Sustainability and Dancing

Carol Harden elegantly lays out, in broadest terms, from an environmental, cultural, social, political, economic and historical perspective, the essential confluence between geography as a discipline and sustainability as a concept. And then, in the face of the inevitability of change, she provides such a succinct metaphor for pursuing sustainability—just dance!

Carol Harden, elegantemente establece, en términos más amplios, desde una perspectiva ambiental, cultural, social, política, económica e histórica, la confluencia esencial entre la geografía como una disciplina y la sostenibilidad como un concepto. Y luego, en la faz de la inevitabilidad del cambio, ella ofrece una metáfora concisa para la persecucion de la sostenibilidad –Solo Baila!

A Sustainable Peace: From Militarized Borders to Transnational Resource Collaboration

In a very cohesive and convincing argument, Randall Amster asks us to look at the other side of the well-worn coin that links environmental degradation and resource despoliation to conflict and war. Instead, argues Amster, conflict zones have been shown to be appropriate sites for the creation of peace parks and other similar initiatives, where they can be turned into regions of enhanced sustainability—in every sense of the word, including environmental, social, and economic.

A Tale of Two Sustainabilities: Comparing Sustainability in the Global North and South to Uncover Meaning for Educators

In this interesting comparison of sustainability in very different geographic and cultural settings—Long Island, New York versus the Chiloé archipelago, Chile—Vercoe and Brinkmann suggest that the societal framework for sustainability requires very different educational efforts. Their in-depth analysis of how these societal frameworks are almost diametrically opposed opens us to understanding how important geography is to the way we formulate our educational goals and systems.

The Sacred Breath: Teachings from the Inner Landscape

Jenny Finn reminds us that we all carry a full geography of internal landscapes, embodied in the simple act of breathing. As we consider the deep and complex issues that entering learning about sustainability in the outer world, is it not essential, she asks, that we connect, profoundly through each breath we take, with those internal landscapes?

Beyond the Monoculture: Strengthening Local Culture, Economy and Knowledge

In this deeply cohesive and fundamentally geographic argument, Helena Norberg-Hodge brings an impressive array of sustainability issues under a single guiding rubric for educating and changing society—the need for a shift from globalised systems to local practice. While every point in her argument is backed with interesting details—including her fascinating experiences with the Himalayan Ladakhi people—she is consistent in bringing us back to valuing localisation and yet measured in her prescription which calls for gradual shifts, not radical and potentially harmful jumps, towards localisation.

A Note on Urban Sustainability-Education Nexus

Reza Banai makes a strong case for urban sustainability as the perfect area of practice to apply a broad range of effective pedagogies. The complex multi-disciplinary nature of urban design means that it requires advanced, high-level, analytical, holistic, hands-on pedagogies to bring about real solutions for sustainability. With urban popuplations booming worldwide, chances to apply Banai’s nexus between urban sustainability and a robust education abound.

A New Agenda for Science Education

Maceo Carrillo Martinet calls for bringing the local geography of sustainability into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) curricula, all the while framing this call in the global context of climate change. He makes a convincing case, based on the experiences of the Instituto Querencia in New Mexico, for using three principals to guide STEM curricula: students as agents of change; diverse cultural perspectives enrich the curriculum; and involve the local community—wherever you might be—in the curriculum.

Food Futures: A Poetic Essay

The problems we are facing are linked.
It is not a set of problems.
It is a system of problems.
Now it is time to look at the system of solutions.
– Janine Benyus, Nobel Laureate Symposium, 2011.

4 Inches of Living Soil: Teaching Biodiversity in the Learning Gardens–A photo-essay

In Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education: Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life, Williams and Brown (2011) place living soil at the center of the discourse on sustainability education. One of the seven principles that guides their pedagogy of learning gardens is: valuing biocultural diversity. This photo-essay of elementary students in K-8 schools, explores how 4 inches of soil in the learning gardens can teach about life’s diversity. The author urges humble attentiveness to that which is below our feet seemingly hidden and unnoticed yet teeming with life.

Where Can Green IT/IS Education and Training Be Found Today? An Initial Assessment of Sources

The push toward sustainability & “greening” in organizations is evident in the Federal government as well as within the private sector. A more specific focus on “greening” information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) can also be seen. As might be expected, a corresponding increase in green jobs is also occurring with many of those jobs focused on IT. The trouble with filling green jobs, IT or otherwise, is finding educated and qualified workers to fill them. As a result, there is a growing demand for green computing education. As early research has indicated, however, the demand for green computing knowledge by those in industry is only slowly making its way to the academic world. A recent study by Sendall (2010) identified a surprising “lack” of green IT/IS/computing and/or sustainability curriculum initiatives in institutions of higher education. With this knowledge as background, this research efforts attempts to identify, even so: Where can green computing education and/or training be found today?

Planting the Seed of Sustainability: Languages and Cultures Fertilize an Organic Garden at Miami Dade College

In this fascinating case study from Miami Dade College, Anouchka provides us with a detailed and subtle look at the effects of a simple school garden on her students. The garden’s potential to build a sense of community and place as well as a new environmental ethic is developed through vivid vignettes woven throughout the description of how Anouchka and her colleagues launched the project. The garden project described is a powerful example of complex, interdisciplinary teaching that also takes advantage of the college’s physical campus to foster experiential learning and cultural exchange. Whether or not readers are involved in similar projects, this story is important for its illustration of the interconnectivity and endless learning possible in any discipline from a connection to the living earth.

Enhancement of the Construction Engineering and Management Curriculum through Physical Energy Assessment of City Facilities

As we continue into the future, if we hope to move in the direction of sustainability, the question of energy efficiency in buildings old and new becomes increasingly relevant and key to success. Read this article by Dr. Terri Norton and Matija Ratovic to learn about efforts I the Midwest to prepare university students to take on this task.

Working Towards Sustainability One Room at a Time

There is much discussion in sustainability education about the urgent need for a wholesale paradigm shift and much debate about the role of incremental, grassroots change in societal transformation. Eason and Heroux describe a creative and pragmatic project that addresses behavior change through an incremental approach. Their case study provides a provocative example of how a grassroots effort to change energy consumption can have growing implications for campuses’ climate impact through the viral nature of student culture. Their “Green’s List” is a fine and replicable model for the role of celebration in community transformation.

Incorporating Sustainability into the Curriculum: The Case of Green Course Projects at a Pacific Island American University

Graduate students enrolled in an education research course (many of the students were school teachers) that the author taught during the spring 2010 semester participated in this “green” course project. Those students who were not school teachers, who worked for private companies or government agencies, focused their projects on green communities, workplaces, or households. Students conducted their projects based on inquiry-based learning, and this sustainability study reported in the current paper itself derives from an inquiry-based approach. The results from this study demonstrated that daily curricular activities at universities and schools provide an important way to support environmentally responsible living. Implementing green course projects similar to the one described here is one of many ways in which university teachers can incorporate “sustainability” into their curricula.

BIM as a Framework for Sustainable Design

In a world of changing climate and environmental degradation, architects play a key role in the pursuit of sustainability. In this article, Karen Kensek offers digital tools that will provide up and coming architects with the necessary skills and knowledge to produce sustainable building designs.

Integrating Culture as a Cornerstone of Success in Sustainability Education: A Case Study, Youth Allies for Sustainability Leadership Program, Earth Care, Santa Fe, NM

Environmental sustainability cannot be separated from social justice. Christina Selby presents a compelling case study of sustainability work grounded in cultural democracy, or processes that involve all groups in community decision-making. In the Youth Allies for Sustainability Leadership Program, young residents of Santa Fe, New Mexico, address ecological integrity through intercultural healing, relationship-building, and advocacy. Selby grounds her case in the broader theoretical work of eco-justice and transformative education. She highlights the urgent need to further integrate the defense of cultural integrity with the protection and restoration of ecological balance and economic vitality. This case study is a shining model for such integration.

Review of Fleeing Vesuvius: Overcoming the Risks of Economic and Environmental Collapse, edited by Richard Douthwaite and Gillian Fallon, 2011, New Society, 457 pp. ISBN 978-0-86571-699-5.

In this concise and useful review, Tina Evans brings forth the high points of Douthwaite and Fallon’s comprehensive book about economic collapse, especially featuring those aspects of the book that might contribute to courses on sustainability and peak oil.

Review of Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy, by Charles A.S. Hall and Kent A. Klitgaard (2012), Springer, 407 pp., ISBN 978-1-4419-9397-7.

In this insightful review, Tina Evans makes the case for Hall and Klitgaards’ work as going beyond more superficial ecological economic analysis into a deeper realm of biophysical economics where human economies do not just depend on a natural resource base, but are part of it. She is impressed by how thoroughly the book delves into the many theoretical and interdisciplinary aspects of biophysical economics, while engaging the reader and presenting a coherent common theme throughout.

Generations on the Land: A Conservation Legacy, by Joe Nick Patosky. A review.

Richard Pritzlaff gives us a good idea what to expect, and not expect, from Nick Patosky’s book. This is not a grand theoretical or comprehensive work on land use or conservation, but, as Pritzlaff explains, stories from real families about their experiences of restoring land, especially grazing land. Pritzlaff gives us enough of a taste to sense the morsels that are here and to let us know how our plate will be filled by reading the whole book.

Unpacking Spinoza: Sustainability Education Outside the Cartesian Box

Abstract: By its nature and scope, the concept of sustainability is a challenge to traditional education. Where most academic institutions still value and promote narrowly conceived fields of expertise, sustainability requires a comprehensive, wide-angle approach to problem definitions as well as solutions. This challenge highlights the need for a bold reassessment of a number of epistemic assumptions; one of them being the validity of the Baconian-Cartesian reductionism at the core of the scientific method. This paper presents a novel, non-reductionist approach to understanding and teaching sustainability grounded in an analogy from the systems philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). This approach is an alternative that transcends the traditional dichotomy between reductionism and holism in their various forms. I discuss how Spinoza’s approach to parts and wholes can be applied to a transdisciplinary, systems-based sustainability education addressing systems of varying size and complexity. A multitude of systems theories and methodologies have failed in the role as widely accepted and used meta-languages that effectively transcend disciplinary confines. As applied in this paper, Spinoza’s philosophy can effectively be used as such a discipline-transcending facilitator of understanding. To my knowledge, Spinoza’s fundamental contributions to the philosophy of systems and transdisciplinarity presented in this paper have not been recognized in the literature, including the research on Soft Systems Methodology and other “constructivist” systems approaches.

A New Systems Approach to Sustainability: University Responsibility for Teaching Sustainability in Contexts

A systems theory approach to sustainability in five contexts—social/cultural, economic, environmental, technical, and individual—is a realistic and useful approach to researching and teaching sustainability in the university. As a springboard for social change, the university needs to develop values-based sustainability content for classes across disciplines, and especially address the careful assessment and evaluation of both human and technical factors for solving sustainability problems.

“Framing Sustainability”

As institutions of higher education continue to embrace sustainability as a guiding principle, administrators, campus sustainability leaders, and researchers in the field struggle to present a holistic picture of the changes necessary for complete organizational change. While resources available for decision-makers typically focus on individual case studies on specific concepts, few have worked to address the field as a whole. This paper aims to address sustainability within the frames conceived by Bolman and Deal in their seminal work Reframing Organizations (2008). Specifically, it looks at reframing organizational change within the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames, as well as adapting Kotter’s Change Stages to address how sustainability can, and should, transform colleges and universities, while providing the tools necessary for sustainability professionals to enact this innovation.

Creating a Learning Organization to Promote Sustainable Water Resources Management in Ethiopia

Partnerships between universities have the tantalizing possibility of providing fresh pathways to more sustainable societies. Institutions in sub-Saharan Africa are new players in this emerging development paradigm, but arguably are most in need of building capacity to address fragile and dynamic environmental and social conditions after decades of underinvestment in higher education. This paper documents the early stages of an Ethiopia-United States partnership to build capacity in institutions of higher education in Ethiopia in the critical area of sustainable water resource management that was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Higher Education for Development (HED). We explain how the concept of sustainability was interwoven with theories about learning organizations, supplemented by in-depth dialogue with stakeholders to assess existing capacity and future needs, and used to inform a strategic plan. The literature highlighted the need for a learning organization: a place where people continuously expand their ability to generate the results they truly desire, where innovative and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. In 2011, the partnership established the Ethiopian Institute for Water Resources (EIWR) with the vision that it will become a key innovator in sustainable water resources management in Ethiopia by integrating education, research, outreach and training. One important observation so far is that in order to create a more substantive engagement than was realized in the “technology transfer” policies that shaped past North-South relationships, partnerships need to be authentic and characterized by open dialogue, mutual respect, and shared learning. Another is that the opportunities for fieldwork in Ethiopia’s complex social and physical landscapes also have enormous potential to create deep and learning experiences for other students of sustainability, thereby building capacity not just in Ethiopia but across multiple geographies.

Teaching Sustainability across Scale and Culture: Biogas in Context

Teaching sustainability invariably involves teaching about energy – its use, its sources, its
environmental impacts, and its social implications. This paper explores how one renewable
energy alternative – biogas – is adapted and applied across scale and culture. Biogas is made by
capturing the methane released during anaerobic digestion of organic matter such as manure,
sewage, and food waste. In Nepal, biogas is a household scale technology used to create a
cooking fuel that replaces firewood and improves both environmental and human health. In the
United States, biogas is used as part of large-scale waste management systems for livestock,
wastewater treatment, and landfills to create electricity for on-site use and for sale into electric
grids. In Sweden, biogas is used as part of a regional effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and fossil fuel usage by using locally generated biogas for district heating, electricity, and
vehicular fuel. By comparing these three cases, we gain insight into how one technology is
adapted across diverse needs and from household to regional scales in the pursuit of more
sustainable energy practices. Such an exercise can be an asset in the classroom to teach students
about the importance and relevance of place-based solutions that address diverse cultural and
economic realities.

The Effects of Participative Goal Setting on Future Sustainability-Related Behaviors and Attitudes

A study was conducted using a modified participative goal setting approach to create a behavior change over the course of a semester. Two approaches to goal setting were used. Student subjects set goals regarding switching from one-time use plastic or paper bags to reusable bags when grocery shopping. They monitored their behavior on a weekly basis. We hypothesized that the participants would report: 1) an increase in the degree to which they used reusable bags on shopping trips, 2) being more committed to acting in an environmentally-responsible manner, 3) voluntarily adopting additional sustainability-related behaviors that are not required as part of the exercise, and 4) attempting to affect sustainability-related behavior in others. Additionally, the following research question was posed: Would any behavior change be accompanied by changes in attitudes towards sustainability? Results indicated that goal setting was effective in increasing the reported frequency of using reusable bags when shopping, though there was not significant change in attitudes. A more simplified approach was almost as effective as a more complex. If our results can be generalized, they suggest that managers can use a simplified goal setting technique to increase the frequency with which employees engage in sustainable behavior. Further, a change in attitude may not be necessary for this effect to occur.

Assessing Systems Thinking Skills in Two Undergraduate Sustainability Courses: A Comparison of Teaching Strategies

The purpose of this study was to determine systems thinking skill development among undergraduate students and assess the effectiveness of two different instructional methods for increasing these skills. Undergraduate students from two four-year state institutions, one located in the Midwestern region (n=20) of the United States and one in the Southwestern region (n=16) participated in the study. To accomplish the research object, the study employed a mixed between-within subjects experiment. Employing two different systems thinking teaching interventions, one group of students was exposed to a one-time intervention while the other group was exposed to a more extended and holistic intervention. Data were collected at two points in time: pre- and post-intervention. At the beginning (pre-intervention) and end (post-intervention) of one semester, students read case studies describing apparel firms’ sustainability efforts. The students were then tasked to identify sustainability challenges, analyze conflicts between challenges, and offer business recommendations. Using a rubric, the authors scored the students’ responses on a scale of 0 to 5 and assessed ability to 1) think holistically and 2) perceive interrelationships and resolve resulting conflicts. T-tests revealed that prior to the teaching interventions, as a whole, the students had unsophisticated skills related to their ability to think in systems. ANOVA revealed that, through instructional methods focused on systems thinking, it is possible to increase students’ ability to think in systems. Additionally, the study revealed that, compared to a constrained one-time intervention, a long-term, holistic, and integrated approach is significantly more effective in encouraging students’ system thinking competencies. Results of this study support the need for educators to integrate teaching methods designed to increase students’ systems thinking competencies holistically throughout course curriculum. Additionally, the study outlines a transferrable approach to assessing systems thinking skills within postsecondary education.

It’s about time: extending time-space discussion in geography through use of ‘ethnogeomorphology’ as an education and communication tool

Effective bases of environmental decision-making build upon multiple and divergent understandings of landscapes and landscape connection. This paper develops ‘ethnogeomorphology’ as a tool for developing a shared (if contested) landscape platform for sharing worldviews and perspectives. Interfaces of intercultural communication, particularly with many Indigenous knowledges, are spaces of crucial juncture in understanding challenges of environmental and social sustainability and their relevance extends far beyond only ‘Indigenous studies’. Methodologies that aim to empower many Indigenous communities in documenting their knowledges can fail when attempting to communicate them in terms of conventional cause-and-effect science based on assumptions of linear and static spatial perspectives. This paper documents one such failure in practice with the Maiyoo Keyoh in Canada, and draws upon research conducted with the Yorta Yorta Nation (south-eastern Australia), the Stò:lō Nation (British Columbia, Canada), the Maiyoo Keyoh (northern British Columbia) and the Tia Kina Te Taiao (in New Zealand), from 2007-2011. Emerging insights in geography offer critical insight in addressing some of these challenges in practical ways, as increasing unrest in ‘physical’ disciplines (such as geomorphology), contest traditional binaries between ‘physical’ and ‘human’. This paper argues that geomorphic landscapes themselves are good learning tools that illustrate dynamic time-spaces. Recent developments around concepts of emergence, contingency and complexity, addressed through system-specific applications, point to reengagement with ‘place’. Similarly, conceptual developments in human geography see concepts of “scale as relation” rather than ‘scale as level’, also offers synergistic perspectives with physical geography founded on seeing multiple scales simultaneously. This solid grounding of coherence in geography could contribute to a practical and grounded basis of sustainability. Rather than being limited to theoretical debates, this paper illustrates the potential of a hybrid geography in practice. This convergence/hybridity in perspectives is not a conflation of knowledges, but an opportunity for situating worldviews in dialogue, assisting efforts to decolonize intercultural communication and promote ethical engagement in practice. This ‘ethnogeomorphic’ perspective offers a reconsideration of the term ‘adaptive’ in ‘adaptive management’, framed around multiple connections to landscapes, rather than as a tool restricted to Western science.

Navigating a Geography of Sustainability Worldviews: A Developmental Map

Given the importance of understanding and learning to work effectively with a diversity of perspectives and values in the sustainability field, this article offers a developmental map of the worldviews of sustainability. It includes an introduction to developmental theory and research, an overview of the diversity of worldviews, how they differ and relate to one another and to sustainability practice and leadership, and how these worldviews develop over time. A developmental perspective suggests that every sustainability practitioner/educator/leader has a worldview that is made up of the beliefs that person holds and their definition for sustainability emerges out of those beliefs. Moreover, there are consistent patterns observed cross-culturally in the ways that these worldviews develop. Understanding and learning to work with the diversity of perspectives and their developmental trajectory is vitally important for sustainability education and leadership in that it helps us to design curriculum, and sustainability campaigns, policy and actions in ways that are more holistic, include a diversity of worldviews, address conflict between them and contribute to the development of the worldviews themselves.

My Ecological Self on Trial: Confessions of a Graduate Student in Sustainability Education

Malcolm Brooks, as with all good lol humor, helps us look in the mirror, recognize where we come from, and not take it all so seriously.

How our Teaching Changes our Thinking, and How our Thinking Changes the World: A Conversation with Jaimie Cloud

In this insightful, foundational and wide-ranging interview, Jaimie Cloud makes the case…and defends it…for the prime importance of Education for Sustainability (EfS). Her ground-breaking work and years of experience bring an authoritative voice to this nascent field and give confidence that, as she says, “it all begins with a change in thinking” and “we just have to educate for it.” Her impressive accomplishments and the examples she brings to the interview are a must-read of inspiration for anyone involved with sustainability education.

Bomb Threats, Global Warming and Decision Making: An Educational Experience

Dave Tomkins and Panagiotis Tsigaris focus their fine analytical stats skills on how to not to make the wrong kind of error…yes, that should be the right logic…regarding global warming. They elegantly lay out the math behind what we all know intuitively…nothing is to be lost from taking precautions regarding global warming, or avoiding Type II statistical error, which comes, not from assuming that humans caused global warming, even when we didn’t, but rather being unable to prove that humans cause global warming, when in fact we are causing it. They present the statistics in the context of a course case study and make it clear that we have no reason to wait on the data since the potential for this type of error is already with us and the actions to be taken are probably beneficial in other areas as well.

Sustainability in Outdoor Education: Rethinking Root Metaphor

Recognizing that behavior comes not only from understanding, but also from attitudes cultivated in outdoor settings that elicit visceral feelings toward nature, outdoor educators have unique opportunities to make sustainability comprehensive, accessible, and relevant.  Yet the principal metaphor underlying outdoor education in general, and the Leave No Trace (LNT) program in particular, may be counterproductive to fostering environmentally and [...]

Compost, Blossom, Metamorph, Hurricane – Complexity and Emergent Education Design: Regenerative Strategies for Transformational Learning and Innovation

This work proposes a novel theoretical framework for sustainability education and explores four possible applications of the framework. Insights from complexity and complexity education elide with patterns from nature to birth four patterns of regenerative, emergent education. In this work I explore these four natural systems models of emergence and apply them to education. For [...]

Sponsoring the Journal of Sustainability Education

Sponsoring the Journal of Sustainability Education The Journal of Sustainability Education is actively seeking partners, sponsors, and donors to collaborate on moving the field of sustainability education outward and deeper. The Journal is a premiere publication with dynamic content elements, a blend of peer reviewed and timely interviews and media pieces that draw over 11,000 unique visitors [...]

Teaching Sustainability in Graduate Education: A Call to Leadership Development

The generic definition of sustainable development involves using resources to meet current needs without forfeiting those of future generations. Though this definition has been criticized for being vague and vulnerable to misinterpretation, it has evolved into a paradigm that confronts the way we exist, including how we educate. I became personally acquainted with the benefits [...]

Let Us Learn Again to Nourish a Gifted Subsistence

In this fascinating personal and educational journey, Terril Shorb asks us to look locally and look at our own subsistence first when we consider sustainability. While acknoledging a role for large-scale efforts based on technology, he believes in the inward solution that relies on relationships, being resourceful, working reciprocally, and finding a way of living in gifted subsistence.

Sustainability Education Invites Learners to Anticipate and Shape the Future: Terril Shorb interviews Stephen Sterling

In this wide-ranging interview, author and professor Stephen Sterling brings forth a good case for how academic can work to see collaborations that bring policy into practice, especially at a local level.

People, Society and Sustainability

Introduction – The Human Factor When discussing “a sustainable future” most writers expect we will be using “renewable energy”, driving more efficient cars and be far more efficient in our use of resources.  Those are items they recognize will have to change, (a good step) but it appears they expect the rest of life to [...]

Buildings, Climate Change, Education and Action: The role of the building sector systems in climate change mitigation

In this clarion call for broad-based change in the way buildings are designed and built and occupied, Papesch and his colleagues bring attention to the broad swaths of society that are involved in this fundamental aspect of our daily lives. While bringing into play diverse groups of lay people and professionals, from poets to engineers, with a focus on architects and designers, they call for changes at every level, from the development of a Green Mindset among the population at large, to local governmental code changes to, as they argue most importantly, fundamental changes in design curricula that lead to the primacy of an interdisciplinary approach to climate change mitigation in building design.

Sustainability Education in the Interior Design Curriculum

Nichols and Adams show how central design must be to sustainability by showing the numerous ways and multiple disciplinary perspectives that allow sustainability to be incorporated into the design curriculum. The program described goes far beyond a nod to “green building” technologies and shows how design is at the root of the ecological, economic, social and transformational aspects of sustainability.

Northwest Earth Institute’s Discussion Guides Enhance Sustainability Education at University of Michigan

Mike Shriberg shows the power of implementing a true discussion-based curriculum in his sustainable campus course at the University of Michigan.

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Teaching the Marketing of Sustainable Products

Kaufman and colleagues at Illinois State University provide us with a dynamic example of how their students work with real companies in designing marketing strategies for green products, combining both the technical development of the product with a consideration for how to bring it into the marketplace.

Trash Talk: A case study of waste analysis at Pomona College

In this well-formulated case study, Miller and Close show us how student involvement and action through a group independent study course led to sophisticated analysis and real change in the handling of waste at Pomona College. They make a good case for student analysis to have equaled or better what experts might have done, with the added benefit of giving students an impactful, real-life experience with practical solutions to sustainability education problems.

Toward climate justice: Perspectives on the climate crisis and social change, by Brian Tokar, Communalism Press (2010), 137 pp., $14.95, ISBN 9788293064015.

In this insightful review of Brian Tokar’s book, Randall Amster hails the work as a hopeful response to climate change that, rather than playing off of apocalyptic scenarios, envisions a future where society is re-structured not only in technological and economical terms, but also towards a more socially equitable way of life.

Review of The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: Skills for a Changing World

In this detailed and insightful review, Laura Henry-Stone admires the breadth and cohesiveness of this edited volume from mostly European sustainability educators. She makes a good case for bringing this wide array of pieces under one cover, for avoiding static definitions of sustainability, even the traditional “triple bottom line”, and rather looking outside reductionist approaches to find integration, inter-relation and the kind of broad strokes that the chapters in this book propose for educating and solving for sustainability.

Can Uncertainty Lead to Sustainability? Review of Science, Society and Sustainability: Education and Empowerment for an Uncertain World, edited by Donald Gray, Laura Colucci-Gray and Elena Camino

In this insightful review, John Gist gives us some perspective for thinking about science education and its potential for framing the sustainability debate. This is a brief introduction to Gray et al.’s fascinating book Science Society and Sustainability: Education and Empowerment for an Uncertain World. Gist presents the issue of uncertainty in science, in all its complexity, and finds value in the book for addressing deep understanding in a comprehensible and useful way.

Primary care—what it should embrace. A review of “A World of Health: Connecting People, Place and Planet”

In their review of the Northwest Earth Institute’s A World of Health, the Frolich brothers look to place the wide-ranging issue of environmental health concerns into the every-day framework of so-called “primary health care.” They see value in the book where it addresses what can really be done, through action, and through a guided study group, to confront and change the way our interactions with the environment affect our every-day health.

Educators as Architects of Living Systems: Designing Vibrant Learning Experiences beyond Sustainability and Systems Thinking

This article discusses how living systems principles can inform educational design. It describes a theoretical framework for creating academic learning experiences as organic wholes that sustain learning verve. The framework is intended to aid educators in awakening a felt sensation of aliveness, vibrancy, and self-organizing creativity in a group of learners. It seeks to create [...]

Growing Our Own: A Case Study of Teacher Candidates Learning to Teach for Sustainability in an Elementary School with a Garden

This case describes how four teacher candidates, placed for a year-long internship in an elementary school with a garden, learned to teach for sustainability. Evidence from the interns’ Teacher Work Samples, survey data, interviews, and observational data are used to assess the extent to which teacher candidates demonstrated the knowledge, skills and dispositions to teach [...]

Teaching for Transformation: (Re)Designing sustainability courses

If educators are to effectively prepare learners with the knowledge, skills, and values they will need for creating more sustainable places and communities, a transition must be made from transmissive teaching models to transformative learning processes. But how can courses be designed or redesigned so that they create opportunities for transformational sustainability learning, and how [...]