What is Sustainability Literacy?
Dr. Laura Colucci-Gray
University of Aberdeen
Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability (IRIS)
Glasgow School of Art, Thursday 26th June 2014
Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education Topic
support network
A recent document has just been published by the
Higher Education Academy and the Quality Assurance Agency
Education for sustainable development:
Guidance for UK higher education providers
June 2014
“... is intended for educators working
with students to foster their knowledge,
understanding and skills in the area of
sustainable development” (p. 4)
An authoritative document
Mapping sustainability literacy against four dimensions:
“Aims to prepare graduates to be
• Global citizenship
able to lead the debate on
• Environmental stewardship
complex issues such as what
• Social, justice, ethics and well-being constitutes global citizenship and
good governance, sustainable
• Future-facing outloook
resource use, and the
determination of ecological
limits.” (p.7)
But sustainability is a contested concept – fraught with contradictions,
fuzzyness and uncertainty: of language, aims, values and practices.
Perhaps we need to inquire into the philosophical and relational basis of
our current ways of knowing the world? Facts, values, experience and
perspectives are inextricably interwoven.
Outline of this talk
• Knowledge and development in the 21°
century:
 key forces
 key actors
• Describing or Inhabiting the Planet?
 Risk, Uncertainty and Ignorance
• Towards a sustainability literacy:
 Understanding the role of language as a technology
for sustainability
 Education and the dialogical experience
Education in STEM - June 2013
Foundations partnered in stem cell research
Ethical
issues
Picture of embryonic human stem cells, with added colours. (Image:
Miodrag Stojkovic/Science Photo Library)
Regulation faces legal challenges
David Cyranoski reports on biotech industries proposing therapies which are not being
sufficiently tested.
Stem cells in Texas: Cowboy culture
http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cells-in-texas-cowboy-culture-1.12404
Social and Environmental questions
STEM celle research
What expectations are being met and satisfied?
 How does it sit in with global priorities in healthcare?
 To what extent will the therapies be financially sustainable?
 Why so much support given by both the public and private enterprises?
 How to do we ensure safety and how do we measure effectiveness of these
new treatments?
 Will it provide a ‘better alternative’ to other treatments?
Many EVENTS around the country:
Nanosciences and nanotechnologies are
a core sector of techno-scientific
innovation;
According to many researchers they are
destined to change many aspects of our
everyday life.
Big Science Research (50’s onwards)
(nuclear bomb; aviation; nylon industries)
Shift from ‘science’ to ‘techno-science’
NETWORK OF ACTORS: Scientists, technical staff, financial agencies; industry;
citizens; consumers...
POWERFUL FORCES: economic, political and financial interests;
mechanical, electrical and computing power to support global research and
impact.
Some important implications...
• There is no longer a neat separation between
‘description’ and ‘application’: the Earth is the
laboratory for innovation.
• All inhabitants of the Earth are relevant ‘stakeholders’;
who participates in decisions? Whose views are heard?
Who takes responsibility?
• Technological innovation appears to increase
complexity and interdependency across systems: are
we able to regulate appropriately?
Genetic manipulation is
driven by immediate
concerns and interests
Genetic manipulation
overrides the
fundamental biological
principle of co-evolution
organism/environment;
Who pays? Who
benefits?
Genetic manipulation is operated
in a short time-span; many
variables: flows of $; chemical
reactions; physical variables….
The laboratory of post-normal
science
Certainty, control, domination…
… or…
…unpredictability, precaution, humility?
TECHNO - SCIENCE
 is driven towards the development of instruments to determine outcomes for the
future (revenues; products; goals); to minimise possible pitfalls and to maximise
expected, positive results.
 the objective is the modification of the outside world, developing and maintaining
power and control over natural phenomena.
SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE
 is founded upon the preservation and refinement of the abilities of human beings and more generally, of all living creatures - to respond and to adapt.
 aims to sustain and imprpove individual and collective resilience.
According to some authors, we are now able to model also the living systems, and
entire ecosystems, just like climatologists do (Purves, 2013). The world described
quantitatively becomes predictable.
According to others, the complexity generated by our techno-science is such that we
are not only unable to control it but not even to understand it (Harris & Sarewitz, 2011).
The evolution of complex systems in which we are included is unpredictable.
An example from NANOTECHNOLOGIES
• The applications of nanotechnologies will contribute positively to the quality of life thanks to the
production of light and durable materials, cleaner energy, production of pure water; they will also
offer beneficial medical applications, like the ‘smart drugs’. The science community needs to act
now if strategic research is to support sustainable nanotechnologies, in which risks are minimized
and benefits maximized (Maynard, A.D. et al. Safe handling of nanotechnology. Nature 444, 267–269, 2006.)
• With the increasing use of engineered nano-materials the workers’ exposure to these materials
will also increase significantly. We know very little about the risks of these sub-cellular, high
reactive materials for human health. (Savolainen et al. Risk assessment of engineered nanomaterials and
nanotechnologies—A review, Toxicology 269 (2010) 92–104)
Trust in scientific progress and economic growth.
The secrets of nature will be unveiled and humanity
will dominate the Planet.
The intelligence and human power will overcome
the biophysical limits of the Earth,
and everybody will benefit
from the benefits brought by innovation.
Two different VISIONS….
And their different
NARRATIVES
Science is only one of the ways we can
look at the world and understand its complexity.
Beneath every problem there are values,
beliefs, interests and conflicts.
Equity and democracy require
to put limits upon innovation.
The learning perspective:
A growing field of analysis agreeing that
much of our problems with education and
action are to do with our ways of
thinking…
Difficult to solve a problem, if we
do not realise that we are part of
it! (Sterling, 2002)
INHABITING THE
ENVIRONMENT
The mind is a biological system
rooted in bodily experience and
interconnected with the bodily
actions and interactions with other
individuals
Acting and interacting in the world,
representing it, perceiving it... Are
different levels of the same
relational link which exists between
organisms and the local
environment in which they think
and live
Garbarini & Adenzato, 2004
Embodiment
• Recognising that we exist as a nexus of
interactions between energy, matter and
information
• We are part of the global fluxes of the biosphere
• Our cognition is distributed across the mindbody system, and develops from action and
perception.
• Our language is the expression of our
biophysical and relational positioning in the
fabric of Life on the Earth (E.G. METAPHORS).
Language and literacy
There is an implicit relationship between
signifiers and signifieds in different forms
of language, and the underlying
representations of reality:
The Junk DNA
The ‘killer’ cells
The ‘building’ blocks
Need to promote a
dialogue between
experience and
knowledge!
Problematic aspects
The rapid shift from a situation of total dependency from
Nature to a partial and relative autonomy
has led to a break, a rift, a discontinuity
Language, self-consciousness, neuro-motor system
structures, artistic expressions
which evolved slowly within a variety of ecosystems
have been projected onto an artifical environment, which is
no longer in continuity with the energy flows of Nature
HIGH POWER CIVILIZATION
year
activity
POWER
produced
1900
A U.S. Farmer with 6
working horses
5 KW
2000
A U.S. Farmer with a
tractor
250 KW
1900
A U.S. Train master with
a steam engine (at 100
Km/h)
2000
The pilot of a Boeing
747 (at 900 Km/h)
1 MW
120 MW
VISIONS and ideas of SCIENCE: how do we
make decisions?
The ‘normal’ model
Risk is ‘managed’
•Science describes and presents the
facts as they are
•Uncertainty is only temporary
•Experts speak truth to power: from
the ‘truth’ of science derives the
‘right’ of politics;
•Technological power and human
creativity produce innovation which
will solve the problems and overcome
the biophysical limits of the Planet.
A focus on what is known and can
be determined
•Short-term framing
•Quantitative mesures
•Specialised language
•Ignoring the unknown unknown
(Jasanoff, 2003)
Epistemic and normative black box
(Harding, 2004)
VISIONS and ideas of SCIENCE
The ‘post-normal’ model
•Many sciences interpret the facts
with different methods and
perspectives, which change over time.
•Uncertainty is integral to life and
cannot be eliminated;
•Decisons require democratic
dialogue amongst different points of
view and value-systems;
•Humanity needs to accept its
dependency from the natural systems
and adopt ‘humble’ technologies.
Risk is intrinsic
•High complexity
•Values in conflict
•Multiple ‘framings’
•Open dialogue
(Funtowicz and Ravets, 2003)
Sustainability = Life on the Planet
Life is a creative force…
It transforms and transfers chemical states of matter. And so
do human beings… al the time…
“Life in other words is like us. Or, rather, we are just life doing
what comes naturally to it. Our genius follows the lines of the
ancestral genius of life” (Volk, 2003, p. 170)
Human societies as part of life, continuously transforms,
develop and respond to the environment around them.
Knowledge and learning
• Curriculum is not given but continously changing
as the environment around us changes...
• Knowledge is not simply ‘acquired’ but produced
in contexts of action and interaction...
‘Teaching and learning do not exist and cannot be
identified separately from the networks through
which they are themselves encted’ (Fenwick,
Edwards and Sawchk, 20111, p. 6)
The post-normal laboratory
Everyday
topics
What bodily
experiences?
Variety of
relational
competences
What journeys
are made
possible?
Battaglia, M. in Gray, D., Camino, E., Colucci-Gray, L. (2009) Science, Society and
Sustainability. Education and Empowerment for an Uncertain world. Routledge, New York,
Sustainabilty literacy
• It is embedded in our experience of the natural
world: biographical literacy
• It is based on awareness of prejudice and
expectations, of ourselves and other people
• It engages with the relationship between people
and the land
• It interrogates power relationships
• It develops from ongoing encounters with the
natural environments
• It interrogates the quality of the tools and
conditions for dialogue (contextual literacy)
The world can be narrated many
times and in many different ways
•Re-formulation of the University as a place where
students-citizens are both critics and creators;
The teacher has the important role of facilitating dialogue,
bringing forth a plurality of epistemic positions in an
educating community…
How does this change professional
expectations of university
graduates?
It is important to become aware
of the visions
which underlie individual
and collective choices!!
Visions for Sustainability
IRIS – Interdisciplinary Research Institute on
Sustainability
www.visionsforsustainability.net
visions@iris-sostenibilita.net
Selected references
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Siegel, D. (1999) The developing mind. New York, Guilford Press.
Condit C.M., Bates B.R., Galloway R., Brown Givens S., Haynie C.K.,
Jordan J.W., Stables G. & Marshall West H. Recipes or blueprints for our
genes? How contexts selectively activate the multiple meanings of
metaphors Quarterly Journal of Speech Volume 88, Issue 3, 2002 pages
303-325
Fox Keller E. Making sense of life. Explaining biological development with
models, metaphors and machines. Harvard University Press, 2002.
Fox Keller E. Refiguring life. Columbia University Press, 1995.
Gitelman L. “Raw data” is an oxymoron. The MIT press, 2013.
Harris P. & Sarewitz D. Destructive creation and the new world disorder.
Current History pag. 29-33 January 2012.
Hauskeller C. & Weber S. Framing pluripotency: iPS cells and the shaping
of stem cell science New Genetics and Society Volume 30, Issue 4, 2011
pages 415-431
Hellsten I. From sequencing to annotating: extending the metaphor of the
book of life from genetics to genomics New Genetics and Society Volume
24, Issue 3, 2005 pages 283-297