Change Project Approach for Reorienting University …
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getting worse. When we engage in the discourses around our assumptions and expectations, i.e. our social world, community, and culture, as oppressive, unfair or unsustainable we can enter into a process of learning for social transformation. Transformative learning is therefore the process of examining, questioning, and revising those
perspectives that we have otherwise taken for granted. Transformative learning also
draws on the humanistic assumption that people have the ability to change deliberately their frames of reference and in this way have an inherent potential for personal
growth and development (Ojala 2016).
The transformative learning perspective generally agrees with the common
assumption of the education for sustainable development that openness and pluralism
are necessary, i.e. learning processes that are collective, open-ended and reflexive
are a vital part of sustainable development in which dominant ways of knowing can
be challenged (Boström et al. 2018). Hampson and Rich-Tolsma (2015) summarized symptoms of transformative learning in three ways regarding the changing
roles of learner, teacher and learning environment, i.e. the transformative learner, the
transformative teacher and the transformative occasion. Firstly, the transformative
learner; the student becomes transdisciplinary, a scientific investigator, a scholar and
a practitioner all wrapped in one package. Secondly the transformative teacher; the
educators serve the roles of mediator and companion; they become the enabler of the
students’ self-determination and social emancipation: teacher as catalyst for transformation. This includes facilitating emotional intelligence, and critical awareness.
Thirdly, the transformative occasion; the learning environment becomes transformed
into one in which the planetary, the complex, and the holistic are welcomed, encompassing multiple perspectives and states of awareness. The student encountering
transformative learning is no longer a mere educational consumer, but rather a transdisciplinary scientist-scholar-practitioner deeply engaged in self-determination and
the apt transformation of their world (Hampson and Rich-Tolsma 2015).
The challenge for higher education is to create an integrated and systemic response
that addresses sustainability issues meaningfully, consistently and effectively. Four
different responses to the challenge of sustainability have been identified by Sterling
(2004):
(a) Denial (it’s a hype that will go away)
(b) Bolt on (add a ‘green aspect’ to a curriculum or program)
(c) Built-in (important enough to integrate in all we do)
(d) Whole system re-design (we need to re-think the very foundations of what we
currently do).
In most universities that we have worked with to address the sustainability challenge, initiatives are (b and c) of the ‘bolt-on’ and/or ‘built in’ variety. This has been
due to a variety of reasons including policy limitations, incentive constraints and individuals lack a clear and consistent sustainability dimension among others (Wals and
Benavot 2017). It is the last response that suggests a paradigm shift from “business
as usual” (education as usual) and a transition towards doing better things differently
(transformation) rather than doing what we do (business as usual) better (optimization). The ultimate goal for the Change Project Approach is (d), the ‘whole institution’
255
getting worse. When we engage in the discourses around our assumptions and expectations, i.e. our social world, community, and culture, as oppressive, unfair or unsustainable we can enter into a process of learning for social transformation. Transformative learning is therefore the process of examining, questioning, and revising those
perspectives that we have otherwise taken for granted. Transformative learning also
draws on the humanistic assumption that people have the ability to change deliberately their frames of reference and in this way have an inherent potential for personal
growth and development (Ojala 2016).
The transformative learning perspective generally agrees with the common
assumption of the education for sustainable development that openness and pluralism
are necessary, i.e. learning processes that are collective, open-ended and reflexive
are a vital part of sustainable development in which dominant ways of knowing can
be challenged (Boström et al. 2018). Hampson and Rich-Tolsma (2015) summarized symptoms of transformative learning in three ways regarding the changing
roles of learner, teacher and learning environment, i.e. the transformative learner, the
transformative teacher and the transformative occasion. Firstly, the transformative
learner; the student becomes transdisciplinary, a scientific investigator, a scholar and
a practitioner all wrapped in one package. Secondly the transformative teacher; the
educators serve the roles of mediator and companion; they become the enabler of the
students’ self-determination and social emancipation: teacher as catalyst for transformation. This includes facilitating emotional intelligence, and critical awareness.
Thirdly, the transformative occasion; the learning environment becomes transformed
into one in which the planetary, the complex, and the holistic are welcomed, encompassing multiple perspectives and states of awareness. The student encountering
transformative learning is no longer a mere educational consumer, but rather a transdisciplinary scientist-scholar-practitioner deeply engaged in self-determination and
the apt transformation of their world (Hampson and Rich-Tolsma 2015).
The challenge for higher education is to create an integrated and systemic response
that addresses sustainability issues meaningfully, consistently and effectively. Four
different responses to the challenge of sustainability have been identified by Sterling
(2004):
(a) Denial (it’s a hype that will go away)
(b) Bolt on (add a ‘green aspect’ to a curriculum or program)
(c) Built-in (important enough to integrate in all we do)
(d) Whole system re-design (we need to re-think the very foundations of what we
currently do).
In most universities that we have worked with to address the sustainability challenge, initiatives are (b and c) of the ‘bolt-on’ and/or ‘built in’ variety. This has been
due to a variety of reasons including policy limitations, incentive constraints and individuals lack a clear and consistent sustainability dimension among others (Wals and
Benavot 2017). It is the last response that suggests a paradigm shift from “business
as usual” (education as usual) and a transition towards doing better things differently
(transformation) rather than doing what we do (business as usual) better (optimization). The ultimate goal for the Change Project Approach is (d), the ‘whole institution’