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Pedagogic Approaches: Teach Sustainability Using Data and Real Examples
Service learning, using real examples (at the local, national, and global scale), and field work are some of the pedagogies that lend themselves to strengthening the connection between the knowledge and skills students learn in the classroom to the outside world, including the community and workforce. The pages linked below describe how each method can be implemented at a variety of scales, environments, and disciplines. They also provide tips on how to incorporate sustainability topics into your course using these methods as well as links to related materials that describe the method in more depth. The example activities and courses provided on these pages can be used wholesale or can be modified to fit your classroom. Read more about the importance of making these connections on: Why Tie Sustainability Topics into Real World Examples?.
- Strengthen community connections with Service Learning
This approach gets students out in the community, applying their knowledge to solve concrete problems, which also provides an opportunity to build bridges between institutions and the community. Projects like designing and building a solar house or designing and planting a 'green' community garden can promote sustainability concepts and develop students' ability to apply classroom knowledge and skills in the real world. The Service-Learning to explore Sustainability activity, by Tracy Lai, Seattle Central Community College, explains how she gets her students involved in setting up and following through with a service learning project of their choosing. Get more ideas for service learning projects and access collections of example activities.
- Bring relevance to classroom concepts and skills Using Local Examples and Data
Local examples can help students relate to sustainability topics. Further, local examples can be tied to global challenges to broaden this relevance. Incorporating the local environment can be done at the course-level or activity-level. For instance, Steve Semken's course Earth Science in Arizona and the Southwest, utilizes place-based learning to teach about earth topics. Single activities or a series of activities can also be implemented into an existing course. For example, Holly Ewing uses this Carbon Storage in a Peat Bog activity to develop her students' quantitative skills by determining carbon storage in a local bog. You can also team with service-learning projects that utilize the local environment such as Lori Troxel's Habitat for Humanity Build Day activity, where students explore sustainability concepts such as energy efficiency and then apply them with a hands-on activity at a real and local site. See other pedagogic guidance and ideas for incorporating local examples and data as well as teaching materials and resources.
- Engage students with examples they can relate to by Using Real World Examples
Real world examples include case studies, field work, and local data. This technique engages students by giving a real-world context and applicability to the knowledge and skills they learn in the classroom. Real examples can reach beyond the local scale to teach about sustainability issues. For example, tie the local issue of water needs to the larger scale need for water using Assessing Water Resource Demand in New York City activity, by Kyle Monahan. This activity also builds students' quantitative and data analysis skills using multiple datasets (e.g. census, water use, watershed characteristics). For more ideas, browse the activity collections.
- Demonstrate and practice practical skills by Utilizing Field Work
First-hand observation of the natural world creates a special kind of connection between students and the Earth. Field work can can help students understand where the data that they read about and use comes form and its limitations. It can also be used as a mechanism to teach students important skills that can be carried into their professional work. For example, students can learn basic observation skills as well as more technical or complex skills like using instrumentation, programming, complex thinking, data analysis, and data synthesis. Take a look at some example activities that utilize field work, including those that can be done in an urban environment as well as those that incorporate service learning.
- Teach Sustainability and Social Justice through Contrasting Narratives
Explicitly comparing and contrasting narratives about the same topic, or how a story changes through time, can illuminate differences in the ways different communities or members of a community view an event or topic, or changes in the way an event or topic is viewed by a community as their perspective changes over time. The ways in which humans experience natural disasters and the opinions that they hold on environmental and resource issues of all types are influenced by their experience of the world and the cultural values they hold. Understanding that social context and experience are relevant to how one views either a natural phenomenon or a human response to that phenomenon is essential if students are to make sense of the intersections between society and the Earth that surround their daily lives. One method to help students cultivate awareness of differing perspectives is to examine an issue through a specified lens other than their own. For example, Lauren Waterworth, Appalachian State University, has her students evaluate a proposed highway project through different public and private organizational lenses in her activity Mock Public Comments on the Draft EIS for West Virginia's King Coal Highway.
- Service learning example projects, from Pedagogy in Action, contains projects from the sciences, economics and education.
- Service learning projects, from On the Cutting Edge, has examples from the geosciences.
- Using Real World Examples such as case studies, field work, and using local data
- Campus Based Learning activity collection from Pedagogy in Action, offers a what, why and how for using this pedagogy as well as examples you can use or modify for your classroom
- Experience-Based Environmental Project examples, including the Lifestyle Project, from Pedagogy in Action
- Washington Center's Curriculum for the Bioregion offers examples of six Promising Pedagogies for teaching about sustainability issues. This page describes these pedagogies and offers resources to learn more about why they work and how to use them in your classroom.