Learning sustainability as an effect of disruption

Abstract

Since sustainability is subjective and context dependent, sustainability education should focus on the development of a personal understanding of sustainability through critical reflection of values and behaviour. Emotions can motivate value clarification – a prerequisite to transform worldviews and behaviour. The article presents the disruptive learning theory, aiming to inspire educators to design pedagogical interventions that stimulate initial emotions, triggering deep learning within sustainability. Inspired by transformative learning, pedagogic interventions (visual cues) were designed and implemented with the intention of stimulating an initial emotional reaction. Here, different teaching strategies and methods were combined to stimulate deep learning. Using constructivist grounded theory, this research explored the impact of these pedagogical interventions on student teachers’ thoughts and emotions. The analysis of students’ experiences revealed that initial emotions progressively stimulated more critical thinking about anthropocentricism and existing interdependencies among nature, self, society and economy, which in turn triggered value clarification and change agency. Based on the findings, the disruptive learning theory emerged. It contains three processes: (1) disruption (2) deep learning and (3) change agency. Practically, disruptive learning initially evokes emotions that foster personal connections with lecture content, opening space for deep learning to evaluate the need to change perspectives and/or behaviour.

Keywords:

• Sustainability education
• emotions
• values
• higher education
• disruptive learning

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers for the great feedback provided, and Dr. Charlotte Holland and Dr. Alfredo Salomão Filho for the fruitful debates in teaching and learning.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The image of the boy cue portrays a sand sculpture by the artist Sudarsan Pattnaik of the original image of Alan Kurdi with the tag line ‘Humanity washed ashore SHAME SHAME SHAME’. Alan Kurdi is the three-year old Syrian boy, who drowned off the Turkish coast because their boat capsized shortly after leaving Bodrum. The image was accompanied by the critical question: Whose responsibility is it to solve the current refugee crisis in Europe?

2 This homeless cue contains a video portraying a social experiment about prejudice towards homelessness. A ‘homeless’ (actor) asks customers of a café for food but receives no help, while the ‘real’ homeless then share their food with him. It was accompanied by two critical questions: What have you learned from this social experiment? How can this social experiment inform our thinking on sustainable development?

3 The image shows a mouse with a human ear growing on its back – the Vacanti mouse – sitting on the shoulder of a young woman. The critical question asked students: Would you allow a body part to be grown on an animal to improve your appearance?

4 The image shows a woman from the Yanomami tribe breastfeeding both a human baby and a baby monkey (Mark Edwards, Hard Rain project). The title is a word play relating to ‘baby’ and ‘baboon’. The critical question asked was: Would you breastfeed a baboon?

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tanja Tillmanns

Tanja Tillmanns is a lecturer at South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences. She is also engaged with a multidisciplinary research team acting in the field of artificial intelligence and lifelong learning in Europe. Her research interests include adult education, teaching and learning in higher education, sustainability education and teaching ethics.