Ron Cörvers

The Need for New Paradigms

In translating the concept of sustainable development into science and education, a number of fundamental barriers and practical obstacles have to be taken into account. However, there are also interesting opportunities and attractive challenges to make sustainable development “researchable, teachable, and learnable.” New paradigms, or at least a shift in dominant paradigms, are required. Transition of the old curricula into more “sustainability-oriented curricula” means that the limited mono- and multidisciplinary approaches need to be replaced by full multi- and interdisciplinarity. This educational transition, which took place in several Dutch universities in the past two decades, and shifts in paradigm changed the educational system, which is now based on ideas from problem-based learning, project education, internationalization, multi- and interdisciplinarity, and competence-based education.

Internet public opinion on climate change: a world views analysis of online reader comments

Purpose – The purpose of the study was to assess the representation of different world views with respect to climate change in public opinion on the internet. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted this world views analysis by means of a content analysis of publicly expressed opinions in the form of online lay reader comments to articles on climate change, published on Dutch newspaper web sites between August 2002 and December 2009. The comments were assigned to the world views of two typologies commonly used in ex ante assessment of climate policies. The classification of an online reader comment was based on world view specific keywords and positions on climate change. Findings – From a set of 2,148 comments to 168 articles found on the web sites of 19 newspapers, 314 comments could be assigned to a particular world view. For both typologies, the distribution of comments over the different world views was highly uneven, with world views characterized as “climate sceptic” scoring more than 9...

Problem-Based and Project-Based Learning for Sustainable Development

Universities hold a crucial responsibility and role to contribute to sustainable development, also in their education task. The concept of competencies for sustainable development and the idea of using real-world sustainability issues in education are promising approaches to transform sustainability programmes at universities into student-centred learning environments. Especially the educational formats of problem-based learning and project-based learning foster such a process of educational innovation towards student-centred learning. Moreover, hybrid forms of problem-based and project-based learning offer added value, but challenges for PPBL courses in sustainability remain salient.

1 Environmental problems in an international context

Publisher Summary Changes in the physical environment have created a new political challenge, that is, the question of how to deal with the maintenance of the worlds basic stock of natural capital. This chapter discusses this problem, which is closely linked to the more general social issues of economic interrelations and economic development. A great deal depends on the attitude taken by the developed countries. These countries must take the initiative in tackling global environmental threats and assist the poorest countries in solving their environmental problems having both, local and international effects. In doing so, the developed countries need to foster the development of the developing countries, for an environmental problem is also a matter of international inequality. The problems must be tackled within the context of a world system that is characterized by great cultural, political, and economic heterogeneity.