“We are learning a new way of learning”
Student-led Learning for Sustainability in University
Caitlin Wilson
I am fascinated by the mysterious and very human processes of learning and change.
I joined this course to do a project on my own teaching and to meet and learn with and from my peers in the other Nordic countries. I was totally surprised by how our learning accelerated when we met at the four course sessions, and I tried to replicate some of these ways of interacting and learning in my own teaching.
In my project I focused on my students in the School of Education, on their experience and how they learn. I, with my co-teacher, put the focus of the course on the students such that the content and teaching and learning methods revolved around them and came out from them. Through this we hoped to build on their interest, cultivate intrinsic motivation, and make the course relevant to their identities as students, future researchers, and global citizens. The students reported in interviews that they felt genuine participation in class and a sense of responsibility for their learning and for their actions as practitioners.
Perhaps most interestingly, some said what they really got out of the course was seeing that there was a different way of teaching and learning that “maybe you keep longer.”
This project has shown me the benefits of paying attention and working intentionally. Even making small changes like shifting the focus in the classroom created dramatic effects.
I had the same feeling about my experience in the pilot course. What I found was that when we, the participants in the pilot course, came together over issues of sustainability and education, something happened.
By bringing together many perspectives and getting something tangible to discuss, there arose a spirit of solidarity and inquiry, this feeling that we were in this together and we could figure out ways forward into an unpredictable future.
More often than not I am discouraged by the state of the world and our future prospects, but from this course I got the conviction that the more brains, hearts and souls we can gather in the spirit of creating our future, the more we actually do create a beautiful future, starting now, with ourselves.
What matters the most for learning and change is the question of how. Both in my project and as a participant in the pilot, the magic formula seems to be some kind of combination of acting deliberately, listening to each other, being open to possibilities, and creating together.
