Green Pedagogy: Confrontation and Provocation to Promote Sustainability Skills

What is it about?

The chapter describes the features of Green Pedagogy, originally developed in Austria in German where it is still being actively researched. Green Pedagogy offers a structured approach to lesson planning to achieve embedded sustainability competencies within a specific vocational or academic field. The Green Pedagogy approach achieves sustainability competency through a controlled appeal to the emotions and the explicit uncovering of learner values to take on new ideas and new perspectives in a more sustainable direction. The approach is compatible with many recommended Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) pedagogies such as project-based teaching and the case study approach. The approach also implements several more general evidence-based pedagogical strategies such as concept change. The key feature of Green Pedagogy is that the process ends with locally based action whose wider implications are explored. We relate some of the challenges involved in translating a pedagogical approach from one language to another as the ProfESus Erasmus project aimed to disseminate Green Pedagogy to a global cohort of teachers of home economics in English. Reactions of participating teachers in the piloting of the training are explored and some practical solutions offered.

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Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash

Why is it important?

As the issue of sustainable development and how to achieve it becomes mainstream, teachers need a way to embed sustainability issues so that they cut through to learner values and result in behavioural change. The Green Pedagogy approach offers a template approach to achieve this.

Perspectives