Learning Sustainability

Call for Papers

Are you concerned or even passionate about making the Earth sustainable? Are you learning, or do you help others to learn about, sustainability? Do you consider that experience is an important way in which people learn? Do you consider ethics to be important in learning (about) sustainability?

If answered 'yes' to those questions, especially the first three, you are encouraged to contribute to this special issue - https://e4l-jrnl.weebly.com/

This interdisciplinary special issue focuses on the intersection of several areas:  experiential learning, sustainability, the Earth and ethics.  They can be summed up in the sentence “the role of experience and ethics in learning about the Earth and about sustainability” or “how experience helps us to learn ethically about sustainability”.

It may be approached from several angles or perspectives, with the areas intersecting in several ways, including (but not limited to):

• Processing experience of the Earth to turn it into learning,
• Experience and ethics in learning for a sustainable Earth,
• Ethical ways of learning about the Earth and sustainability,
• Experience of and learning ethical sustainability,
• Experience of learning sustainability ethics,
• Unethical aspects of experience in or of learning about sustainability.

All aspects of learning sustainability are of interest, including the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), oceans and climate change. A wide range of experiential learning types is covered, such as simulations, disaster experience (eg, tsunami, earthquake), Companion Modelling, role-play, internships, adventure, field trips, games, school outings, voluntary work, project work, etc. We welcome articles from Earth, sustainability and social scientists, from organizers of learning experience (eg, eg, educators, trainers, pedagogues) and also from people (ordinary citizens, NGO workers, journalists) who have learnt from their experience 

of the Earth (eg, through, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc) or who have helped others learn from their experience in informal settings. How do we get people to learn effectively about, and become responsible for, existentially important aspects of Earth and social system?  How do we get leaders of all kinds to learn about this stuff; how do we get people to learn enough to vote for leaders who act according to what the science says?  How do we get Earth citizens to learn to make their planet and society sustainable?  How?  Those are a few of the fundamental questions that this article collection will strive to address.

This issue will embrace the above-mentioned areas, including climate change; the Earth cannot be sustainable if the climate is out of whack.  The emphasis will be on learning, with a focus on various forms of experiential learning - probably the most common way in which humans and animals learn.  The issue will not go (much) into educational stuff, like curricula, exams, programme evaluation and the usual fare of topics in journals on institutional environmental education - except maybe to insist that education systems need to make experiential sustainability and climate learning a central component of all courses in all disciplines, from primary to tertiary, round the world.

For more information:  https://e4l-jrnl.weebly.com/