Berlin

Abstract

Accelerating anthropogenic climate change, the finite nature of fossil fuels, the shortage of natural resources, and the biodiversity loss are among today’s major environmental challenges. Coping with these issues requires a fundamental change in politics and policies related to the balance of power between countries of the global north and south as well as principle questions of ecology, economy, society, and culture. These challenges cannot be solved without fundamental political and social change. Such a transformation calls for broad societal awareness of these problems, and the magnitude of change required. Sustainability is the one idea that links all of these global problems and connects them to mechanisms of change. In its 2011 report on Bthe new societal contract for a Great Transformation,^ the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) described the importance of education that contributes to sustainable transformation by promoting societal participation. The report singled out universities’ special role in supporting education for sustainable development (ESD) by better orienting science and policy to the societal goals of the Great Transformation. ESD means Beducation that enables people to foresee, face up to and solve the problems that threaten life on our planet. It also signifies education that disseminates the values and principles that are the basis of sustainable development. Lastly, it means education that highlights the complexity and interdependence of spheres, the environment, society—broadly defined to include culture—and the economy^ (ESD Portal). Therefore, the UN Decade ESD that ended in 2014 seeks to promote the acquisition of Bshaping competences^ (Gestaltungskompetenzen). They describe Bthe ability to apply knowledge of sustainable development and to identify the problems of a non-sustainable development. This means drawing conclusions on environmental, economic, social and cultural developments in their interdependence, on the basis of analyses of the present and studies of the future, and then using these conclusions to take decisions and understand them before implementing them individually, jointly and politically^ (ESD Portal, download leaflet