Pedagogies of a Just Transition: A Provocation

For our very own survival, we must learn to live together sustainably on this planet. We must change the way we think and act as individuals and societies. So, in turn, education must change to create a peaceful and sustainable world for the survival and prosperity of current and future generations. Now is the time for every education system to lead the transformation that is needed to set our world on a more just and sustainable course, because our common future depends on our present actions. We have a responsibility and opportunity to make a difference. We recognize the power of education to transform practice. Faculties, Colleges, Schools, and Departments of Education have a major role in the education, research, policy formation, practices and information exchange necessary to make these goals possible. This is a social and an ethical responsibility. We must act. (2022). Students, too, are calling for change in what and how they are learning. At the 2023 Barnard Bold conference, a panel of undergraduates (“Thinking Climate Feeling—A Roundtable”) made it clear that education that does not incorporate ecological issues is irrelevant to their future on this warming planet. They called for the incorporation of indigenous ways of knowing across the curriculum, the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries, and practical alterations to the day-to-day operation of educational institutions to make them more sustainable. These world, university, and student leaders share a belief that what happens in ecosystems of teaching and learning impacts the trajectory of the wider ecosystems that surround them. This article identifies Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) as a powerful tool in bringing about this shift toward education for a sustainable future, and it argues for the Just Transition Framework as a guide for this work. The Just Transition Framework (JTF) was developed by the Climate Justice Alliance (2024), a network of justice-oriented organizations and communities on the front lines of the climate crisis dedicated to organized, collective action to bring about a just and sustainable future. The term “Just Transition” describes the global transition “away from extractive systems of production, consumption and political oppression, and towards resilient, regenerative and equitable economies.” The framework offers a broad set of principles that can be applied to any industry, organization, or process; it is useful for both identifying the means by which current systems uphold extractive and inequitable structures and for visioning and planning for a regenerative future. As agents of change within higher education, CTLs are in a position to use this framework to promote equity, justice, and sustainability in both what gets taught and how teaching happens. If all of education must change to meet the challenges of the climate and ecological crises, then CTLs are uniquely positioned to lead this change in North American institutions of higher education. As Mary Wright (2023) argues in Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education, CTLs “are increasingly positioning themselves as change agents” within their institutions. She writes, “CTL goals that support institutional missions have decreased in frequency [since 2010]. In contrast, we see a rising emphasis on compelling home institutions to change, and ideas about supporting student success and changing culture have certainly increased.” Wright identifies that some of the specific “changes” that CTLs are working toward are to “create a culture of teaching (… 75% in 2016)” and “to support ideals of diversity, equity, justice, inclusion, and/or culturally responsive teaching.” See, for example, Dietz et al. (2022) on the utilization of the wicked problems framework to advance DEIJ initiatives and cultural change through CTLs. CTLs can bolster and expand their growing commitment to justice by pairing it with a commitment to sustainability. One obstacle to shifting higher education toward education for justice and sustainability is the contemporary academy's focus on disciplinary boundaries and content. Many instructors believe that their discipline, or their courses, are not relevant to the climate crisis, and therefore that there are no opportunities for them to meaningfully contribute to the work of building the future. Similarly, CTLs may object that, even if they do act as change agents within their institutions, they are not in the business of advising instructors of what to teach, only on how to teach, which limits their potential for sustainability interventions. To begin to address these concerns, instructors and CTLs can start by realizing that, because a Just Transition requires rethinking every aspect of society, every discipline and course can make interventions to transition toward justice and sustainability. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a useful resource to begin expanding instructors’ and learners’ understanding of the interwoven complexity of the climate crisis, and to begin brainstorming how any individual discipline or course can contribute (Andreoni and Richard 2024). The SGDs, taken as a whole, cover most (if not all) disciplines of teaching and learning, and they help instructors to expand their understanding of the work that can and must be done to build a livable future for our students. Used in consultation with disciplinary experts, the SDGs reframe the question, “what does my discipline have to do with climate change?” to “how can I draw on the unique values, methods, and knowledge frameworks of my discipline to build a better world?”—a conversation in which many educators are well-versed. For example, a lecturer in gender studies may have difficulty connecting the dots between their course and the climate crisis because there is little relationship between gender theory and carbon emissions. However, with the knowledge that “Gender Equality” is the fifth SDG, and the Roadmap's prompt to “promote gender equality in particular with regard to specific gendered sustainability challenges” (United Nations 2015), that same instructor has a place to begin: how does ecological change differentially impact people of different gender identities? How do the ideologies of ecological exploitation and gender exploitation intersect? How does an ecofeminist lens illuminate new possible futures? Thinking more expansively, these goals can also aid in the creation of new courses and curricula that move beyond disciplinary borders. Although every discipline has something to contribute, no one discipline can solve any of these challenges alone. CTLs are uniquely positioned as incubators of interdisciplinary relationships, serving instructors and departments from across universities that may not ever otherwise encounter each other. This positionality makes them uniquely suited to promote initiatives that will give students the transdisciplinary tools they need to thrive in a changing world. For example, Barnard College's Center for Engaged Pedagogy supports “Climate Co-Teaching” with resources, mentorship, and retreats that help instructors from different disciplines collaborate to teach a course specifically designed to blend disciplinary borders and provide students with transformative learning experiences. Even if a CTL does not want to get involved with advising instructors on disciplinary content selection, they can incorporate these SDGs into their broader pedagogical resources to help plant the seeds of eco-pedagogy in instructors’ minds. For example, Georgia Tech's Serve-Learn-Sustain Initiative houses a cache of teaching resources, the “Teaching Toolkit” (2024), that support instructors in applying different pedagogical methods (working with case studies, service-learning projects, etc.) through the lens of sustainability. Many of these resources explicitly engage the SDGs, such as “Designing a Course with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” (2024), which provides support for writing learning objectives, engaging in backward design, and working with case studies, all through the lens of sustainability. To shift to a sustainable future, we need to rethink what, where and how we learn to develop the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that enable us all to make informed decisions and take individual and collective action on local, national and global urgencies (emphasis added) The rest of this article focuses on the how of learning, as well as the values and attitudes that education can cultivate, via the Just Transition Framework. more recent injustices include: the political and economic abandonment of whole communities who once prospered from mining; employment of forced labour in the production of solar panels and batteries; wind farms that threaten endangered species of birds; and climate debt … which was the subject of much debate at the recent United Nations (UN) COP27 discussions. (1–2) It is clear that the transitioning global economy will impact students; both their ability to focus on learning while in school and the work that they do when they graduate. How can CTLs help institutions of higher education adapt to the changing needs of students, and of the global ecosystem? The provocation of this essay is this: what would it look like if CTLs, and higher education in general, structured their work around facilitating a Just Transition and applied the JTF principles to teaching and learning methodologies? Adopting JTF as a set of guiding principles defines and expands the role of a CTL as a “change agent,” and it utilizes the momentum of CTLs’ increased focus on supporting “ideals of diversity, equity, justice, inclusion, and/or culturally responsive teaching” that Wright identifies (2023). In the same way that CTLs have been making the argument that inclusive teaching strategies can be utilized in any course, regardless of subject matter (Lawrie et al. 2017), they can lead the conversation about incorporating pedagogies of a Just Transition across the curriculum. The specific principles of the JTF are organized into five categories of transition: purpose, governance, resources, worldview, and work (Climate Justice Alliance 2024). In each of these categories, the framework identifies the guiding value system in an extractive economy (current) and an alternative value system under a post-Just Transition regenerative economy. Under an extractive economy, the guiding purpose is the “enclosure of wealth and power,” governance is founded on “militarism,” resource use is structured by the expectation of “extraction” and the refrain “dig, burn, dump,” the guiding worldview is “consumerism” and a “colonial mindset,” and work is organized around “exploitation.” In contrast, the JTF proposes a regenerative economy whose purpose is to bring about “ecological and social wellbeing,” supported by governance founded on “deep democracy,” regenerative use of resources, a worldview focused on “caring and sacredness,” and work organized around “cooperation” (Climate Justice Alliance 2024). To apply this framework, the Just Transition advocate must first identify the ways in which their current institution, system, or practice aligns with and upholds the values of the current extractive economic system, and then take action to revise or rebuild it to facilitate and support a regenerative value system. The rest of this essay considers a few examples of how this kind of work can be, and is already being, done in educational development. Within the JTF, the shift from extractive to ecological practices flows through a values filter, which can be broadly applied in decision making processes. The values filter states, “A Just Transition Must: Shift economic control to communities; Democratize wealth and the workplace; Advance ecological restoration; Drive racial justice and social equity; Relocalize most production and consumption; Retain and restore cultures and traditions” (Climate Justice Alliance 2024). As Wright indicates, many CTLs already see themselves as drivers of racial justice and social equity (2023). Recent advances in culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogical frameworks indicate educational development's potential to help retain and restore cultures and traditions (Ginsberg and Wlodkowski 2009). What would it look like to feed all teaching and learning, and all strategic planning in higher education, through this filter? Would students have control over how their tuition dollars are allocated? Would symbiotic connections between the “town and gown” flourish? Could institutions of higher learning become multifaceted agents of ecological restoration? The JTF illuminates these questions and more as possible-to-be-asked, and the potential answers to these questions begin to sketch pathways toward a more just and sustainable future. Of particularly pertinent note, for example, is how this values filter might apply to institutions’ engagement with generative artificial intelligence (genAI). As CTLs scramble to support instructors with everything from redesigning assessments to disincentivize genAI use to intentionally incorporating genAI into courses, it is worth slowing down and asking about the potential impacts of this technology on the Just Transition. Does genAI shift economic control to communities, or does it further concentrate economic power in a few large corporations and the institutions that do business with them? Does it democratize wealth and the workplace, or does it disadvantage workers who do not have access to the most up-to-date institutional licenses? Does it advance ecological restoration, and delocalize production and consumption, or does it—for example—deplete scarce fresh groundwater resources in communities far away from where the technology is being used (Danelski 2023)? Does it drive racial and social equity and retain and restore cultures and traditions, or does it rely on exploiting an traumatizing marginalized workers (Rowe 2023)? Let us take one of the JTF categories of transition and attempt to apply it to teaching and learning in higher education. In some ways, “governance” is the easiest place to begin. Often large and unwieldy, institutions of higher education can be strictly hierarchized in administrative and academic structures, and the echoes of militarism are hard to miss. Consider, for example, one of the most pervasive forces of governance in the classroom: assessment. Under traditional assessment structures, in which each student is assigned a grade by an instructor based on a set of criteria (explicit or implicit), the power dynamic is clearly visible: the instructor wields influence over the student based on their singular ability to determine that student's academic well-being. As Jesse Stommel argues in Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop (2023), “Ultimately, traditional grades are better at measuring and reinforcing compliance than they are at measuring or adequately communicating learning, engagement, or content knowledge.” This emphasis on “compliance” surfaces throughout many traditional grading schema—students are penalized, via grades, for latenesses, absences, or general failure to perform in accordance with the instructor's expectations (see, for example, the broadly-defined “participation” section of many syllabi). The militaristic values underlying traditional grading manifest most explicitly, as Stommel (2023) argues, in the increasingly draconian apparati of academic honesty enforcement; even though academic dishonesty is often itself a symptom of an overly dictatorial assessment schema (Lang 2013). Militaristic assessment not only fails to facilitate student learning, it also shifts students’ attention from process (learning) to product (grade), and from social wellbeing to grade-based competition with their peers. In contrast, what would assessment look like if it were founded on deep democracy? The Climate Justice Alliance defines deep democracy as a process in which “workers and communities have control over the decisions that affect their daily lives” (2024). In the classroom context, deep democracy means empowering students to determine what and how they learn, and—importantly—how to demonstrate that learning. 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