Overview
- Shares student voices that highlight students’ perspectives on sustainability
- Provides a framework for integrating sustainability
- Presents examples from non-science fields, such as theater
- This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
Part of the book series: Environmental Discourses in Science Education (EDSE, volume 7)
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About this book
This book investigates how educators and researchers in the sciences, social sciences, and the arts, connect concepts of sustainability to work in their fields of study and in the classrooms where they teach the next generation. Sustainability, with a focus on justice, authenticity and inclusivity, can be integrated into many different courses or disciplines even if it is beyond their historical focus. The narratives describe sustainability education in the classroom, the laboratory, and the field (broadly defined) and how the authors navigate the complexities of particular sustainability issues, such as climate change, water quality, soil health, biodiversity, resource use, and education in authentic ways that convey their complexity, the sociopolitical context, and their hopes for the future. The chapters explore how faculty engage students in learning about sustainability and the ways in which working at the edge of what we know about sustainability can be a significant source ofengagement, motivation, and challenge. The authors discuss how they create learning experiences that foster democratic practices in which students are not just following protocols, but have a stake in creative decision-making, collecting and analysing data, and posing authentic questions. They also describe what happens when students are not just passively receiving information, but actively analysing, debating, dialoguing, arguing from evidence, and constructing nuanced understandings of complex socioscientific sustainability issues. The narratives include undergraduate student perspectives on what it means to engage in sustainability research and learning, how students navigate the complexities and contradictions inherent in sustainability issues, what makes for authentic, empowering learning experiences, and how students are encouraged to persevere in the field.
This is an open access book.
Keywords
- Science Education
- sustainability research
- teaching climate change
- environmental racism
- saving pollinators
- sustainability in schools
- sustainability in classrooms
- complex socioscientific sustainability issues
- integration of sustainability in education
- college science teaching
- sustainability teaching
- undergraduate science curriculum
- Ecology’s White nationalism problem
- Teaching chemistry in context
- important places on Earth for birds
- Brownfield action
- health in the urban environment
- Environmental Impacts of Reuse in Design
- green infrastructure into biology laboratory courses
- Open Access
Table of contents (25 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Framing and Reframing Sustainability and Environmental Justice
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Front Matter
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Sustainability and Ecological Perspectives on Biodiversity
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Front Matter
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Sustainability and Environmental Justice Perspectives in Undergraduate Science Education
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Front Matter
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Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Stephanie Pfirman is a Foundation Professor at the School of Sustainability and a Senior Sustainability Scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University. Before joining ASU in 2018, Pfirman was Hirschorn Professor of Environmental and Applied Sciences and co-Chair of the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College. She held a joint appointment with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences as an Adjunct Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Pfirman focuses on understanding and responding to the changing Arctic, developing innovative approaches to formal and informal education, and exploring the intersection between diversity and interdisciplinarity. Pfirman’s Arctic research addresses implications of changes in sea ice origin, drift, and melt patterns, including defining the Last Ice Area, recently established as a protected area by Canada. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As a former co-PI of a National Science Foundation Advancing Women in the Sciences (ADVANCE) grant, past President of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors, and Chair of the Columbia Earth Institute's Faculty Development Committee, Pfirman has helped to understand and foster the career trajectories of women and interdisciplinary scholars. Pfirman co-designed EcoChains: Arctic Life, a card-game that earned a Parent’s Choice award. A longtime advocate for action on climate change, as a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, Pfirman co-developed one of the first climate change exhibitions, "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast," produced jointly with the American Museum of Natural History.
Hilary S. Callahan, an Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Biology, joined the faculty at Barnard College in 1999 and today serves as department chair and directs the Arthur Ross Greenhouse; she is also an affiliate of Columbia University's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. She learned her early love for nature from knowledgeable relatives, and gained her identity as a botanist and activist during her undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral years in New Haven, Connecticut, Madison, Wisconsin, and Knoxville, Tennessee, where she fostered friendships with scholars across disciplines and with labor activists, grassroots conservationists, community journalists, and progressive politicians. Today, she resides in The Bronx. She has received multiple National Science Foundation funding awards for her research projects and mentoring of experiences in STEM research for undergraduates, including UNPAK: Undergraduates Phenotyping Arabidopsis Knockouts, described in this volume. Her writings in plant ecological genetics focus on plant responses to environmental change. As part of the Barnard Teaches digital initiative, she created an interdisciplinary course in botany and its history in collaboration with the New York Botanical Garden and the Columbia Center for Science and Society. Over the years, she has contributed to the Barnard Noyce Teacher Scholar Program (BNTSP), founded Barnard's Beckman Scholars Program, and served on many sustainability committees and working groups. Since 2018 she has served as President of the Board of Directors of Black Rock Forest in Cornwall, New York.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Transforming Education for Sustainability
Book Subtitle: Discourses on Justice, Inclusion, and Authenticity
Editors: María S. Rivera Maulucci, Stephanie Pfirman, Hilary S. Callahan
Series Title: Environmental Discourses in Science Education
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13536-1
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Education, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-13535-4Published: 21 June 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-13538-5Published: 21 June 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-13536-1Published: 20 June 2023
Series ISSN: 2352-7307
Series E-ISSN: 2352-7315
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 447
Number of Illustrations: 44 illustrations in colour
Topics: Science Education, Environmental and Sustainability Education, Teaching and Teacher Education