A feasibility study of utilizing big history as a new pedagogical framework in achieving a paradigm transition from environmental education to education for sustainability

Abstract

Many discussions of sustainability nowadays note the importance of interdisciplinary work to find and make human civilization more sustainable. However, the rapid rising complexity of sustainability issues in the twenty-one century cannot be addressed by narrow single disciplinary approaches. Yet, modern disciplinary fragmentation eliminates the chance to discuss about the sustainability of humanity civilization as a whole. A pedagogy which equips student’s interdisciplinary mindset therefore is needed desperately. A recognized framework for such a discussion is also lacking. This handicaps communication and collaboration between endeavors from various disciplines. In addition, we have been teaching a climate change course since 2009. The nominal results are satisfying, but the students, our future leaders, generally feel pessimistic towards the sustainability circumstances and do not see themselves as agents for change. A possible solution is Big History – a new paradigm, put forward by David Christian and other scholars and supported by Bill Gates, attracts our attention. Big History is an example of disciplinary consilience in constructing the whole natural history and human history into one single thematic structure with based on the latest scientific evidence. We re-structured our climate change course by embedding Big History as the pedagogical framework and addressing its prospective potentials in delivering sustainability, in which, climate change is only one of the many approaches in explaining the complexity. We analyzed the students’ performance by administrating a pre-course and post-course survey, studying student feedbacks and their poster assignments. The students’ performance in various aspects are encouraging, especially the perceived instrumentality. Several challenges are also discussed for further improvements. It is hoped that this study can serve as a showcase to educators in tertiary education on how we change the pedagogical framework for shifting the focus by employing an entirely new and bigger narrative in delivering a sustainability course. Keywords. Big History; Pedagogy; Education for Sustainability

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology