Abstract
Over the last decades, the extent of human impact on Earth and the atmosphere has been the subject of large-scale scientific investigations. It is increasingly argued that this impact is of a geologically-significant magnitude, to the extent that we have entered a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene. However, the field of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD) research has been slow in engaging in the Anthropocene debates. This article addresses that research gap by offering a theoretical analysis of the role and position of HESD, and more particularly of the lecturer and the student, within the Anthropocene. At present, the majority of HESD research can be categorized as either instrumental or emancipatory. This article’s central aim is to develop a third, navigational approach toward HESD research. In order to do so, the article first argues that developing understandings of the Anthropocene reconfigure traditional humanist conceptualizations of time, space and collectives. The article proceeds with advancing new, relational conceptualizations of educational spaces (as learning milieus), educational times (as rhythms that slow the present) and learning (as a situated activity that takes place through belonging). Embedded within these new conceptualizations, the proposed navigational approach aims to enable educational actors to orient themselves and to consequently navigate in, and to learn by making connections with, our more-than-human world.
Highlights
Summer, the end of another academic year
This article offered an analysis of how Anthropocenic conversions reconfigure traditional modern and humanist underpinnings of space, time and collectives, and how these reconfigurations necessitate a reconceptualization of how we conceive of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD)
Presented in a minor key, the analysis we provided did not seek to denounce more established instrumental and/or emancipatory approaches, but rather presented a third, navigational approach that conceives of lecturers and students as actors who are attentive to, and sensible for, situated acting and being in the Anthropocene
Summary
The end of another academic year. A couple of colleagues from all over the university are having a meeting of the Network for Sustainability Education, a recently launched initiative at the authors’ university. We argue that addressing this ‘something more important’ requires an approach to HESD research that is neither instrumental (focused on problem-solving) nor emancipatory (focused on individual transformation), but that rather focuses on the situated and entangled being of both human and non-human actors in specific, designated places [19] We call this third approach a navigational approach, since its primary aim is to teach educational actors (i.e., lecturers and students) to orient themselves and to navigate in (and become able to compose a response to) these relational and profoundly entangled more-than-human spaces and times. In line with these arguments, we conclude the article by offering some concrete implications of this navigational approach for the role and position of lecturers in HESD
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