Experiential Learning Activity

Having read the following article on experiential learning:

Atherton J S (2011) Learning and Teaching; Experiential Learning [On-line: UK] retrieved 28 October 2011 from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/experience.htm

I am left thinking no big deal, this is typical of how teaching occurs in the art school.

The graphic model of Kolb (1984)'s Experiential Learning Cycle looks like this:

Dividing the graphic into quadrants is a handy device for relating & qualifying the four aspects of the cycle. One of those qualifications relates to learning styles (e.g. Activist, Reflector, Theorist, Pragmatist ). I'll side with the sceptics & give a bollocking to the value of learning styles. The article suggests that small groups of learners are better served by getting to know them & personalizing their learning experience. We in the art school enjoy such small class groups.

The simple version of the experiential learning cycle is "Plan, Do, Review"

In the art school learning begins with 3-7 week chunks of thematic learning favouring a prescriptive mode of tutorial direction. At senior student levels learning moves toward a self-directed mode with one-to-one teacher consultation.

The Plan, Do, Review cycle is enacted at all levels. The generation of the planning stage moves from teachers in first year classes to students in senior years.

I will modify a 7 week chunk of learning at Yr2 level to include an experiential learning activity that can enhance sustainability awareness.

The plan involves a road trip from Dunedin to Colac Bay during which we will gather stone material for jewellery,

 stay overnight on Takutai o te Titi marae (Ron Bull's whanau) 

& include a guided visit to Invercargill Museum's collection of early Maori stone artifacts.

I would like students to:

• focus on aspects of material & cultural sustainability.
• know the "Story of Stuff" related to the materials they use for jewellery, the extraction, production & disposal cycle of what goes into a piece of jewellery.
• know, value & care for the local land & environment.
• be aware of a world view that is holistic, i.e. human activity lies within the constraints of the biosphere rather than valuing nature for its utility to humans.
• be aware of the world view of the takata whenua of this place.
• value a greater sense of community.

This writing is a part of the PLAN

The road trip, gathering of materials, porwhiri & marae stay, museum visit, subsequent studio work with the materials is the CONCRETE EXPERIENCE  or DO.

Class discussion, theory reading, journal reflection is the REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION & ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALIZATION. Within a seven week timeframe there will be opportunity for this cycle to push into the EXPERIMENTING phase & continue revolving, I'll be there kicking it along.

Is Otago Polytech up to speed with international ideas for EfS?

I have sliced & summarised the article by Hopkins & McKeown below. My responses follow in red font.

Reference: Hopkins, Charles and McKeown, Rosalyn. (2000). Chapter 2, Education for sustainable development: an international perspective in Tilbury, D., Fien, J., Stevenson, R.B., and Schreuder, D. (2000). Education and Sustainability: Responding to the Global Challenge

"Education and Sustainability: Responding to the Global Challenge" is the title of a 200 page paper prepared by the World Conservation Union (IUCN)'s Commission on Education and Communication (CEC) in 2002. The first two chapters provide an overview of the concept of sustainability and highlight the international scope of educational institutes to promote sustainable development.
 

It was a quarter of a century ago, that education was described by Schumacher as the “greatest resource” for achieving a just and ecological society. Since then, a series of major international reports have emphasized the critical role education can play in the search for sustainable living.

The CEC report sets out priorities for establishing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). ESD is used interchangably with EfS. The first two priorities are:

1. Improving basic education
2. Reorienting existing education

The term “reorienting education” has become a powerful descriptor that helps administrators and educators at every level to understand the changes required for ESD. An appropriately reoriented basic education includes more principles, skills, perspectives, and values related to sustainability than are currently included in most education systems. These skills include:

• the ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing;

• the ability to think about systems (both natural and social systems);

• the ability to think in time – to forecast, to think ahead, and to plan;

• the ability to think critically about value issues;

• the ability to comprehend quantity, quality, and value;

• the capacity to move from awareness to knowledge to action;

• the ability to work cooperatively with other people;

• the capacity to use various processes – knowing, inquiring, acting,

  judging, imagining, connecting, valuing, questioning and choosing

• the capacity to develop an aesthetic response to the environment.

• learning to prepare materials for recycling;

• learning to harvest wild plants without jeopardizing future natural

  regeneration and production;

• learning to grow low-water-need crops; and

• learning to protect local water sources from contamination.

Communities creating ESD curricula cannot or need not teach all of the above skills. The quantity of study would be overwhelming.

We need to find ways to harness the existing skills of the current educational labour force. We call such In this model experienced professionals are provided with additional training. In turn, they reshape existing programmes by drawing on their new knowledge, previous expertise, and understanding of national and local systems.

recognition and use of the skills, knowledge, and talents of current practitioners a “strengths model” for professional development and training.

However, use of this “strengths model” requires that someone be sufficiently well versed in the principles of ESD to pull together the pieces taught in the various disciplines to form a complete picture of the role of individuals, communities and nations in a sustainable world.

The future of ESD will depend on how the concept is perceived in the next few years. If ESD is seen as yet another isolated societal issue to be squeezed into the curriculum, or yet another topic to be given as an elective, then little progress will be made.

Although OP has articulated aims visions & policies to put in place EfS since 2005 the net effects of these have not made a profound difference to me as an educator or the programmes in which I teach. Given the course for which I am writing this blog is an elective topic & it appears squeezed into the curriculum I think little progress has been made. 

This report, together with the Strong Sustainability report & the article written by David Orr all point to the urgent need to reshape education profoundly in order to move our society to a sustainable future.

In our school the manner of implementing the moves toward sustainability have consisted primarily of an announcement that sustainability must be embedded in our courses. As educators we have not yet been adequately enabled to understand why this must be or given adequate opportunity or impetus to reorient our courses & programmes.

On the evidence of my perception, OP is very much conforming to the Business As Usual, incremental improvement toward sustainability.

I would value a broader understanding promoted by management (equal to Turning Point for instance) & a greater degree of guided risk in changing our curricula toward Education for Sustainability.

Sam Mann is the coordinator of integrating sustainability in OP & although he may be well versed in the principles of EfS, he has not had much contact with me or effect on the courses in my school. Perhaps this role needs to be dedicated rather than an extra load on top of Sam's other responsibilities?

While many of the skills listed above as related to sustainable education are included in art education in a general way the sense of purpose in collating & focussing them toward sustainability is not yet articulate.

There is an untapped opportunity to adopt interdisciplinary study within OP toward sustainability principles; eg. make subjects from horticulture & outdoor education available to art students (& vice-versa of course). Given the proximity of Otago University there is also the opportunity to include humanities subjects covering ethics, philosopy, ecology etc. These would be more accessible if they were collated & made relevant under an umbrella of EfS. Clearly there's a whole bunch of politics in the way but we need to crash some heads together soon.

Strong Sustainability for the Dunedin School of Art Jewellery Studio?

Strong Sustainability is the name of a visionary project & its documentation paper published by a group called Sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand (SANZ). The project evolved through SANZ coordinating three think-tank workshops in 2008 calling together about 90 people knowledgeable in the subject of sustainability. The aim of the Strong Sustainability project is to provoke thought & debate about sustainability specific to Aotearoa and particularly in an educational context.
Strong Sustainability is a a set of ideas, ethics, conditions & strategies that map a path that might lead to survival & continuation of civilization in the face of imminently catastrophic changes to the biosphere, sociosphere & econosphere. These changes are the result of greenhouse gas emissions, pollution & a financial & economic system based on continual growth.
The basis of Strong Sustainability is the concept that human activity must lie within the constraints of the biosphere.
Strong Sustainability proposes that a very different ethical stance is needed by people committing to strong sustainability; ethics that:

• Ensure material Basic Needs of people are satisfied
• Place much greater importance on non-material sources of happiness
• Remove the perceived linkage between economic growth and success
• Affirm the deep interdependence of all people and mutual respect between all
• Value nature intrinsically through knowing that human society and its political economy is an integral and interdependent component of nature and the ecosphere of Earth. Humans have reverence for nature and consider themselves stewards of it.

http://angoa.org.nz/angoa_docs/Dr-John-Peet-Strong-Sustainability-for-NZ.pdf

The bulk of the Strong Sustainability publication is devoted to describing future scenarios of a strongly sustainable Aotearoa. These read like a synopsis of a science fiction. The focus is one of optimism but the booklet prefaces these descriptions with the equally plausible scenario of catastrophe & chaos.
The projected optimism is consistent with Otago Polytech's adoption of a Swedish-developed framework called The Natural Step, selected as a plan to manage the process of embedding a sustainable approach in all areas of study. Instead of attempting to forecast, the natural step methodology backcasts from a desired state for future of the organisation that adheres to ‘rules’ for sustainable practice, then moves step by steptowards such a vision.

What would a strongly sustainable Jewellery & Metalsmithing Studio look like?

• It would be contained in a energy efficient, architecturally inspiring building.
• The studio would be part of a complex that integrated arts and education within a local cultural community.
• Students would take a much longer study that incorporated arts within common subjects of systemic ecology, ethics & practice of strong sustainability.
• Students would participate actively in decision making & leadership.
• J&M students would make artwork that was critically responsive to the needs values of the community. 
• J&M students would specialise in the incorporation of sustainable design, material & processes in artworks.
• Art students would understand & care for the landscape in which they & the school is located.
• The art school & its students would be supported by the community & role of the school & students would be commensurately valued by the community.

A Sustainable Artist Looks Like..........

 Reflections 34 35 on Art and Sustainability
by Victor Margolin

http://www.sdscrolls.org/museums/beyond-green/reflections-art-sustainability-index.html

Beuys was instrumental in creating the current difficulties that surround the problem of "ecological aesthetics." He was strategically brilliant in trading on his recognition as a gallery artist to gain attention for his action projects such as 7000 Oaks and the polemics of his lecture tours. Ultimately all these activities have been drawn into an art discourse, but they don't fit comfortably. To deal with new forms of human expression and action, critics and curators are continually trying to stuff them into institutional boxes where they don't fit. Old categories need to collapse before we can begin to create a different dialogue on aesthetics in a sustainable culture.

We will need a new aesthetic to embrace the three categories of object, participation, and action without privileging the conventional formal characteristics of objects. In this aesthetic, the distinctions between art, design, and architecture will blur as critics discover new relations between the value of form and the value of use. Hildegard Kurt was correct when she criticized the art world for viewing sustainability in terms of environmental subjects instead of as a larger cultural challenge. The culture that Kurt identified within the wider sustainability discourse remains an issue and needs to be overcome. This will lead to new forms of solidarity within the culture of sustainability.

Imagination is an artist's greatest asset. It can produce bold visions of what a sustainable future might be like. People can be moved and aroused by powerful environments, innovative designs, and practical demonstrations of active engagement. With open minds and a willingness to collaborate, those who seek a place in the culture of sustainability must move forward. The problem of "ecological aesthetics" will solve itself.

The Principles of Sustainability in Contemporary Art
by Maja and Reuben Fowkes



The artistic engagement with sustainability entails an understanding of ecological equality, a shift from the anthropocentric model to include the non-human world in our moral universe, a renewed sense of social responsibility, as well as a concern for grassroots democracy, and draws on radical critiques of art and society and the dematerialised practices of conceptual art to offer sustainable alternatives in art and life.
http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=265

In general we prefer to talk about the sustainability of art,
rather than Sustainable Art with capital letters, as our
primary interest is in the implications of a broad notion
of sustainability for the whole of contemporary art,
rather than just a niche area, such as is associated with
the term Environmental Art. Artists that consider the
ethical aspects of their formal decisions, such as what are
the implications of the use of animals in art or of people
in community art projects, are in that sense giving
precedence to ethics, rather than aesthetics.

Satish Kumar's article entitled ‘Art for Earth’s Sake’.

In our times of eco-spiritual crisis, Satish Kumar proposes a shift from unsustainable mass consumerism to mass production of life-sustaining art

The dominant thinking in Western society is that of separation: the separation of mind from matter, science from spirituality, art from daily life. From the Renaissance onwards, artists worked as individuals, in their studios, in isolation from other artisans, separating themselves from their fellow craftsmen and women.  They practised art as a way of self-expression.  Their art produced mostly items of luxury and status.  Thus art became disconnected from the natural world, from living communities and from life itself. There art stayed, for centuries, something apart – to be practised only by those with special talent, to be purchased only by those with great wealth and seen mostly within the four walls of churches, museums and art galleries. For the past 500 years, art has become an item of consumption; a commodity to be bought and sold: no longer a way of life, practised by everyone as an everyday activity.

The Art of sustainability – Should Artists be Driving Political and Ethical Thinking?

Are music and sustainability related? If so, maybe musicians and artists should be using art to drive political and ethical thinking. Or is it really anything to do with them at all? Giles Crosse tunes up.

http://www.ourfutureplanet.org/news/457

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions. Rather than asking whether art and sustainability are suitable partners, if we think about things in terms of the 'art of sustainability’, the approach becomes rather different.
From this perspective, sustainability itself can be seen as an art form, an organic, growing process that stands on the shoulders of others and develops throughout time, as individuals and societies contribute to the cultivation of knowledge that might actually create something positive.
So the ‘art of sustainability’ might be about learning better how to interact with the planet, how to live responsible and happier lives, and how to derive some measure of peace and contentment from minimising the rape of resources and achieving a much more holistic balance.

David Orr's article "What Is Education For?" on education for sustainability

David Orr, a Yank celebrity educator specializing in sustainability delivered the following talk as a opening address for a grad ceremony at Arkansas College in 1990:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC27/Orr.htm

He starts by pointing out that our environment is all but cattle-trucked & the folk to blame are by-and-large well educated. His essay argues that there must be something wrong with our ideas of education to land us in this solid mess.
Fair enough.
Orr sets out a few punters he reckons shaped modern Western thinking; Frank Bacon, Galileo & Descartes. Thier ideas are all about humans dominating nature & that attitude is at the foundation of our governments, businesses & knowledge. That attitude got us to the moon but landed us in a growing pile of shit downstairs on Earth.
Orr structures his arguments for the failure of education by listing six myths & expanding them. Numbering things off like that makes him sound like the man that knows - set up those ten pins & then bowl them over. Good strategy for a celeb talk.

1. ignorance is a solvable problem
2. with enough knowledge and technology we can manage planet Earth
3. knowledge is increasing and by implication human goodness
4. we can adequately restore that which we have dismantled
5. the purpose of education is that of giving you the means for upward mobility and success
6. our culture represents the pinnacle of human achievement

The gist of these points is that our education does not convey a wholistic sense of knowledge & the specificity that gives us technology, vocation & a shot at wealth leads us to lose touch with the health of the Earth.

Orr makes another goddam list of six principles that may redeem education.

1. all education is environmental education
2. The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one's person
3. knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world
4. we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities
5. the importance of "minute particulars" and the power of examples over words
6. the way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses

The argument here is that environmental sustainability must be embedded in education from the get-go by emphasising a wholistic understanding of the relationships between environment, civilization, & morality. Furthermore all educators & educational centres should be role-models of the above.

Tough call
Sounds like us educators need to be old & wise in a whole hell of a hurry.
Sounds like we collectively need to know more about most things before we can become specialists.
Sounds like education ought to take more time & cost us less.
I'd like to think that I currently embed points 2,3,5 & 6 in my practice as an educator. I'm here because I'd like to improve on point 1. Point 4 ought to be implicit if all the other conditions are being met. Understanding how knowledge affects real people in the community would be a mission to measure; an awareness about the ethics of a relationship between self & community might be more realistic.

'UUUUUUUUUCK!
He finishes off with, count-'em-up, four proposals for the good graduates of Arkansas:

1. I would like to propose that you engage in a campus-wide dialogue about the way you conduct your business as educators
2. examine resource flows on this campus: food, energy, water, materials, and waste
3. reexamaine how your endowment works
4. set a goal of ecological literacy for all of your students

A bit like take yourselves into the hall of mirrors & have a long hard look at yourselves. Of course you'll see that David W. Orr is by all counts a winner.

Sustainable Tucker

Bron hooked up a mean Coq au Vin while we were waiting out the snow yesterday. Bron runs the chooks & the garden. Two of our immediate neighbours have chooks as well. We're the only ones with a rooster, George Orpington:

George is a busy fella. He looks in on next door's ladies now & again. Recently two chooks hid a stash of eggs & we had eight new chicks. We kept some, gave some away & bumped off the roosters when they started crowing.
The best meals we've eaten come from food we've grown or caught. Our Coq au Vin had carrots Bron dug out of our neighbour's veggie patch, herbs from our garden & home made stock. It was cooked on top of our woodburner.
The Coc au Vin included red wine from Australia, it probably travelled 4000km before we got it. We used some Henderson's bacon - probably from unhappy pigs in a feedlot. The butter we used probably came from a dairy that has contributed to river degradation. Who knows where the onions came from? It's a tough gig being rigorous about ethical, sustainable, healthy, cheap & accessible food.

Why we don't believe science

I read an interesting article by Roderick Aldridge in the Green Party's newsletter Te Awa (issue 30 May 2011), "Let's accentuate the positive"
He refers to this report about the science of why we don't believe science:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

The argument might include something like this:
The message about climate change is fundamentally bad news. Folks tend to react with an emotional response far more quickly & powerfully than a logical analysis. We tend to push threatening information away from us because of this emotional reaction. It's a fight or flight reflex to data, a survival instinct.

On the basis of Mooney's report the Green dude Aldridge reckons the Greens should carefully use language that prioritises a positive aspect of a message rather than hitting off with the gloomy facts. This might counter the tendency to switch off the Green message because it's seen as threatening.

eg. "we are the ones who know how to build a sustainable future with a better quality of life"
cf. Climate change is 'gonna be a bummer & the deadshit National government aren't doing jack about it.

'Gotta vote Green I reckon.

Getting to & from work

My partner Bron & I live 20km from our workplaces, Otago University & Otago Polytechnic.
Half the time we cycle to work, mostly on recumbent bikes I have built recently:

The Random Tandem

The bikes are made from recycled donor bikes, second hand parts & a minimal amount of new stuff.

Recumbent bikes are more comfortable to ride. I am hoping that people might think a bit more about cycling as a transport option when they see us commuting on these unusual treadlies. We are hell keen that the Dunedin City Council extend the Harbour Cycleway out to Port Chalmers. Commuting is a political performance action.

I teach Jewellery & Metalsmithing in the Dunedin School of Art. These bikes are part of my professional practice as an artist/maker/designer. I would hope the students get the implicit message of sustainable transport when they see me pull up & park the Random Tandem.

 When we're not cycling we drive the Wombat, a Toyota Succeed. It uses bugger all petrol, 6l/100km.