Professional Documents
Culture Documents
&
Thinking Systems
in
Educational Sustainability
EDSU Introduction to Educational Sustainability
Synchronous Seminar
Joy Kcenia ONeil, Ph. D.
February 24, 2016
The Problem
Complex issues such as global climate change,
population, social justice, biodiversity loss, economic
instability
Example: what is mono-cropping, how does it relate to
population, pollution, biodiversity loss, economic stability or
instabilitiy
Solution? Sustainability
Revisiting our frames of reference
Change in view from mechanistic parts to a relational
whole
Onion story
Paradigms of educational
sustainability
Education about sustainability
Transmission - Knowledge acquisition about problems and
solutions related to sustainability
Review
Relationality is a state of being relational (Ontology)
Systems thinking is to think in interconnected relations
(epistemology)
Sustainability is to interconnect and balance the three
pillars
Educational sustainably is to educate as a relational
interconnected whole in response to educating in
disconnected parts for social and ecological change that
is viewed as interconnected activities