Environmental Education, Ethics and Action: Re-imagining critical skills for sustainable lifestyles and global citizenship


Open deliberations on values associated with relationships between people, and people and their environment are central to (re) emerging concepts of environmental stewardship, sustainability, conservation, eco-justice and other notions that capture people-environment interactions. This brings values and ethics into focus in environmental education processes and practice. But many educators are daunted by the philosophical and pedagogical challenges of enabling such exploratory, open-ended learning processes, or integrating them with school or higher education curricula. This workshop responds to these challenges by providing hands-on activities that provide educational entry points into the process of examining environmental ethics as an everyday activity.

This workshop explored some of the educational processes that could enable deliberations on values and ethics and how these may foster creative explorations of more environmentally and socially responsible forms of development, environmental justice and social-ecological change. In this sense, ethical thinking is about involving people in processes of exploration and understanding values and how they might transform themselves and their society.

Using contemporary examples from newspapers, advertisements, and curriculum guides, participants were encouraged to identify deeply embedded assumptions within these cultural artefacts regarding how we value, represent and act in relation to each other and the natural world. During the workshop, each activity had a strong focus on critical thinking, reflexivity and explorations of alternative ways of thinking and being. This was related to the workshop’s focus on ‘re-imagining possibilities’. Here participants developed some practical ideas about redesigning their language of instruction, pedagogical orientations, and perspectives on curricula.

The Working Group Sessions included deliberations arising from active engagement with pedagogical activities that provide openings for environmental ethics and action. These deliberations will include reflections on:

  • Pedagogical approaches for engaging in contemporary environmental ethics in complex social settings,
  • Cultural needs and sensitivities required for broad re-imagining of ethical possibilities,
  • Gaps in the existing range of stories and pedagogies required for effective education, ethics and action, and
  • Balancing pedagogical impulses and ecological imperatives in ways that support education over the long term.

The ideas and activities shared during this workshop will drew on new activities that have been drafted and are being tested for inclusion in the second edition of the UNEP activity book entitled Environmental Education, Ethics and Action: A Sourcebook for Educators, intended for use in teacher education and other educational settings. Feedback from deliberations will inform the ultimate content and form of this sourcebook. Workshop participants were acknowledged for their contributions.

Workshop coordinators:
Bob Jickling, Lakehead University , Thunder Bay, Canada; Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Environmental Learning Research Centre, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

 


Date & Time

Session Details

11 January 2016

08:00-09:30 Hrs

Registration

09:30-10:45 Hrs

Inaugural Plenary at Plenary Venue

10:45-11:15 Hrs

High TEA/COFFEE 

Session l
14:30 - 16:00 Hrs. (1.5 Hrs.)

Ethics, Education and the SDGs
Bob Jickling, Lakehead University, Canada
Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Rhodes University, South Africa

Session II

16:30 – 18:30 Hrs. (2 Hrs.)

Curriculum Critique

Bob Jickling, Lakehead University, Canada
Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Rhodes University, South Africa

12 January 2016

Session III
11:15- 13:15 Hrs.
(2 Hrs.)

Ethics as Story – Outdoor activity with story

Bob Jickling, Lakehead University, Canada
Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Rhodes University, South Africa

13:30- 14:30 Hrs

LUNCH 

Session IV

14:30 - 16:00 Hrs.
(1.30 Hrs.)

Self Validating, Reduction, Invitations

Bob Jickling, Lakehead University, Canada
Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Rhodes University, South Africa

16:00-16:30 Hrs

TEA/COFFEE  

Session V

16:30 - 18:30 Hrs.
(2 Hrs.)

Moral Proximity and Ethics as Action

Bob Jickling, Lakehead University, Canada
Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Rhodes University, South Africa

13 January 2016

Session VI

11:150 - 01:15 Hrs.
(2 Hrs.)

Reflections on Ethics, Education and the SDGs

Bob Jickling, Lakehead University, Canada
Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Rhodes University, South Africa