SG - The Role of Higher Education in the Face of Crises

About The Role of Higher Education in the Face of Crises

Presentations, workshop & dialogue

Tonight, we start with a provocative question: Is the way our higher education is organised suitable for learning to deal with contemporary challenges? If anything is missing, then what, and why?

Professor Arjen Wals argues that the current state of the world asks for nothing less than a radical re-orientation of education, and that we are in need of more social learning, transformative learning, and maybe above all transgressive learning. Being disruptive or transgressive is an essential part of sustainability-oriented learning in his view, as hegemonic structures, powers and routines need challenging. Find out why he is in favour of a so-called Whole University Approach, and what this entails.

Next, lecturer Koen Arts gives you the opportunity to get a taste of non-conventional experiential and place-based education in a workshop titled ‘Dark Pathways to Connectedness’. Weather permitting we go outside, so dress warmly! In a fun way, experience what the value can be of outdoor education. How could it stimulate relational learning, and what has this to do with sustainability? And is such an approach ‘sufficiently scientific’? Or is the assumption of the scientific researcher as an objective observer precisely what hinders us in addressing the problems at hand?

About Rethinking Higher Education in Times of Systemic Global Challenges

Our times are characterised by daunting problems: alarming climate change, accelerated biodiversity loss, rising wealth inequality, food security threats, increasing resource scarcity, and other growing vulnerabilities and injustices. How should educational systems respond to such global crises? To what extent is our higher education developing the qualities and competences the world needs today?

In the face of urgent environmental and social problems, calls are made for a reform of our educational visions and practices. Alternative approaches question conventional modes of learning and researching, and challenge classical (western) ideas about what (higher) education should look like. What is the rationale behind these alternative views on the desired objectives and character of education? What could they offer that the regular system might not offer (enough)? And what kind of discussions does this evoke about the mandate and responsibility of the university, the nature of (good) science and education, and the role of students and staff?

About Arjen Wals

Arjen Wals is Professor of Transformative Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at the Education and Learning Sciences Group of Wageningen University & Research. He also holds the UNESCO Chair of Social Learning and Sustainable Development, and is a Visiting Professor at Norwegian Life Science University in Ås where he supports the development of Whole Schools Approaches & Sustainability.

His recent work focusses on transformative social learning in vital coalitions of multiple stakeholders at the interface of science and society. How can we enable, support and assess ecologies of learning that foster sustainable living by inviting more relational, ethical and critical ways of knowing and being? His teaching and research are directed towards designing learning processes and learning spaces that enable people to contribute meaningfully to sustainability. A central question in his work is: how to create conditions that support (new) forms of learning which take full advantage of the diversity, creativity and resourcefulness that is all around us, but so far remain largely untapped in our search for a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect?

Arjen Wals writes a regular research blog that signals developments in the emerging field of sustainability education.

About Koen Arts

Koen Arts is a Lecturer at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group at Wageningen University & Research. He works on human dimensions of nature conservation, specifically human-environment interactions at a local and practical level. Topics of focus include: local ecological knowledge and skill, community-based conservation, human-wildlife interaction, human rewilding, and outdoor relational learning and capacities for transformative change. Koen usually adopts critical qualitative social science approaches, drawing from various (sub)disciplines such as political ecology, material anthropology, outdoor studies, eco-sociology, -psychology and -philosophy, and governance studies.

Increasingly focusing on outdoor relational learning, in 2021 he set up the new WUR course Anthropology of Outdoor Skill: Combining theory and practice through relational learning (FNP51306). This course won the WUR Excellent Education Award in the category Special Courses in 2023. Since 2024 he runs a sequel to this course: Anthropology of Outdoor Skill 2: The Journey (FNP52306). He is also co-organiser of the PhD summer school Human-Nature Relationships for Transformative Change. Koen co-founded the open-to-all Reading for Planet Earth Book Club.

A passionate conservationist, Koen also has a strong interest in green writing beyond academia. He wrote ‘Wild jaar’ (2021) on his experiences of living a year outside and ‘IJsberen met optimisme’ (2022), a compilation of essays on human-nature relationships, and co-edited the book ‘Rewilding in Nederland’ (2022). For Koen, immersive nature experiences are a crucial entry point to more sustainable thinking and living.