There are four parts to this chapter:

9.1  Denial and Acknowledgement in EC

9.2 Emerging Ecological Psychology: Mental Health in EC

9.3 Embodied Mind, Metaphor and Framing in EC

9.4  Ecological Perception vs Perceptive Myopia and the Depth Metaphor

This chapter can be downloaded here. I have also written another more comprehensive brief introduction to this chapter on my blog.

Chapter Seven can be downloaded here.

This chapter argues that transformative learning (TL) has the potential to transcend the notorious value/action gap that divides our awareness of environmental threats from our capacity to take appropriate action. Transformational learning engages an ecological view of education that is relational, holistic, participatory and practical. Although transformational learning was not developed explicitly to deal with environmental education, it provides a relevant framework to inform a learning process for ecological literacy.

Transformative learning involves becoming aware of one’s assumptions to address issues from a fresh perspective. Beyond the mere dissemination of information, transformative learning challenges assumptions and facilitates dialogical learning processes. Because the problems concerned with sustainability are both very complex and deeply entrenched into our culture, these processes are useful the learning associated with ecological literacy. Unfortunately, TL remains a severe challenge due to the fact that individuals are often intensely threatened by the prospect of re-examining accepted norms of beliefs and behaviour (i.e. addressing epistemological error – see 1.5). Transformative learning theory informs the design of the communication practices and learning processes in this thesis (especially the Teach-in).

Download Chapter Six here.

Action research aims to create social change in the process of conducting research. Although it is linked to design research through a shared focus on practice, action research’s critique of power and its epistemological insights provide a more critical and holistic foundation. Action research (AR) emphasizes learning by doing, addressing real life problems, increasing participation and bringing together theory and practice in pursuit of practical solutions. In The Handbook of Action Research (2006) Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury describe AR as a unique manner of conceiving of knowledge and its relation to practice. It is an orientation that enables researchers to take on more complex social problems than traditional social sciences. Action research is a value-oriented approach that is more critically aware of its social, historical and political context than design theory, research and practice. As such AR offers important insights for the learning and communication problems associated with ecological literacy. Action research developed in tandem and was strongly influenced by pragmatic philosophy, liberationist movements, social theory and ecological thought. This chapter will briefly explore the provenance of these ideas and the key concepts coming from each tradition. AR aims to do better research because of the diverse voices that inform the process thereby creating a richer, more nuanced and representational perspective on complex issues. While some forms of action research simply reflect on practice, the more radical AR practices question underlying values. Action research creates a basis for individuals to become more effective agents of social transformation and has a legacy of facilitating change within organizations and wider social movements. These factors make AR a rich field capable of informing design practice in the context of sustainability. Action research is an orientation to inquiry that is participatory, practical, multidisciplinary, systemic and contextual as a deliberate reaction to earlier social research that created a dichotomy between research and action – amongst other identified sites of contention in traditional social sciences, which are explored below.

Chapter Five can be downloaded here.

At its best, design is an integrative discipline, an applied trans-disciplinary field that bridges theory and action in pursuit of practical outcomes. Design is a problem-solving profession concerned with the ‘creation, realization and materialization’ of possible futures (Grand & Wiedmer 2010:3). Design is also a changing field of practice encompassing a wide spectrum of activity. A recent attempt to categorize design practice, where designers were asked to ‘identify their fields and disciplines’, elicited a list of over 500 fields of professional practice and scholarly research (Love 2009: unpaginated). Confusingly, the word ‘design’ is used in four ways: ‘as a field or a discipline; as a profession; as an activity; and as an artefact’ (Turnbull Hocking 2009:3). Pioneers have attempted to widen the scope of design problems over recent decades such that design processes and design thinking address social and environmental problems. These attempts often involve a shift from designing artefacts, graphics and buildings to designing processes, systems and future sustainable ways of living. This movement has become more pronounced as the understanding that the material expansion of the economic system is fundamentally unsustainable (Meadows 1972;Meadows and Randers 2004; IPPC 2007; Daly 2008; Simms et al. 2010,;Jackson 2009) and radically new models of development must be created for sustainable ways of living to become possible. Design is primed to function as a facilitator of social change once it transcends the systemic priorities of the market and current development frameworks, which remain structurally unsustainable.

Figures 4.3 – System diagram: Sustainability in Higher Education. Source: J.Boehnert

Chapter Four is now published here.

‘The operational definition of sustainability implies that the first step to build sustainable communities is to become ‘ecologically literate’, i.e. to understand the principles of organization, common to all living systems, that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life’. (Capra 2003:201)

The defining characteristic of ecological literacy is that it recognizes ecological systems as the context in which humankind is situated and acknowledges the necessity to construct human systems that are mutually complementary and symbiotic with natural processes. This chapter introduces ‘Nature’s Patterns and Processes’ concept promoted by The Center of Ecological Literacy (CEL) in San Francisco1 and developed by its co-founder Fritjof Capra. Capra writes that ‘it is no exaggeration to say that the survival of humanity will depend on our ability in the coming decades to understand these principles of ecology and live accordingly’ (2005:29). The patterns and processes of nature proposed by the CEL examined in this section are: networks, nested systems, cycles, flows, development, and dynamic balance. This chapter expands on each of these principles by linking to a concept in systems design: resilience, epistemological awareness, circular design, energy descent, emergence and planetary boundaries. By linking each process to an ecological design principle this chapter briefly explores how ecological literacy can inform design processes for sustainability. These concepts suggest a dramatic reorientation of design principles and practice.

This chapter can be downloaded here.

2.0
Ecological literacy describes ecology as the dominant root metaphor for a culture that is capable of thinking in terms of whole systems. The ambitious aim of ecological literacy is to create the frame of mind that recognizes embeddedness within the ecological systems and thereby organizes cultural, political, legal and economic systems accordingly. As examined in the previous chapter, we have inherited a highly reductive intellectual tradition and worldview characterized by atomism, mechanism, anthropocentrism, rationalism, individualism and a dualistic tradition between humanity vs nature. This radical discontinuity with nature constitutes an error in understanding that is reproduced in education, media, communication, politics and law resulting in industrial systems that are quietly destroying the ecological systems on which humankind depends. Acknowledgement of geophysical relationships is a foundational step toward transforming learning and cultural priorities and making sustainability possible. This chapter will examine how ecological literacy envelops the tradition of modernity into a more inclusive and ultimately a more functional worldview. This chapter provides a brief overview of the historical development of ecological literacy and offers a new typology of ecological literacy. It will end with an examination of the relationship between ecological literacy and the overused, abused and ambiguous term ‘sustainability’.

One of the premises of this thesis is that there is great distance between accepting something as an intellectual truism and perceiving, thinking and acting according to this position. Another major theme is that the current way of knowing, the dominant cultural paradigm in the West is such that we are unable to deal with the complex, interconnected world in which we are situated. We suffer from an inadequate epistemology that manifests itself in our perception of the world and in our actions. Our current way of knowing determines that we are incapable of perceiving systemic interconnections between our problems and ill prepared to deal with the complexity presented by converging ecological, social and economic crises. Furthermore, hegemonic ideological, ontological and epistemological premises succeed in part because of how its infrastructure – both physical and metaphysical, is not visible. It is not that humankind cannot deal with interconnectedness and interdependence, but that this reality is effectively being hidden from us by the complexity of current conditions and the legacy of error in premises inherited from modernity.

Chapter One, titled ‘Ecological Philosophy’, is now available for download here.