SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

 

 

8:00 AM - 9:30 AM             Part One: Transnational Theoretical Perspectives to Sustainability in Asia

                                                                   Sustainability discourses in different cultural contexts: Curse or blessing?
                                                                   Tamara Savelyeva, HKIED, Hong Kong

                                                                    Educating heart and mind: Inclusive education for sustainable development
                                                                    Mousumi Mukherjee, University of Melbourne, Australia

                                                                   Global citizenship education and ecopedagogy at the intersections: Asian comparisons
                                                                  Greg William Misiaszek and Lauren Ila Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University, China

9:30 AM - 9:45 AM             BREAK

9:45 AM - 11:15 AM           Part Two: Case Studies of Education for Sustainable Development in Asia

                                                                   Attitudes in education for sustainable development: An exploration from Hong Kong
                                                                   Liz Jackson, University of Hong Kong

                                                                  Ethnic Tourism and the Big Song: Public pedagogies and environmental discourse in Southwest China
                                                                 Jinting Wu, University of Macau

 

                                                                  IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION : We regret that the two sessions below have been CANCELLED.
                                                                      (1) Education for sustainable development in South Korea: The Tongyoeng Regional Center for Expertise
                                                                      Sung, Jung Hee, Yonsei University, South Korea
                                                                      (2) Taiwan to Japan: Learning sustainability in the tourism service supply chain
                                                                      Yun-Hui Lin, Mei-Miao Lin, Wei-Shuo Lo, Meiho University, Pingtung, Taiwan
 

 

           SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM
 

Sustainability discourses in different cultural contexts: Curse or blessing
Tamara Savelyeva, HKIED, Hong Kong
Contact email : tamara@ied.edu.hk
Although a Western discourse of sustainability has been widely implemented in university systems, its main principles do not fully resonate with localized ecological frameworks which ground Asian education. These ancient cosmo-anthropic ecological frameworks preceded Western ecology in its conceptualizations of nature-to-human relationships, and they have been dominating Asian educational traditions for many centuries. Do these frameworks aid or prevent a global spread of sustainability into Asian educational systems? In her comparative case study, the author answers this question by revisiting Asian ecological discourse of Neo- Confucianism and explaining how ignorance to culturally-specific ecological frameworks might minimize or maximize a widespread entry of western sustainability into non-western higher education systems. The author uses an example of the Global Seminar project to uncover tenets of localized tradition, explain innovative specifics of curricular implementation, and propose organic contributions to global sustainability discourse. 
   

                                                              

Educating heart and mind: Inclusive education for sustainable development                                        Mousumi Mukherjee, University of Melbourne, Australia
Contact email : m.mukherjee@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
There is growing global consensus that inequality is making sustainable development goals unattainable. This paper draws on a transnational institutional ethnography of a globally interconnected colonial school’s inclusive work in India. The school has been through waves of inclusion during its long history. This paper argues that congeries of local and global intellectual resources and historic ideological forces were active in conceptualizing a distinct inclusive philosophy of engagement by the school for the upliftment of the ‘subalterns’ in the local community, making middle-class girls active stakeholders in the education and welfare of less privileged peers. Inclusive reforms at the school were a product of the intercultural experiences of Jesuite school leadership within the cultural history of social and educational reform in the region since the early 19th century. The paper utilizes Rabindranath Tagore's ‘southern theory’ to analyze how the school conceptualized inclusive education within a historic context of exclusion and inequity based on race and class since colonial times.
   

                                                               
Global citizenship education and ecopedagogy at the intersections: Asian comparisons    Greg William Misiaszek and Lauren Ila Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University, China
Contact email : gmisiaszek@gmail.com ; limisiaszek@gmail.com
This research explores how, in an increasingly globalized world, expert educational scholars perceive the intersectionalities of citizenship with environmental issues and the pedagogies of both fields. The presentation will introduce a theoretical framework centered on critical theories of citizenship, ecopedagogy, and globalization. Then we introduce the methodology of the project. The research analyzed views from a diverse pool of experts to understand commonalities and differences of the two fields. In addition, responses were compared with the canons of Global Citizenship Education and critical environmental pedagogies (e.g., ecopedagogy). Finally, we examine the intersectionalities of citizenship with environmental issues and the pedagogies of both. In the first section, we introduce a concept of “spheres of influence” to analyze the data and discuss how salient spheres differed between “East” and “West” (problematic constructs we deconstruct in the process). Then, we highlight four major topics that illustrate significant differences between “Eastern” and “Western” participants.
 

Attitudes in education for sustainable development: An exploration from Hong Kong
Liz Jackson, University of Hong Kong
Contact email : lizj@hku.hk
The presentation discusses the importance of environmental attitudes as part of education for sustainable development. It provides several different forms of justification for including attitude change as part of any kind of ESD and addresses challenges and concerns related to subjectivity and partiality within social and political context. Next it reviews different research practices for examining environmental attitudes. The final part of the presentation discusses the findings of a preliminary study undertaken in Hong Kong to pilot and validate such a research instrument, and contrasts findings related to environmental attitude development within formal schooling and nonformal NGO educational contexts. Implications for future research and educational practice are briefly given.
 

Ethnic Tourism and the Big Song: Public pedagogies and environmental discourse in Southwest China
Jinting Wu, University of Macau
Contact email : WuJinTing@umac.mo 
The presentation examines two public pedagogies in rural southwest China—tourism and ethnic songs—for their contested roles in transforming relations with the natural and built environment. While tourism alters the village landscape by spatial intervention, demolition, and construction, “landscaping” is a visual and conceptual device that produces a pleasurable environment as “other” and signifies what is tourable and to be seen. On the other hand, the echoes of the environment and human-nature relations are central elements in ethnic songs sung for centuries to transmit ancestral, historical, and cultural understandings. The paper illustrates that a nascent environmentalism of ethnic songs is increasingly oriented towards instrumental development rationality, choreographed in staged tourism performances. Both tourism and ethnic songs offer public pedagogies to rethink how incommensurable discourses generate new environmental crises by altering the vernacular landscape and local beliefs. The paper proposes a place-based critical pedagogy to rethink development with ecological ramifications and resituate education within the local context of shared cultural politics.
 

Education for sustainable development in South Korea: The Tongyoeng Regional Center for Expertise CANCELLED
Sung, Jung Hee, Yonsei University, South Korea Chung, Ga Young, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Contact email : thesalala@gmail.com
This presentation focuses on a case study on how the Tongyoeng Regional Center for Expertise (Tongyoeng RCE) has contributed to the practice of Education for Sustainable Development in South Korea by establishing a cooperative system between formal education and informal/nonformal education within a given environment of a conservative and exclusive educational system. Focusing on the substantial achievement of Tongyoeng RCE that has not only transformed the South Korean education system from a knowledge and grade-centered Eastern educational regime to a value and practice centered one, this presentation also addresses how the Center has initiated a learning society of decentralized and deregulated educational communities that are more flexible in resolving the unprecedented challenges of globalization. This research finally emphasizes and reflects on the implications of education for sustainable development as a domain of challenge and change in Asia.
 

Taiwan to Japan: Learning sustainability in the tourism service supply chain
CANCELLED
Yun-Hui Lin, Mei-Miao Lin, Wei-Shuo Lo, Meiho University, Pingtung, Taiwan
Contact email : x2134@meiho.edu.tw 
How to learn about sustainability in tourism within higher education environments has been a challenge. This presentation uses the Global Seminar model to examine learning about sustainability in higher education in the tourism service supply chain. First, it examines how individual understanding is developed through practical experiences within the industrial tourism service supply chain. Second, it shows how a student’s internship process can help them understand the cultural and social diversity between Taiwan and Japan. Third, it shows how a campus can achieve its sustainability by using both top-down and bottom-up processes. This case study finally emphasizes how faculty and staff can use their leadership skills to overcome potential educational barriers.

 

 

                   

 

                   SPEAKERS