Sunday, June 10, 2012

I am currently exploring ways and means to develop suitable stimulus materials for our APL candidates to reflect on what makes a sustainable practioner in their sepcific disciplines, occupationbs and professions. I'm pondering Sam Mann's (the green graduate. 2011. p38) statement: "Sustainability is about context and the big picture (systems thinking, ethics, evaluating change,scientific and creative paradigms) and a few methodologies.(eg. carbon footprinting,as appropriate). We can offer a bottom line foir each discipline. A sustainable practitionere will be succesful when they support people and nature in their actions by: a) enabling people to meet their own and future generations' needs in an equitable way; b) causing no harm to nature; c) consuming resources at a rate at which nature replaces them; d) ensuring nature is not subject to materials it cannot process. I'm hoping some folk will attempt to develop a statement about themselves as a sustainable practitioner in the (particular occupation or discipline) based on this bottom line. Currently I'm working with a number of Social Service candidates and am conscious that the School has chosen to highlight the social justice "equitable"sense of sustainability. Design has a much more obvious focus on consumables. I'm wondering what would make me (an educator) a sustainable practitioner?

1 comment:

peterb said...

Willie, I think that last statement is a challenge to us all. One the one hand I think I know what a sustainable educational practitioner would look like, but on the other hand the parameters of free action are severely constrained by working for a large organisation. I suppose it comes down to a compromise fed by awareness and a constant tinkering with our habits under the sharp light of new knowledge.