SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

The role of Higher Educational Institutions (HEI’s) in promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) is crucial since they are engaged with knowledge creation, skills development, and in the promotion of values, behaviours, and lifestyles favorable to a sustainable future. In this regard universities both in Sweden and in South Africa require innovative sustainability pedagogical methods for preparing students to create a more sustainable world. The other more deliberate effort is to engage historically excluded populations from the sustainability conversation as the SDG’s have been critiqued on offering a western ontology promoting neoliberal development models which can disenfranchise non-western communities (Nawn, 2015).

This aim of this workshop is to practically explore with university lecturers the features of a “green pedagogical” approach to module design. A key feature of a “green pedagogical” approach is that learning is transformative (Mezirow, 1995) since it is driven by the imperative of locally based action. Taking immediate action to resolve sustainability issues while learning means that these pedagogies concurrently offer a direct pathway towards infusing sustainability consciousness amongst students. In this workshop digital storytelling is a tool that will be used to offer lecturers an opportunity to explore learning design that connect to student interests, community needs and sustainability goals. As digital media offers the possibility for embracing, legitimizing and recognizing the rich cultural and linguistic narratives of all people including those who have been historically excluded the development of “action stories” will help lecturers to unearth all funds of knowledge so that all voices are given the opportunity to contribute and be heard.

The workshop is open to all lecturers of any discipline, as green pedagogies and digital stories has a universal applicability, hence the possibility on inter-and transdisciplinary collaborations will be encouraged. This could include collaborative online international learning opportunities. Lecturers attending the workshop will have the opportunity to engage with colleagues to create pedagogical experiments that could offer the beginnings of longer term collaborations beyond the workshop.

The following is a tentative workshop design for two hours, where the pedagogical method is in focus and thus suitable for any area of knowledge:

10 min Introduction to Education for Sustainable Futures and Green Pedagogies
20 min Two case studies (One from South Africa and the other from Sweden)
15 min Exploring the power of stories
15 min Designing a “green” pedagogical outcome
30 min Creating a digital story using a cell phone
30 min Sharing digital stories/experiences/thoughts etc.

Keywords: Education for Sustainable Futures, Green Pedagogies, Digital Storytelling, CellFilm, Visual Participatory Methodology