Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education

Living Edition
| Editors: Walter Leal Filho

Transformative Learning for Sustainability

Living reference work entry
First Online:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_104-1
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Definition

The theory and practice of sustainability education, while often transformative in intent, does not often draw from transformative learning scholarship. This chapter reviews the three approaches to transformative learning that facilitate micro level or individual change, meso level or transpersonal and institutional change, and macro level or social change. Sustainability education is most transformative when it addresses all three levels of change, in this case in higher education. At the macro level, it challenges the deepest structures of Western epistemology (ways of knowing and nature of truth), ontology (ways of being and nature of existence), cosmology (nature of the universe), and ethics (nature of moral values and conduct). Drawing from Karen Barad (2007), an onto-epistemological-ethic of relationality begins to transform the dualism, reductionism, mechanism, and anthropocentrism built into our knowledge systems. At the macro level, this can drives global...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.St. Francis Xavier University (on leave)AntigonishCanada

Section editors and affiliations

  • Noor Adelyna Mohammed Akib
    • 1
  • Tehmina Khan
    • 2
  1. 1.Universiti Sains MalaysiaPenangMalaysia
  2. 2.School of AccountingRMIT UniversityMelbourneAustralia