We had the wonderful pleasure of catching up with Dr. Jos Eussen at Maastricht univeristy, who has designed a new transdisciplinary course that uses the student-centred approach and a co-created curriculum. Even after working within the restraints of university rules and regulations, Jos has managed to start the pilot stage of a creative open approach to sustainability education, where students work on current topics and exchange their learning experience across borders. We are lucky enough to be invited as a part of this experience and have been working on different avenues that we can contribute to the students’ learning experience. It is a truly fantastic project and a great inspiration. Thank you, Jos for working so hard to put these ideas into action.
I have also been talking with Steven Curtis at Lund University. We will be working together this spring to facilitate a group of international teachers on an online course Higher Education Didactics in Sustainability (HEDS). The course is designed around a student-centred co-created curriculum that will provide opportunity for a learning space open to everyone’s curiosity. Instead of lecturing, I will be turning on my active listening brain to provide help where needed and also learn with the students. I will also be facilitating the sustainability competence mindset map with the student group to provide practical experience and reflection on how it can be used across disciplines. A change in mindset can start with the teachers as well as facilitated in the classroom. The international group of students with a diverse background and disciplines is going to be a great space for creative inspiration and deep learning.
There are several projects that have created such transformational space to allow for new ideas and new activities to be put into action. The reflection questions this week are: What have you been creating to help contribute a new way to approach sustainability education? How can we implement new approaches in the educational systems that already exist? Why are so many afraid to move away from the textbook and start to listen to student curiosity?
Leave a Reply