teaching for sustainability Archives - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Reading about a capstone project designed to integrate sustainability in software engineering

July 2, 2025

Palacin-Silva et al. (2018) describe a capstone project developed to integrate sustainability in software engineering education. Their course has five main aims: Understanding [something technical]; Implementing [something technical] to support…

“Education for Sustainable Development Curriculum Design Toolkit” by Higgins & Calvert (2025)

June 23, 2025

I found another “head, hands, heart” model! This time, Calvert et al. (2022) use it as a frame to organise the key competencies for sustainability:

Currently reading Cech (2014) “Culture of disengagement in engineering education?”

June 23, 2025

I’m thinking quite a lot about responsibility — of students for their learning, for example in the context of active learning and co-creation, of teachers for what they are teaching…

On opposable and defendable propositions as a teaching tool

June 21, 2025

I recently watched the TED talk “Dare to disagree” by Margaret Heffernan. It is brilliant in itself and the message to “dare to disagree” is super important, but what especially…

Gandolfi (2024) on the becoming, being and (re)imagining teaching in the age of environmental emergencies

June 21, 2025

I am currently talking a lot with LTH teachers to figure out what the thresholds are that make it difficult for them (and other teachers) to take action on changing…

Conceptualizations of weak and strong sustainability (according to Rachel Lombardi et al., 2011)

June 21, 2025

Rachel Lombardi et al. (2011) write “The overutilisation but simultaneous undertheorisation of sustainability as a term means that it can lend itself to a vast array of very divergent goals“.…

The Spiral of Silence, or why it is so difficult to talk about sustainability (updated)

May 30, 2025

I like using the “Spiral of Silence” when talking about why it is so difficult to talk about sustainability, so here comes an updated version!

Pihkala (2022)’s Model for “The Process of Eco-Anxiety and Ecological Grief”

May 27, 2025

Today I found the model by Pihkala (2022) that I think can be helpful when thinking and talking about eco-anxiety (and that I, of course, had to recreate in order…

Teaching THROUGH Sustainability

May 15, 2025

I recently wrote about the framework of Teaching about, with, in, through, for Sustainability (which I had found in a bluesky post by Kyle Bartlett and then adapted to my…

The political dimension of teaching for sustainability (currently reading Håkansson et al., 2018)

May 15, 2025

A very common remark when talking about Teaching for Sustainability is that it is political and we shouldn’t indoctrinate our students, hence stay away from politics, and thus from sustainability…

Currently reading Winner (1980) on “Do artifacts have politics?”

May 6, 2025

Recently on Bluesky, I came across a post by Bo Thomson who wrote about the article I am summarising below “I frequently had students ask “Why are we reading this…

“It is our responsibility as educators not only to impart knowledge but also to inspire and support our students to make a difference. For if we don’t do it, who will?” Bolander Laksov (2025)

May 4, 2025

Already a month ago, my colleague and current guest professor in our group, Klara Bolander Laksov, published the column “Democracy – An Educational Mission for Higher Education” in “universitetsläraren“, the magazine…

Slow reading of “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School” by Venet (2024), Part III

May 2, 2025

In preparation of the next meeting of our book club, here is my summary of Part III of Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School by Venet (2024) (summary…

Currently reading “the Climate Change Playbook” by Meadows et al. (2016)

May 1, 2025

In a recent Transformation Thursday (the monthly networking opportunity that Terese and I have started, where we sit in one of the university canteens over lunch and invite teachers wanting…

Currently reading about SDGs, education for wonder, and academic activism

April 30, 2025

As many other places in the world, my university works with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework, and for many researchers and teachers pointing to one or…

Reflections on the workshop “How to deal with climate anxiety as teachers and researchers?”

April 29, 2025

On Thursday, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the workshop “How to deal with climate anxiety as teachers and researchers?” co-organised by the Environmental Politics Research Group (EPRG)…

Reflections on the workshop “Pedagogy of Hope” by Diana Holmqvist

April 27, 2025

On Friday, I participated in a workshop on the “pedagogy of hope”, that Diana Holmqvist from Linköping University ran. Since she is one of the two authors of my current…

Currently reading Orr (1991) on “what is education for?”

April 7, 2025

In response to my post summarising Biesta’s purpose of education, my friend Terese sent me a speech David Orr gave in 1990 with a very similar vibe. Even though the…

Slow reading of “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School” by Venet (2024), Part II

March 21, 2025

In preparation of the next meeting of our book club, here is my summary of Part II of Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School by Venet (2024)…

Megagames demo with Ola Leifler

March 21, 2025

27 curious teachers joined Ola Leifler‘s demonstration of large-scale social simulations (“Megagames”) yesterday. Can you imagine playing a game with 180 people in individual roles for a full day? Me…

Slow reading of “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School” by Venet (2024)

March 6, 2025

I have written about this, my current favourite book, repeatedly before, while I was reading it for the first time (blog post 1, 2, and 3), but here comes a…

Reading Pleasants et al. (2023, 2024) on technoskepticism

February 27, 2025

Our experience with how students argue in the Climate Fresk serious game is that they often jump to technical solutions to climate change right away and are unwilling to even…

“An active academia for peace and sustainability” Hattle et al. (2025), and about constructive hope and doubt (Marlon et al., 2019)

February 27, 2025

After following the journey of my voting letter in the tracking app for more than a week and seeing that it did not make it to Sunday’s election on time,…

“Teachers should be allowed to be learners”! Currently reading Lidgren et al. (2006)

February 20, 2025

What are the barriers to including sustainability into courses and curricula at Lund University? Lidgren, Rodhe and Huisingh (2006) start from the premise that universities have an important role to…

Reading about design principles for blended learning

February 19, 2025

I am in the brainstorming phase of a super cool project where we are planning to collaborate on; giving an academic development course in two countries simultaneously, teaching both online…

It is not up to us to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it

February 15, 2025

I now finished reading Venet (2024)’s “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice in School” (where I understood that “the process is the point“, and where then helpful tools like…

Kirsty Dunnett on Galløe (2023)’s “emotions differentiate opportunities”

February 1, 2025

My most loyal guest poster strikes again! Welcome Kirsty Dunnett, today writing about Galløe (2023)’s chapter on how emotions differentiate opportunities.

My learning diary for the MOOC “Paths of transformation: sustainability in higher education”

January 30, 2025

When my friend Robert sent me the link to a MOOC on “Paths of Transformation: Sustainability in Higher Education” (in German only, sorry!) yesterday, I jumped at the opportunity to…

Currently reading Venet (2024)’s “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School”

January 29, 2025

I’m continuing my reading of Venet (2024)’s “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School” (online access for LU!). I first wrote about the first couple of pages here.…

Currently reading and thinking about Sustainability Communication

January 24, 2025

Yesterday, I talked to someone about Sustainability Communication and what we should be teaching our students, and I was honestly expecting something like the Karpman Drama Triangle (see featured image)…

Some thoughts on yesterday’s Grand Seminar “Exploring the complexities and potentials of environmental communication”

January 23, 2025

Yesterday, I attended the Grand Seminar on “Exploring the complexities and potentials of environmental communication” organised by LU Sustainability Forum, BECC and MERGE at Lund University that my friend Terese…

The process is the point.

January 20, 2025

I picked up my copy of Venet (2024)’s “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School” this morning and I loved the book before I even started reading the…

Currently reading Narong (2024): “A system-based framework for engineering education as sustainable development”

January 8, 2025

After writing about “Teaching about, with, in, through, for sustainability?” last night, writing about Engineering Education as Sustainable Development seems to be the logical next step. This is a summary of…

Teaching about, with, in, through, for sustainability?

January 8, 2025

This morning on the bus I was browsing bluesky, and came across a post by Kyle Bartlett, suggesting a framework for how to think about Education for Sustainable Development with,…

Different ways students are talking about Wicked Sustainability Problems (currently reading Lönngren, Ingerman, & Svanström; 2017)

December 11, 2024

When teaching for sustainability, we need to give students the chance to practice working with Wicked Problems, and we as teachers need to figure out where they are at in…

Currently reading: “Carving space to learn for sustainable futures: A theory-informed adult education approach to teaching” by Holmqvist & Millenberg (2024)

December 10, 2024

This morning, I read the article “Carving space to learn for sustainable futures: A theory-informed adult education approach to teaching” by Holmqvist & Millenberg (2024) and it really resonated with…

Using eco-guilt to motivate behaviour change seems not really supported by literature

December 9, 2024

Following up on what I wrote on Friday about how my colleague respond to her talking about sustainability issues with “don’t make me feel guilty”, I am exploring eco-guilt as…

Thinking about how to respond when people say “Don’t talk to me about sustainability, you make me feel guilty!”

December 6, 2024

Today one of my colleagues told me that a very common reaction she gets in her department is that people do not want to talk to her about sustainability because…

Learning from history. Currently reading “Education and Learning for Sustainable Futures: 50 Years of Learning for Environment and Change” (Macintyre, Tilbury, Wals; 2024)

November 30, 2024

Before I started browsing this book, my gut feeling was that while it would surely be educational to read, I really did not feel like a history lesson of the…

Reading up on how climate protests work

October 23, 2024

Inspired by Robert’s Climate Activism 101 course, I have become more and more interested in reading about non-violent protests and understanding how they work.

Exploring PBL, reflection, student identity, and sustainability in Ginie Servant-Miklos’ work

October 20, 2024

I am currently in the early stages of co-developing a course, most likely project-based, on sustainability for engineering students. I have written a lot about how I am trying to…

Thinking about Storytelling in Teaching for Sustainability

October 3, 2024

I am on the fringes of a course on “Integrating Sustainability Competences in the Curriculum” that my awesome colleague Steven Curtis is currently teaching. And the way he introduces the…

Currently reading & thinking about “The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place” (Gruenewald, 2003)

October 1, 2024

I am on the fringes of a course on “Integrating Sustainability Competences in the Curriculum” that my awesome colleague Steven Curtis is currently teaching, and he asked me to read…

Currently reading: “The Ideal Outcome of Education for Sustainability: Transformative Sustainability Learning” (Michel et al., 2020)

September 30, 2024

I have written about transformative experiences (wave watching! When you suddenly see the world with new eyes) and transformative learning (with my favourite head-hands-heart model) before, but here comes the…

Attempting to Assess Key Competencies in Sustainability

September 12, 2024

In this post, I am bringing together a bunch of thoughts and literature, and try to provide an idea of how to assess key competencies in sustainability. Wish me luck!…

Currently reading: “Sustainable assessment revisited” (Boud & Soler, 2016)

September 9, 2024

“Sustainable assessment” is about making assessment useful to learning beyond the frame of the course it is related to, not just in terms of retaining the learnt information and skills…

Taking the course “Climate Activism 101”

August 29, 2024

I am taking the open “Climate Activism 101” course, organised by Robert Kordts for Scientist Rebellion Bergen. Here, I am summarising my impressions and take-aways from the first meeting today!

UNECE “Competences for educators in education for sustainable development”

August 28, 2024

After having thought a lot about what we need to teach our students in terms of sustainability competencies, what is it that teachers actually need to know, be able do,…

Using Kate Raworth’s “doughnut of social and planetary boundaries” to kickstart sustainability conversations?

August 23, 2024

I am really late to the party of “doughnut economics”, but I just discovered this great conversation starter on sustainability!

Thoughts on a webinar on “Climate Action Pedagogy (CAP): Working with Sustainable and Inner Development Goals” by Karen Costa

August 22, 2024

Since on one of her first slides (and here is a link to the slides that contains links to all resources mentioned below, too) last night, Karen Costa invited participants…

Thinking about assessing sustainability competencies

August 21, 2024

Current goal: Figuring out how to do assessment of sustainability competencies for a pass/fail course (where the fail option is an actual option*).

Inner development and mindfulness at university (reading Libertson, 2023)

August 19, 2024

As I wrote recently when discussing frameworks for sustainability competencies, intrapersonal competencies have only recently been added as integral parts to the common frameworks. Today, I am summarising an article…

Sustainability competences, what they mean and when we need them (loosely after Wiek, Redman, and colleagues)

August 17, 2024

I like using the Redman & Wiek (2021) framework for sustainability competencies that shows sustainability competencies relating to each other as well as to disciplinary content and generic competencies. But…

Currently reading “Implementing competence orientation: Towards constructively aligned education for sustainable development in university-level teaching-and-learning” (Wilhelm et al., 2019)

August 17, 2024

Over the summer, I have read a lot about sustainability competencies. But I still find it really difficult to implement them into curricula (or build curricula around them from scratch),…

Browsing the “you have a part to play” toolkit for higher education for sustainability (Meerkerk, de Mul & Broekhaus; 2024)

August 14, 2024

I’m currently preparing for several consulting projects where I’ll be supporting groups of teachers with developing their teaching to include a focus on sustainability competencies, so I am looking through…

Summary part 2&3 of “Competences in Education for Sustainable Development. Critical Perspectives” (Vare, Lausselet, Rieckmann, 2022)

August 1, 2024

I have previously summarised the first part of the book “Competences in Education for Sustainable Development. Critical Perspectives” by Vare, Lausselet, & Rieckmann (2022), and here are some take-aways from…

Summary part 1 of “Competences in Education for Sustainable Development. Critical Perspectives” (Vare, Lausselet, Rieckmann, 2022)

June 12, 2024

Continuing my mission of “I am reading it so you don’t have to” on a new book: Competences in Education for Sustainable Development. Critical Perspectives by Vare, Lausselet, & Rieckmann…

Currently reading “Academic identities and teaching wicked problems: how to ‘shoot a fog’ in a complex landscape” (McCune et al., 2024)

June 12, 2024

Teaching about sustainability is teaching about a (or many) wicked problem(s), and that is a challenge for teachers for many reasons. We need to, for example, teach how to work…

In a nutshell: “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

June 12, 2024

I really really really recommend that you read this book, but if you are short on time, check out my summary posts (part I, IIA, IIB, IIIA, IIIB) or the…

Thinking about sustainable futures, inspired by a recorded lecture by Dougald Hine

June 11, 2024

Last night I watched a lecture by Dougald Hine. It is part of an online course on Higher Education Didactics for Sustainability that I did not take myself, but that…

Planning an academic development workshop with GAI Claude

June 10, 2024

“Hi Claude, I want to plan a 45 minute workshop for university teachers with the title “how do I cultivate joy, passion, and purpose in my teaching, and how do…

Database of Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion

May 25, 2024

This blogpost is mostly a note to myself so that I don’t have to search for the database of methods for non-violent protest and persuasion next time I need it!…

Currently reading about authenticity in assessment (Ajjawi et al., 2024)

May 16, 2024

Time for another iEarth Journal Club article summary, this time about authenticity in assessment!

Reflections on a seminar on “Introducing Sustainability Competencies”

May 7, 2024

This morning, I participated in an online seminar on “Introducing Sustainability Competencies”, run by my awesome colleagues Steven Curtis and Terese Thoni. Here are my reflections (and if you are…

The paradoxes we are confronted with when teaching for sustainability, and attempts at dealing with them, using Liberating Structures

May 7, 2024

Today, I tried two new “liberating structures” in my “teaching for sustainability” course: First the “Wicked Questions“, where we surfaced some “opposing-yet-complimentary” strategies that we need to pursue simultaneously to…

Mapping the requirements of the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance (1993) and Key Sustainability Competencies (Redman & Wiek, 2021)

April 24, 2024

This is just a quick and dirty mapping, but even though details can certainly be discussed, I think that there is nevertheless a striking overlap between what the Swedish law…

Exploring another serious game for teaching for sustainability

April 12, 2024

Yesterday evening I joined a group of 14 teachers who met up to learn from, and support, our colleague, Ester Barinaga, who wanted to try a new game for teaching…

Currently reading about wicked problems in teaching for sustainability

April 11, 2024

As part of my “Teaching for Sustainability” course, participants find & summarize articles that are relevant for developing their own teaching. From their summaries, the two articles below on using…

Recap of the first meeting of my new course “Teaching for Sustainability”

March 14, 2024

Yesterday was the first meeting of this spring’s installment of my “teaching for sustainability” course and it is so inspiring and energizing to meet so many motivated and engaged teachers!…

Operationalising and assessing sustainability competencies (some ideas from Wiek et al. (2016) and Redman et al. (2020))

March 8, 2024

We put a lot of effort into teaching for sustainability, but whether or not we are actually successful in doing so remains unclear until we figure out a way to…

“Liberating structures: Engaging everyone to build a good life together” (Lipmanowicz et al., 2015) — go read it and try them!

February 29, 2024

My friend Sigrid does short interviews with trainers and facilitators on her company Memogic‘s youtube channel, and I watched the interview with Inna Fischer (in German) yesterday. Inna’s energy was…

Currently reading Högfeldt et al. (2023): “Leadership, support and organisation for academics’ participation in engineering education change for sustainable development”

February 22, 2024

Implementing education for sustainability throughout an institution is a huge challenge, so I am currently reading up on what we might be able to learn from other places. Högfeldt et…

Currently reading Part III of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

February 2, 2024

Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, and the first part and second part of the summary of “PART II: Choosing teaching…

Currently reading Part III of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

February 1, 2024

Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, and the first part and second part of the summary of “PART II: Choosing teaching…

Currently reading Part II of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

January 28, 2024

Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, and the first part of the summary of part II, here comes the…

Currently reading Part II of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

January 26, 2024

Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, here comes PART II: Choosing teaching content and approaches

Currently reading Part I of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

January 25, 2024

I am teaching the course “teaching sustainability” again in March, and while my course has a very applied focus on the questions teachers bring themselves into it, I have been…

Applying the Head-Hands-Heart framework to my “teaching sustainability” course

January 9, 2024

As we are getting ready to officially launch our new blog on “teaching about sustainability”, I am revisiting posts on this blog and rewriting them for the different outlet. And…

Currently reading about how appealing to fear is effective in positively influencing behavior, and hardly ever backfires (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). Who would have thought?

January 2, 2024

Fear can lead to fight, flight, or freeze responses — or so we often hear. So far, I was under the impression that fear was generally not a good emotion…

Our seminar today: “Serious Games in Teaching for Sustainability”

November 21, 2023

Here comes my informal summary of today’s seminar on “Serious Games in Teaching Sustainability”. A more formal summary will go through the official channels shortly (or that’s the plan… :-))

Facilitating the Biodiversity Collage and reading more about serious games in teaching about sustainability

September 14, 2023

Last week I had the pleasure to work with “real” students (“real” in contrast to the teachers that I typically work with) and it gave me so much energy* to…

Currently reading: “Five moves towards an ecological university” by Kinchin (2023)

July 11, 2023

How can we imagine future universities that are less market-driven and more socially just, focussed on community and sustainability? Possibly by using a different metaphor, that of ecology, according to…

Another serious game for teaching sustainability that I like: the Climate Fresk

July 10, 2023

As you’ve seen from my recent Biodiversity Collage posts, I have gotten into serious games as tools for teaching. Today, I am reading up on a different game, the Climate…

Currently reading “Bicycle model on climate change education: Presenting and evaluating a model.” by Cantell et al., 2019

June 30, 2023

Came across this model, had to share! You know I love me a good visualization of a model, and I think this one is brilliant to help support thinking about…

Currently reading: “Competencies for advancing transformations towards sustainability” (Redman & Wiek, 2021)

June 1, 2023

What competencies should we be teaching students so they will be best equipped to work towards a sustainable future? The (really useful, me thinks!) Redman & Wiek (2021) framework.

I can now facilitate the “Biodiversity Collage”!

May 30, 2023

I’m now an official trained facilitator of the Biodiversity Collage (that I wrote about here)!

“The Biodiversity Collage” — a fun and collaborative workshop to explore the biodiversity crisis, but leave hopeful and ready to tackle the challenge

April 13, 2023

My awesome LTH colleague Léa Lévy invited me to a workshop she was doing with some of her colleagues yesterday, where we played a serious game on biodiversity in order to…

Wamsler et al. (2021)’s literature review on “Linking internal and external transformation for sustainability and climate action”, and “Inner Development Goals”

February 3, 2023

Especially when it comes to teaching about climate change or sustainability more generally, it seems unavoidable to really consider mental states. While the dominant discourse around climate change has been…

Emotionally-responsive teaching

February 2, 2023

When I was recently thinking about emotions and teaching about sustainability, I came across the term “emotionally-responsive teaching” that really spoke to me, even though I did not really know what…

More “head, hands, and heart” in sustainability education, this time by Öhman & Sund (2021)

February 1, 2023

Talking about sustainability teaching, one model that seems to resonate with many teachers I speak with is the “Head, hands, heart” model by Sipos et al. (2008). I came across basically…

Thinking about emotions and teaching about sustainability

January 21, 2023

In communicating about climate change specifically, and other sustainability challenges, there is often the debate around how to kickstart people into action. Paint the doom-and-gloom (i.e. realistic) picture so people…

Breathing practice: Where freediving and academic development collide

January 20, 2023

I recently wrote a lot about the emotions that we experience when really thinking about sustainability and the challenges that we face when we take it seriously (e.g. here), and…

From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it” (reflecting on Stein et al., 2022)

January 17, 2023

A lot of things are happening around teaching sustainability at LU right now! As I am planning the second iteration of my “teaching sustainability” course, I am reading more about…

Four misunderstandings about sustainability (after Block & Paredis, 2019)

January 11, 2023

One thing I find irritating in many conversations around how to teach about sustainability is that they tend to get hung up on what “sustainability” actually means. So I got…

Teaching sustainability: Reading about how to turn frustration into action

November 23, 2022

One reoccurring topic in all discussions around how to teach sustainability is how we can turn frustration into constructive action. I haven’t found a comprehensive answer, but I’ve been reading!

Currently reading: “Hope dies, action begins?” The role of hope for proactive sustainability engagement among university students. (Vandaele & Stålhammar, 2022)

September 20, 2022

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked to many people that are in one way or other involved in teaching about sustainability at high school or university level. One…

Currently reading: Inspiring Action, Efficacy, and Connection: Weaving Sustainability into Environmental Science Curriculum through a Connected Learning Model (Bertossi & Halliwell, 2020)

September 13, 2022

Yesterday, in our “collegial project course: teaching sustainability”, I showed two models of how one might approach thinking about teaching sustainability, and here is another one that I quite like,…

Currently thinking about: Transformative sustainability learning

August 19, 2022

A lot of the work I am doing at LTH is related in one way or other to teaching (to teach) sustainability. Here are some notes on an article I…

Currently reading: “Bringing an entrepreneurial focus to sustainability education: A teaching framework based on content analysis” (Hermann & Bossle, 2019)

August 19, 2022

A lot of the work I am doing at LTH is related in one way or other to teaching (how to teach) sustainability, so here are my notes on an…

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