Ecological Literacy

A Foundation for Sustainability

www.eco-labs.org
The Visual Communication of Ecological Literacy
Jody Joanna Boehnert - MPhil - School of Architecture and Design

Why? Context Levels of Learning & Engagement

Presently humanity’s ecological footprint exceeds its regenerative
capacity by 30%. This global overshoot is growing and ecosystems are 1st: Education ABOUT Sustainability
being run down as wastes (including greenhouse gases) accumulate in Content and/or skills emphasis. Easily accommodated
the air, land, and water. Climate change, resource depletion, pollution, into existing system. Learning ABOUT change.
loss of biodiversity, and other systemic environmental problems ACCOMMODATIVE RESPONSE - maintenance.
threaten to destroy the natural support systems on which we depend.

2nd: Education FOR Sustainability

What? Systems, Networks, Values
Additional values emphasis. Greening of institutions.
Problems cannot be understood in isolation but must be seen as
Deeper questioning and reform of purpose, policy and practice.
interconnected and interdependent. We must learn to engage with
Learning FOR change. REFORMATIVE RESPONSE - adaptive.
complexity and think in terms of systems to address current
ecological, social and economic problems. Images can be useful
tools to help with this learning process. 3rd: SUSTAINABLE Education
Capacity building and action emphasis.
How? Transformational Learning Experiential curriculum. Institutions as learning communities.
Learning AS change. TRANSFORMATIVE RESPONSE - enactment.
The value / action gap permeates education for sustainability and is
obvious in environmental coverage in the media. The gap between
Stephen Sterling, 2009
our ideas about what we value and what we are actually doing to
address the problem is the notorious value / action gap. This project
uses transformational learning to move from values to action. This
approach is integrated into cycles of action research and practice
based design work.

ECOLOGICAL

Actions
GOOD
DESIGN Ideas / Theories
ECONOMIC SOCIAL
Norms / Assumptions

Beliefs / Values

Paradigm / Worldview

Metaphysics / Cosmology

Transformational Learning

Values, Knowledge, Skills

A: SEEING (Perception )
An expanded ethical sensibility or consciousness
The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-
B: KNOWING (Conception) psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as
Ecological literacy - the understanding of the principles of organization A critical understanding of pattern, if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent,
that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life - is the first consequence and connectivity intractable, global problems arise directly from this mismatch.
step on the road to sustainability. The second step is the move Donella Meadows, 1982
towards ecodesign. We need to apply our ecological knowledge to C: DOING (Action)
the fundamental redesign of our technologies and social institutions, The ability to design and act relationally,
so as to bridge the current gap between human design and the integratively and wisely. References
Fritjof Capra. The Hidden Connections. London: Flamingo. 2003
Stephen Sterling. Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education. University of Bath. 2003
ecological sustainable systems of nature. Stephen Sterling. Transformational Learning. Researching Transformational Learning. University of Gloucestershire. 2009
Fritjof Capra, 2003 Stephen Sterling, 2009
[email protected] | [email protected]
This poster can be downloaded on this website: www.eco-labs.org
 ECOLOGICAL

ECONOMIC SOCIAL

We have to learn to see the world anew.

Einstein
The world is a complex, interconnected,
finite, ecological-social-psychological-
economic system. We treat it as if it were
not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple,
and infinite. Our persistent, intractable,
global problems arise directly from this
mismatch.

Donella Meadows, 1982

We live in a profoundly relational world, but
our perceptual, intellectual and learning
tools are inadequate to properly see and
appreciate this reality, and to develop an
appropriate ‘systemic wisdom’.

Stephen Sterling, 2009

Content
1. Context
2. Concept
3. Key ideas
4. History
5. Development
6. Practice
7. Learning
The volume of education has increased and
continues to increase, yet so do pollution,
exhaustion of resources, and the dangers
of ecological catastrophe. If still more
education is to save us, it would have to be
education of a different kind: education that
takes us into the depth of things.

Schumacher, 1974
1. Context

Springer-Verlag. The New Scientist.

Living Planet Report 2008. WWF
Living Planet Report 2006. WWF
Earth’s Natural Wealth: an Audit. The New Scientist
The Oil Age. Information design by Dave Menninger. 2006
 Global production of oil and gas
50
Non-con Gas
Gas
Gboe/a

40
NGLs
billion barrels

Polar Oil
30 Deep Water
Production,

Heavy
20 Regular

10

0
1930 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
Source: ASPO

The Oil Crunch

Securing the UK’s energy future
First report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES)

The Oil Crunch.

The UK Industry Taskforce
on Peak Oil and Energy Security.
2. Concept
ECOLOGICAL

ECONOMIC SOCIAL

The interlocking global crises of unsustainability

requires a far more fundamental social learning
and educational response than environ-mental
education, as a largely marginalized and contained
body of thought and practice, has yet been able to
effect.
Sterling, 2005
The development of ecological understanding
is not simply another subject to be learnt but
a fundamental change in the way we see the
world.

John Lyle, 1994

 Ecological Literacy
postmodern ecological worldview

shift from mechanistic metaphor and paradigm

towards an ecological metaphor and paradigm
The first step in our endeavor to build sustainable
communities must be to become ‘ecologically literate’,
i.e. to understand of the principles of organization,
common to all living systems, that ecosystems have
evolved to sustain the web of life…

Fritjof Capra, 2002

This systemic understanding of life allows us
to formulate a set of principles of organization
that may be identified as the basic principles
of ecology and used as guidelines for building
sustainable human communities...

We need to apply our ecological knowledge to
the fundamental redesign of our technologies
and social institutions, so as to bridge the current
gap between human design and the ecological
sustainable systems of nature.

Fritjof Capra, 2002

3. Key Ideas
Systems thinking asserts that valid knowledge
and meaningful understanding comes from
building up whole pictures of phenomenon, not
by breaking them into parts.
• shift thinking from objects to processes
• shift thinking about relationships from
hierarchies to networks
Whole Systems Thinking
= systemism + ecologism
= systems thinking + ecological thought

• extension of perception
• connection in conceptual thinking
• integration of planning and action
• Not all systems thinking is ecological.
• Not all ecological thinking is aware of systems
thinking.

Stephen Sterling
Paradigm

Thomas Kuhn
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962

A basic way of perceiving, thinking, valuing and

doing associated with a particular vision of reality.

Paradigm

A constellation of concepts, values, perceptions,

and practices shared by a community, which forms
a particuliar vision of reality that is the basis of the
whole the community organizes itself.

Capra, 1986
Implicit in the notion of paradigm is the relative
unawareness of deep assumptions.

Paradigms have a normative aspect – they

tell people what is important, legitimate and
reasonable.

Patton, 1990
Paradigms are the lens through which we look a
the world and it therefore determines what we
perceive. A paradigm is a set of beliefs or as-
sumptions we make about the world, normally
beneath the level of awareness and therefore
mostly never questioned.

Stacey, 1996
 Three components of a paradigm

ethos - belief, imaginal, dimension - epistemology

eidos - dimension of ideas / concepts - ontology

praxis - reflective intention and action - methodology

Stephen Sterling
 Actions

Ideas / Theories

Norms / Assumptions

Beliefs / Values

Paradigm / Worldview

Metaphysics / Cosmology

Transformational Learning

Values, Knowledge, Skills

A: SEEING (Perception )
An expanded ethical sensibility or consciousness

B: KNOWING (Conception)
A critical understanding of pattern,
consequence and connectivity

C: DOING (Actio n)
The ability to design and act relationally,
integratively and wisely.

Stephen Sterling, 2009

Epistemology
The study of the nature of knowledge,
its origins, structure and validity.

- ‘how we know’
- epistemic learning = transformative learning
Challenge of unsustainability requires a deep
learning response, which may be termed
transformative or epistemic learning
4. History
Gregory Bateson suggested we suffer from
‘a fundamental epistemological error’
in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972).
Scientific revolution (17th century)
Radical change in epistemological position / paradigm

A: Shift away from Medieval Christianity

- end of the idea of a sacred world

B: Copernicus, Galileo & Issac Newton

- geocentric view of the world displaced by astronomy
C: Scientific method:
- Francis Bacon & Rene Descartes
- empiricism
- reductive thinking
- dualism:
subject & object
mind & body,
people & nature
- the whole was no more than the sum of the parts
- mechanical world- world as a machine metaphor
- facts and values are unrelated
- vision of the material world as a great machine.
- reductionism tries to gain understanding of a
phenomenon by breaking it into the component
parts. This works for study of computers and cars
but not natural systems.
Reductionist science is...at the root of the
growing ecological crisis, because it entails
a transformation of nature such that the
processes, regularities and regenerative capacity
of nature are destroyed.

Vandana Shiva, 1988

 mechanistic,
dualistic,
rationalist,
objectivist,
and reductivist
 Clash of paradigms
Dominant worldview as flawed, dysfunctional
Mechanism Ecological

Objectivist Participative

Reductionist, Holistic,
dualistic   integrative

Reductive Systemic
Stephen Sterling, 2009
Crises of Perception
value driven
participatory

ecological
wholistic

systemic
transdisciplinary

empirical
objective

reductionist
mechanical
Seeing differently
Put simply, the case against the dominant
Western worldview is that it is no longer
constitutes an adequate model of reality -
particularly ecological reality. The map is wrong,
and moreover, we commonly confuse the map
(worldview) for the territory (reality).
Sterling, 1993
5. Development

70s - Meadows, Bateson

80s - Capra, Harman, Clark
90s - Orr, Laszlo, Hawkins, Kortean, Berman+
00s - Sterling, 100s+
Problems as symptoms of systemic failure,
rather than random errors requiring fixes.
 Actions

Ideas/theories

Norms/assumptions

Beliefs/values

Paradigm/worldview

Metaphysics/cosmology

Stephen Sterling on transition from beliefs to actions: ‘Levels of Knowing’, 2009

What we already ‘know’ frames what we see,
and what we see frames what we understand.

The things we make are an extension of the

manner in which we think.
6. Practice
footprinting theory
lifecyle analysis wicked problems
cradle to cradle tipping points
One Planet Living resilience
biomimicry technology lock-in
embodied energy carrying capacity
rebound effect dematerialisation
energy descent ecosystem services
general systems externality costs
Values lead to what we design
& designers subconsiously embed values in to
what we make.

But our value system presently does not

acknowledge our dependence on ecological
support systems.
Some lessons from ecological systems for
design of human systems.

1. Diversity
2. Feedbacks
3. Resilience
4. Non-linear thresholds
5. Emergence
7. Learning

How? Transformational Learning

The value / action gap permeates education for sustainability and is
obvious in environmental coverage in the media. The gap between
our ideas about what we value and what we are actually doing to
address the problem is the notorious value / action gap. This project
uses transformational learning to move from values to action. This
approach is integrated into cycles of action research and practice
based design work.
 Actions

Ideas / Theories

Norms / Assumptions

Beliefs / Values

Paradigm / Worldview

Metaphysics / Cosmology

Transformational Learning

Values, Knowledge, Skills

A: SEEING (Perc eption )
An expanded ethical sensibility or consciousness

B: KNOWING (Conception)
A critical understanding of pattern,
consequence and connectivity

C: DOING (Actio n)
The ability to design and act relationally,
integratively and wisely.

Stephen Sterling, 2009

A sufficient and whole learning response -
at personal, organisational and social levels -
requires shifts in the three interrelated areas of
human knowing and experience:

perception (Seeing – affective dimension)

conception (Knowing – cognitive dimension)
action (Doing – intentional dimension)

Stephen Sterling, 2009

10 Assumptions of Reductionist Thinking

1 ‘To every problem, there’s a solution’

2 ‘We can understand something by breaking it down into its component parts’

3 ‘The whole (of something) is no more than the sum of its parts’

4 ‘Most processes are linear’

5 ‘Most issues and events are can be understood by examining the components.

6 ‘It is acceptable to draw your circle of attention or concern quite tightly, as in ”that’s not my concern’

7 ‘We can define or value something by distinguishing it from what it is not, or from its opposite’

8 ‘Objectivity is both possible and necessary to understand issues‘

9 ‘We can understand things best through a rational response. Any other approach is irrational’

10 ‘If we know what the state of something is now, we can usually predict future outcomes’

Stephen Sterling 2009

10 Assumptions of Reductionist Thinking
• problem-solving
• analysis
• reductionism
• cause-effect
• atomism
• narrow boundaries
• objectivism
• dualism
• rationalism
• determinism
An emerging ecological (relational/systemic)
paradigm presents a sane and hopeful
evolutionary pathway, necessary to the
conditions we now face, with the power
to transcend the disintegrative effects of
modernism and the disempowering relativism of
deconstructive postmodernism.

Stephen Sterling, 2009

To simplify, two ways of thinking...
Problem-solving Reframing /alleviation
Analysis Synthesis
Reductionism Holism
Closed cause-effect Multiple influences
Atomism/segregative Integrative
Narrow boundaries Extension of boundaries
Objectivism Critical subjectivity
Dualism Pluralism / duality
Rationalism Rational / non-rational
Determinism Uncertainty, ambiguity
Key cultural worldviews
Metaphor Mechanism Ecology/living
systems
Epistemology Objectivist Participative

Reductionist, Holistic,
Ontology
dualistic   integrative
Methodology Reductive Systemic
Educational paradigm
Educational Positivist Interpretivist; Critical; Poststructural Participative
paradigm Constructivist radical

Role of Instruction Facilitation Critical Deconstruct- Mediation,

educator pedagogy ion mentoring/
transformative ‘invitational’

Curriculum Prescribed Constructivist; Issues based Pluralist Indicative,

emergent

Pedagogy Delivery Learner Critical Deconstructive Co-inquiry

centered pedagogy
Transactional

Cultural worldview/metaphor
Mechanistic..............modernist…………….Postmodern….........Ecological…
Our machines, our value systems, our
educational systems will all have to be
informed by (the) switch, from the machine
age when we tried to design schools to be like
factories, to an ecological age, when we want
to design schools, and families and social
institutions in terms of maintaining the quality
of life not just for our species, but for the
whole planet.
Mary Catherine Bateson, 1997
Last thoughts...

‘It is better to do the right thing wrongly, than

the wrong thing better and better…’

Russell Ackoff
We can’t solve problems by using the same
kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein
 ECOLOGICAL

ECONOMIC SOCIAL

www.eco-labs.org
http://teach-in.ning.com

Further Reading:
Capra, Fritjof. 2002. The Hidden Connections. London: Flamingo, 2003.
Orr, David. Ecological Literacy. Albany: State of New York Press, 1992.
Stephen Sterling. Whole Systems Thinking as a Basis for Paradigm Change in Education. University of Bath. 2003