Contextualizing learning: Changing and making place

Abstract

The purpose of this review is to consider ways in which student participation in sustainability learning can be enhanced by developing contexts for learning. The aim is to critically analyse three examples of contextualizing learning within our own classes in sustainability education (SE).

In these examples we apply the design framework introduced in another case – in the traditional model this is concept-read-discuss-write and in the ActSHEN approach this is  concept-experience-reflect-discuss-produce. In this study we consider three cases: in two the students moved to a new venue for the class and in the third we tried to bring some aspects of the venue to the students. Students visited an art exhibition curated by a former member of the class on the theme of sustainability, and they visited a fisheries research institute where the two international groups of students were combined into 3-4 person groups and the focus was on wicked problems: where students might find them and their role in working with them on returning home in the case of the fisheries students. In the third setting which focused on the refugee situation then raging in Europe, we used visual and non-academic material to prepare and set the scene and participants included several guests with experience of working with refugees and with human rights.