Sustainable Learning for Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainability issues are appearing with increasing frequency. Education for global sustainability, therefore, must achieve long-term maintenance of resources. For successful sustainability education, a novel learning process must be developed that converts didactic perspectives and designs into sustained deep learning. Incorporating neurobiological mechanisms, such as conscious explicit-declarative and unconscious implicit-procedural learning constructs, psychosocial attention, and value-based motivation, is necessary to make learning sustainable, ensuring successful adaptation to the environment. The authors derive a generalizable, sustained, deep-learning framework from neurolinguistic research concerning language acquisition in autism that transcends many current learning paradigms and provides heuristics to develop pedagogic strategies for global sustainability.

Keywords:

• sustainability
• education
• deep learning
• neurobiology
• implicit
• explicit
• attention
• theory of mind
• motivation
• autism

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Harry D Schneider

Harry Schneider is a medical physician/research neuroscientist at Columbia University Medical Center and Yale University Medical Center. He is currently investigating the neurobiology of learning and memory.

Irina E Livitz

Irina Livitz is pursuing her doctoral degree in psychology at Ohio State University. She has researched with Dr Schneider on declarative and procedural learning mechanisms and her input derives from her master’s thesis.

Debra Schneider

Debra Schneider is a medical coordinator between Columbia University and the Center for Medical and Brain Sciences. Currently, she is pursuing research into the epidemiology of children with developmental delays.

Correspondence to: Dr Harry Schneider, Program for Cognitive Sciences, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA. Email: [email protected]