Values-based Transformative Learning

SUMMARY

For many years, the International Environment Forum, as a Bahá’í-inspired professional organisation, has developed and partnered in educational approaches and learning materials that combine the scientific realities of the challenges facing the Earth System and its dominant human species, with the values required to accept the unity of the human family and the necessary solidarity in justice and equity, and thus to motivate transformation in individual behaviour, community cooperation and collective action. Its website (https://iefworld.org/learning) makes available a wide variety of materials for transformative learning for sustainability and environmental responsibility. It also draws on the wider experience of the Bahá’í faith with spiritual transformation, community discourse and social action that has already demonstrated its effectiveness in a multitude of cultural contexts around the world. The innovations explored combine science and values to heal our relationship with nature, to draw on interfaith approaches across all spiritual traditions and Indigenous worldviews, and to generate educational materials that can be incorporated in any educational system or used directly by individuals and communities.

The central purpose of the International Environment Forum since its founding nearly 30 years ago has been to provide its membership, partners and the wider public with a deeper understanding of the science behind climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and all the other challenges to the Earth System and human wellbeing, as well as a systemic perspective on their underlying causes in our economic system, social organisation, institutions and governance. Despite decades of effort, humanity continues to degrade the planet, and powerful interests block the necessary fundamental transformation towards a just and sustainable world society in all its diversity.

IEF members participated in the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 where IEF was accredited in the Scientific and Technological Organisation Major Group, Rio+20 in 2012, and many other UN meetings and climate change COPs. It is accredited to the Convention on Biological Diversity and has members that contribute to IPBES, and as an organization it has worked actively to share the outcomes of IPBES reports with its members and the public. It continues to support efforts for United Nations reform and more effective global environmental governance (15). These broad activities have provided the grounding for the development of learning materials and other educational resources all aimed at transformative learning.

The IEF has prepared and shared educational materials in many forms, from simple materials on environmental management for rural village use, and on-line courses, to case studies of effective social action. Its website is its primary resource where these materials are freely available, and it has also contributed to academic publications, some referenced in this paper.

The distinctive contribution of the IEF is its combination of science and values as complementary and mutually-reinforcing components of education (4). Inspired by the learning paradigm inherent in the Bahá’í Faith, and by its openness to other faith traditions and to indigenous worldviews and spiritualities, it aims both to inform on the realities we are facing, and to motivate change in behaviour, as essential contributors to more hopeful approaches to the future. Its interfaith course on climate change has been used widely (17). This led to collaboration in an EU-funded programme to develop values-based indicators of education for sustainable development (5,6,7,8,9,10,11). IEF has collaborated in the former Consumer Citizenship Network and its subsequent International Partners Network (https://www.inn.no/english/ccl/teaching-materials-and-resources/index.h…), as well as the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures project (https://tesf.network/resources-library/).

Its approach is also founded in complex systems science, inspired by the efforts of the Club of Rome since 1972, and many other civil society and academic efforts to lay out the directions toward a better future. The many transformations of the Anthropocene are considered as a whole in their environmental, social and economic dimensions, challenging many of the assumptions about human nature and purpose that underlie the present system. Donella Meadows herself laid out the importance of new paradigms and shifts in values as leverage points for systems transformation.

Our approaches to learning go beyond the present materialistic interpretation of human purpose and social organisation to enable diverse explorations of learning in communities rooted in their local realities and diversity, while recognising global responsibility for the common good of all. That includes our essential dependence on nature and the Earth system in general, and the need to replace the exploitation of natural resources by responsible stewardship. The Sustainable Development Goals are a useful framework for integrated learning, and the IEF has created teaching materials making them relevant to communities, organisations and individuals (12,13,14).

Our materials designed for rural village use and for small island developing states feature indigenous wisdom and traditional knowledge alongside environmental science to reinforce holistic views of humans within nature and to encourage the maintenance or restoration of local traditional resource management practices (1,2,3).

As the dynamics of change accelerate, and the signs of disintegration in existing institutions become more evident, it is necessary to educate for resilience and solidarity so as to find ways through the transition in the years immediately ahead as called for in the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (https://www.ipbes.net/transformative-change-assessment). This requires responses at multiple levels, from local communities and national governments to the global level, where the vacuum in effective governance and implementation of agreements is most obvious (15). We are pushing for management of the Earth System to become the fourth pillar of the United Nations (16).

Future learning must adapt to these rapid changes with flexibility and responsiveness, particularly for youth whose aspirations are threatened by anxiety at what they see around them. They need to be a primary target for education that gives hope and that empowers them to take action at whatever level available to them. Learning with a values dimension can help to give meaning and purpose as they devote their lives to service to their fellow human beings and to the natural environment upon which we all depend.

REFERENCES AND LEARNING MATERIALS CITED

1. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 1998. Small Island Environmental Management Training Course. Prepared for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, originally published on UNEP Islands website, archived at http://yabaha.net/dahl/islands/siem.htm.

2. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2002. Linking Science and Indigenous Knowledge for Local Environmental Management. Presented at World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, https://iefworld.org/ddahl02b.htm.

3. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2008. Rural Environmental Management: A do-it-yourself course and training programme. 48 units. International Environment Forum. https://iefworld.org/rem.htm

4. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2012. Ethical Sustainability Footprint for Individual Motivation. Paper presented at the Planet Under Pressure International Scientific Conference, London, 26-29 March 2012. https://iefworld.org/ddahl12d

5. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2012. Values education for sustainable consumption and production: from knowledge to action. Paper presented at the Global Research Forum on Sustainable Consumption and Production, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 13-15 June 2012, on the theme: Global and Regional Research on Sustainable Consumption and Production: Achievements, Challenges, and Dialogues. Proceedings: https://grf-spc.weebly.com/rio-de-janeiro-2012-publications.html Chapter 1, pp. 1-7. https://grf-spc.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/3/3/21333498/_dahlgrf_values_edu….

6. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2013. "A Multi-Level Framework and Values-Based Indicators to Enable Responsible Living", pp. 63-77. In Ulf Schrader, Vera Fricke, Declan Doyle and Victoria W. Thoresen (eds), Enabling Responsible Living, Springer Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg, (hardback/eBook). DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-22048-7_6 http://yabaha.net/dahl/papers/2013c.pdf

7. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2014. "Putting the Individual at the Centre of Development: Indicators of Well-being for a New Social Contract". Chapter 8, pp. 83-103, In François Mancebo and Ignacy Sachs (eds), Transitions to Sustainability. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9532-6_8 http://yabaha.net/dahl/papers/2014i_chpt8.pdf

8. Dahl, Arthur Lyon, Marie K. Harder, Marilyn Mehlmann, Kirsi Niinimaki, Victoria Thoresen, Onno Vinkhuyzen, Dana Vokounova, Gemma Burford, and Ismael Velasco. 2014. Measuring What Matters: Values-Based Indicators. A Methods Sourcebook. PERL Values-Based Learning Toolkit 1. Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL) Available online: https://iefworld.org/fl/PERL_toolkit1.pdf

9. Dahl, Arthur Lyon, Marie K. Harder, Marilyn Mehlmann, Kirsi Niinimaki, Victoria Thoresen, Onno Vinkhuyzen, Dana Vokounova, Gemma Burford, and Ismael Velasco. 2014. Discovering What Matters: A Journey of Thinking and Feeling. Activities Developed with Students, for Students. PERL Values-Based Learning Toolkit 2. Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL). Available online: https://iefworld.org/fl/PERL_toolkit2.pdf

10. Dahl, Arthur Lyon, Marie K. Harder, Marilyn Mehlmann, Kirsi Niinimaki, Victoria Thoresen, Onno Vinkhuyzen, Dana Vokounova, Gemma Burford, and Ismael Velasco. 2014. Growing a Shared Vision: A Toolkit for Schools. Activities for Organisational and Staff Development. PERL Values-Based Learning Toolkit 3. Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL). Available online: https://iefworld.org/fl/PERL_toolkit3.pdf

11. Burford, Gemma, Elona Hoover, Arthur L. Dahl, and Marie K. Harder. 2015. "Making the Invisible Visible: Designing Values-Based Indicators and Tools for Identifying and Closing ‘Value-Action Gaps'", pp. 113-133. In Thoresen, Victoria W., Robert J. Didham, Jorgen Klein and Declan Doyle (eds), Responsible Living: Concepts, Education and Future Perspectives. Heidelberg and Switzerland: Springer. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15305-6_9 http://yabaha.net/dahl/papers/2015burford.pdf

12. IEF Toolkit for the Sustainable Development Goals. 2017. Resources at the community, organization and individual levels. https://iefworld.org/node/882

13. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2021. Why Education is Key for the Sustainable Development Goals, essay on Global Governance Forum Website, 19 January 2021, https://globalgovernanceforum.org/education-sustainable-development-goa…

14. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2021. For Nature's Sake: A Moral Compass for the SDGs. Viewpoints, G20 Interfaith Forum, 19 March 2021. https://blog.g20interfaith.org/2021/03/19/for-natures-sake-a-moral-comp…

15. Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, Sylvia and Arthur Lyon Dahl. 2021. Towards a Global Environment Agency: Effective Governance for Shared Ecological Risks. A Climate Governance Commission Report. Stockholm: Global Challenges Foundation. 77 p. https://iefworld.org/fl/dkarlsson_dahl21.pdf

16. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2024. Towards Effective Multilevel Environmental and Sustainability Governance for Shared Ecological Risks, chapter 19, pp. 317-331 in Global Governance and International Cooperation: Managing Global Catastrophic Risks in the 21st Century, Richard Falk and Augusto Lopez-Claros (eds), London: Routledge. https://globalgovernanceforum.org/global-governance-international-coope…

17. Muller, Christine. (frequently updated). Scientific and Spiritual Dimensions of Climate Change. IEF website https://iefworld.org/ssdcc0.html.