Social Responsibility and the World of Nature: an interdisciplinary environmental studies course for inspiring whole system thinking and environmental citizenship
University of Colorado Boulder
Description
Environmental educators face many challenges in university settings, including improving students’ capacity for systems thinking, the effective use of educational technology, and supporting a sense of agency for participation in social change. This article presents a model for teaching “Social Responsibility and the World of Nature,” an undergraduate-level civic engagement course designed to address these challenges in a context of interdisciplinary environmental studies. The model draws upon strategies from the authentic learning sciences to support co-created, collaborative learning, formative evaluation, and a personally relevant, “affective awareness” of environmental issues. These strategies are combined with case studies on environmental ethics, ecological sciences, and social entrepreneurship to inform a social-ecological design project through which students can express a personal definition of environmental citizenship. A key in application is implementing a reflective teaching practice that questions the role of absolute knowledge in the classroom. The analysis draws upon a case study approach, informed by four semesters implementing and refining the model, to illustrate its use in practice while examining student outcomes to elicit insights on effectiveness. The results support trends in the learning sciences that can transform the teaching and learning of environmental studies in higher education, particularly, the role of personally relevant learning experiences in developing a sense of agency for social and environmental change. This study contributes to these trends, while offering forward-looking insights for environmental educators and researchers in a variety of learning settings.