CHAPTER 5

HIGHER EDUCATION, SUSTAINABILITY, AND THE

ROLE OF SYSTEMIC LEARNING
Stephen Sterling

The development of ecological understanding is not simply another subject to be learnt

but a fundamental change in the way we view the world. (John Lyle, 1994)

INTRODUCTION
This chapter argues that sustainability implies a double learning challenge to higher
education, concerning both ‘paradigm’ and ‘provision’. The possibility of
reorientation of higher education in the context of sustainability depends on
widespread and deep learning within the higher education community and by policy
makers - and this has to both precede and accompany matching change in learning
provision and practice. Whilst discussion often centres on this latter aspect, which
may be called ‘education for change’, sufficient attention also needs to be given to
the first aspect, which concerns ‘change in education’ particularly as regards ethos,
purpose and policy. A systems-based staged model of learning is offered as a tool
for thinking about the difficulty and possibility of such deep change, and the idea of
co-evolution as learning process between institutions and their communities is
briefly outlined as a promising way forward.
In January 2002, in his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Bath,
UK, Peter Reason – an authority on cooperative inquiry and action research - laid
down a challenge to his institution, to place the ‘twin crises’ of justice and
sustainability at the centre of its educational and research efforts (Reason, 2002).
Sitting in the auditorium, I sensed that members of his audience greeted this radical
notion with differing reactions varying from enthusiasm to incredulity. I will argue
below that the probability of his or any other higher education (HE) institution
responding fully to such a challenge depends on a deep appreciation of three
fundamental areas of concern, which can be summarised metaphorically as: the
nature of the territory now occupied as regards both paradigm and provision, the
nature of territory that sustainability implies, and the journey that is required to shift
from one grounding to another.
To help map some of this ground, I will use ideas and tools drawn from systemic
thinking, which offers some clarity and overview in a complex and difficult terrain.
Systems thinking argues that ‘valid knowledge and meaningful understanding comes

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Peter Blaze Corcoran & Arjen E.J. Wals (Eds.), Higher Education and the Challenge of
Sustainability: Problematics, Promise and Practice, 49-70.
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
50 STEPHEN STERLING

from building up whole pictures of phenomenon, not by breaking them into parts’
(Flood, 2001, p. 133). Given the complexity of this subject area - involving
worldviews, the nature of sustainability, policy and practice in higher education,
organisational learning, and transformative change - a systems perspective which
seeks to illumine the relationships involved is both necessary and helpful. Systems
thinking addresses any problematic nexus such as this by increasing the level of
abstraction or overview, rather than the conventional reductionist route of examining
detail and dividing the issues into smaller parts.
This chapter argues that sustainability does not simply require an ‘add-on’ to
existing structures and curricula, but implies a change of fundamental epistemology
in our culture and hence also in our educational thinking and practice. Seen in this
light, sustainability is not just another issue to be added to an overcrowded
curriculum, but a gateway to a different view of curriculum, of pedagogy, of
organisational change, of policy and particularly of ethos. At the same time, the
effect of patterns of unsustainability on our current and future prospects is so
pressing that the response of higher education should not be predicated only on the
‘integration of sustainability’ into higher education, because this invites a limited,
adaptive, response. Rather, I will argue, we need to see the relationship the other
way round - that is, the necessary transformation of higher education towards the
integrative and more whole state implied by a systemic view of sustainability in
education and society, however difficult this may be to realise. In sum, this is an
argument for what I have termed ‘sustainable education’ (Sterling, 2001). My
emphasis here, therefore, is less the detail of curriculum, pedagogy and management
that a changed educational paradigm implies (which, though critically important,
may be found in other chapters in this volume), but rather the deeper issue of why
and how sustainability requires a changed paradigm, and how such change through
deep learning may or may not occur. A distinction is thus made between ‘learning
through higher education’ (relating to provision) which is the usual subject of
discourse, and ‘learning within higher education’ (relating to the guiding paradigm).
The key issue is one of ‘response-ability’: how far institutions and higher
education as a whole are able to respond sufficiently to the wider context of the
crisis of unsustainability and the opportunities of sustainability. The common
perception is often that little more than a change in teaching or curriculum is
necessary – that is, an adaptive adjustment in learning provision. A full response,
however, commensurate with the size of the challenge, implies a change of
educational paradigm – because sustainability indicates a change of cultural
paradigm which is both emergent and imperative. Many commentators maintain the
fundamental issue at stake is a 'crisis of perception' which most of us are part of, and
that a change of cultural worldview based on some form of systems thinking is both
necessary and emerging, if still fragile (Harman, 1988; Clark, 1989; Bohm, 1992;
Wilber, 1996; Capra, 1996). This appears to entail a shift of emphasis from
relationships based on fragmentation, control and manipulation towards those based
on participation, appreciation and self-organisation. Increasing numbers of writers
are pointing to the emergence and nature of this ecological worldview, predicated on
the notion of a co-created or participative reality. Thus this worldview is variously
called 'participative' (Heron, 1996; Reason & Bradbury, 2001) 'co evolutionary'