Exploring Regenerative Cultures for Sustainability

This course provides a space for students to explore perspectives and educational practices for regenerative cultures in the context of major societal and environmental challenges of our time. The ‘outsider’ perspective manifested in many research approaches and the loss of regular meaningful contact with nature pose a challenge to having direct lived experiences to explore what it means to feel for and to be in relation with the world. In contrast, this course takes a self-inquiry-based approach to learning, where students are invited to experientially explore their relation to nature as part of a community of life and develop an understanding of educational practices rooted in their first-personal experience of the latter. More specifically, it asks to what extend place-based, nature-inclusive education can foster a sense of connectedness and belonging to the (natural) world, and how such a sense influences the motivation to care and act for sustainability. Therefore, the course introduces practical activities aiming at reconciling self-care, other-care, planet-care and offers tools for students dealing with climate and environmentally related anxiety.

Central to the course is a full-week outdoor practical camp in which we explore a diversity of nature and community-based practices (partly inspired by Deep Ecology). These practices aim to empower participants to widen and deepen boundaries of concern and to move beyond a crisis mentality toward an inspired and hopeful commitment to sustainability. While the course facilitators offer a series of such practices, the camp constitutes a collective and co-created learning journey in which students actively participate in the construction of knowledge and meaning based on their experiences. At the end of the course, students are challenged to mirror their experiences during the course against current (higher) education with the aim of generating ideas for how (higher) education can become more regenerative.

Practicalities

The full-week (7 days) outdoor camp takes place in P6B and requires full-time availability including overnight stays. This means a student cannot attend another course in P6B. Please be aware that this course can be emotionally engaging and intense.

A fee (approximately 175-225 euro) applies for the outdoor camp to cover food and accommodation. The course is also open for PhD students. In case you want to follow this course as a PhD student, please contact the course coordinator before the start. Maximum number of participants: 20

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Explain, understand and reflect upon the concept of regenerative cultures in the face of prevailing environmental and societal challenges
• Understand and apply principles of personal sustainability science, i.e., using first-personal research methods to reflect on their experiences with the educational activities proposed throughout the course
• More deeply explore their own place in the world as part of a community of life and reflect on what the course experience means for their worldview, personal values, and response-ability in the face of prevailing environmental and societal challenges
• Employ intra- and interpersonal sustainability competencies, such as self-awareness, value clarity perspective-taking, and compassion toward self and others
• Critically reflect on the value and process of experiential, nature-inclusive learning activities, as well as design and facilitate the latter in a purposeful, pedagogically intentional way

Mandatory Knowledge:
ZSS06200 Fieldwork Safety