teaching for sustainability – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Currently reading Monger (2022) on “Teaching oceanography by engaging students in civic activism”

mglessmer — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 08:38:39 +0000

How do we teach for sustainability when the class is huge and there is a lot of content to be covered? One really nice example is described by Monger (2022), who is “teaching oceanography by engaging students in civic activism“. In their class with >1000 students, Monger (2022) teachers introductory physical, chemical, biological, geological oceanography, […]

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Summary of this morning’s workshop on sustainable pedagogies

mglessmer — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:52:19 +0000

This morning, I ran a workshop for university teachers called “Teaching for Sustainability: Practicing for a sustainable future through sustainable pedagogies“. You can look at all the slides here, or see some of them below together with a quick summary of what I said about them. Most of what I am writing below I have written […]

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Currently reading Lawrence et al. (2024) on the “Global polycrisis: the causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement”

mglessmer — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 17:53:25 +0000

Let’s read about everybody’s favourite topic: The polycrisis! Here, I am summarizing a framework that takes “polycrisis” from buzzword to useful concept. Lawrence et al. (2024) start by pointing out that the “perfect storm” metaphor (that is often used to describe the mess we are currently in as a coincidental “bad luck” of lots of […]

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More thinking about “business-critical”, “primary” tasks (and reading Fitton et al., 2026)

mglessmer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:02:39 +0000

Fitton et al. (2026) describe a the difficulties that teachers describe in working with a project aimed at decolonizing the curriculum, and that might partly explain why there is so little progress on decolonialization. The main themes they find are “Eleventh-hour teaching”: Teaching is not planned strategically or long-term enough for anyone to actually have […]

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Thinking about citizen- and active student participation, inspired by Arnstein (1969), Varwell (2022), Biesta (2026), and others

mglessmer — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:18:43 +0000

Since listening to Gerry’s defense of his PhD thesis the other day, I have been thinking about partnership a lot, and how we need to practice partnership also in order to practice democracy. And I vaguely remembered having seen an article where the typical “ladder” is wrapped into a circle, so that rather than being […]

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Journal club on Nagatsu et al. (2020)’s “Philosophy of science for sustainability science”

mglessmer — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:53:53 +0000

Late last year, we had a “Transformation Thursday” lunch on philosophy of science, led by a colleague. Now we will follow up on that with a journal club on Nagatsu et al. (2020)’s “Philosophy of science for sustainability science“. Nagatsu et al. (2020) frame sustainability science (“a field devoted to studying—and ultimately transforming—the way human […]

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Currently reading Sundström & Holmberg (2018) on “When implementation falters: The challenge of having peripheral issues stick in organisations”

mglessmer — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:53:27 +0000

There are often tasks that everybody agrees are important, but that for some reason do not get implemented. In Sundström & Holmberg (2018)’s paper “When implementation falters: The challenge of having peripheral issues stick in organisations” they investigate this issue in the context of information security, but I am (surprise!) mostly curious about what we […]

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Currently reading Williams & Grain (2025) on “Teaching in a Time of Climate Collapse: From “An Education in Hope” to a Praxis of Critical Hope”

mglessmer — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 19:31:31 +0000

“Sustainability educators face a conundrum in the midst of climate collapse: what if to teach truthfully is to break hearts? What if teaching with the most current and rigorous research is tantamount to inducing hopelessness, anger, and anxiety?” This is the introduction to Williams and Grain (2025)’s article “Teaching in a Time of Climate Collapse: […]

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Catching up on some reading on sustainability teaching

Mirjam — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 13:16:02 +0000

I have a bunch of articles that were recommended during our LTHEChat on teaching sustainability last year that have been sitting in a special folder, waiting for a day like today where the best thing to do (right after a dip and a looong, comfy breakfast) is to curl up on the couch and read. […]

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Currently reading Hallgarth (2025) on “Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering”

mglessmer — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:26:22 +0000

I was recently sent Clara Hallgarth’s Master’s thesis on “Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering” (thanks, Clara!) and really enjoyed reading it; it’s a treasure trove of great references and even better ideas! I am summarizing my main takeaways below, but keep in mind that this […]

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