Sustainability, Human Well-Being, and the Future of Education

This open access book explores the key dimensions of a future education system designed to enable individuals, schools, and communities to achieve the twin twenty-first century challenges of sustainability and human well-being. For much of the twentieth century, Western education systems prepared students to enter the workforce, contribute to society and succeed in relatively predictable contexts. Today, people are at the controls of the planetmaking decisions that are dramatically reshaping social, economic, and environmental systems at a global scale. What is education's purpose in this new reality? What and how must we learn now? The volatility and uncertainty caused by digitalization, globalization, and climate change weave a common backdrop through each chapter. Using case studies drawn from Finland and the US, chapter authors explore various aspects of learning and education system design through the lenses of sustainability and human well-being to evaluate how our understanding and practice of education must transform. Using their scholarly research and experience as practitioners, the authors propose new approaches to preparing learners for a new frontier of the human experience fraught with risks but full of opportunity.

Anticipates radical change in society (such as a future without work) and asks what role education, and more importantly learning, should play in that future Originates from a long term strategic focus at the Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra) on developing and working toward a new societal model organized around sustainable well-being Includes recommendations for how practitioners, school and system leaders, and communities can carry the work forward

Autorentext
Justin W. Cook is Senior Lead for Strategy at the Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra) in Helsinki, Finland. He supports Sitra's societal transformation activities through research and projects aimed at catalyzing sustainability and human wellbeing in Finland and beyond.

Inhalt

1. Learning at the Edge of History.- 2. Toward Robust Foundations for Sustainable Well-being Societies: Learning to Change by Changing How We Learn.- 3. Sustainable Wellbeing SocietyA Challenge for a Public Sector Institution.- 4. Schools as Equitable Communities of Inquiry.- 5. Transforming Our Worldview Towards a Sustainable Future.- 6. Towards Solving the Impossible Problems.- 7. Unlocking the Future of Learning by Redesigning Educator Learning.- 8. Four-Dimensional Education for Sustainable Societies.- 9. Creativity, the Arts and the Future of Work.- 10. A New Narrative for the Future: Learning, Social Cohesion and Redefining Us.- 11. Climate Change Education: A New Approach for a World of Wicked Problems.- 12. CASE STUDY: KaospilotsFrom Passive Listeners to Global Change Agents.- 13. CASE STUDY: Reggio Emilia and the Future of Early Childhood Education.