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The wheel of fortune as a novel support for constructive alignment and transformative sustainability learning in higher education

journal contribution
posted on 2021-01-01, 00:00 authored by Sue NoySue Noy, Teresa CapetolaTeresa Capetola, Rebecca PatrickRebecca Patrick
Purpose Education for Sustainability in Higher Education (ESHE) sits within and across disciplinary settings that share the need for a framework that provides a basis for pedagogy, assessment and learning outcomes (Kalsoom, 2019). ESHE strives to create transformative learning spaces that help students gain the knowledge and skills they need to understand and contribute to shaping a world based on communities living within the limits of earth’s resources. This paper aims to offer a novel solution to the challenge of teaching students from different disciplines struggling with the complexity of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores the development of an interdisciplinary subject designed for undergraduate students from four faculties. It presents a case study of pedagogy that moves away from three pillars/concentric circles approaches towards practices based in systems thinking and interactive transformative learning. It describes the iterative process of developing and implementing an infographic: the “Sustainability Wheel of Fortune” (Wheel), to support constructive alignment of content, assessment tasks and learning outcomes. Findings The Wheel provides a holistic, interconnected and dynamic focus for framing content and teaching. The pedagogy aligns with sustainability competencies, builds in flexibility in response to changing times and student experiences and provides teachers and students with a common framework for interrogating the possibilities for sustainable futures. Originality/value The Wheel is a novel learning tool for contemporary sustainability education. It captures key elements of approaches to and concepts about sustainability, visually reinforces the idea of a holistic interconnected approach and provides a framework that supports the constructive pedagogy of an interdisciplinary sustainability subject.

History

Journal

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

Volume

22

Pagination

854-869

ISSN

1467-6370

eISSN

1758-6739

Language

English

Publication classification

C Journal article, C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Issue

4

Publisher

EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LTD