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Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education pp 1–13Cite as

Transformative Learning for Sustainability

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. St. Francis Xavier University (on leave), Antigonish, NS, Canada

    Elizabeth A. Lange

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  1. Elizabeth A. Lange
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Correspondence to Elizabeth A. Lange .

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  1. Faculty of Life Sciences, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences Faculty of Life Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

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    Lange, E.A. (2019). Transformative Learning for Sustainability. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_104-1

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2_104-1

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