New SEEd Sustainability Journey: Where is SEEd in making change?
At SEEd, we place great importance on creativity and experimenting with new ideas. This is also true of our newsletter, and we are therefore delighted to launch the new academic year with a new edition.
This year, we will explore SEEd’s thoughts, values, and mission in depth through specific themes. Our orienting question will be: Where is SEEd in making change? To answer this question, we’re harnessing the power of the SEEd Newsletter, aiming to connect the work of SEEd with broader societal issues and the impact we are having on the lives of students, teachers and their environments. We will gradually create a systems map of SEEd’s actions and impacts to open up discussions about SEEd’s mission. These discussions with family, friends and colleagues will help to spread the word about the potential of education for sustainable development.
Please do share your thoughts and actions with us by email or on social media and help spreading the word by starting discussions about these crucial educational issues.
TRANSFORMATION – The magical word of the century
It’s good to be in touch again in the new year. I hope you had a restful holiday and a strong start to 2026.
When planning this month’s newsletter, I was wondering what the best words, pictures, or questions that describe our monthly theme are: TRANSFORMATION. You will probably understand my confusion. Previous themes were not specifically easy to deal with either, but in this term there is something artificial that forces the meaning of the term to open up to all the various possibilities coming at it — as if transformation would come at every corner. It’s one of those words that seems to appear everywhere. So I want to start with you.
A quick challenge: in one picture, what does transformation mean to you right now?
You can choose one of the options below, or name your own. So please, take some time to think on your own and choose one of the options below, or come up with something entirely different and keep it in mind while reading the rest of the newsletter; who knows, it might change your view! But either way, please do send your understanding of transformative to us! We are all ears!
My skepticism goes for how the term transformative is handled, not for the idea it can represent. This is so because a rather bothersome trend seems to be evolving: everything is “transformative”. All education tends to picture itself as transformative, stating that otherwise it wouldn’t even be education at all. So what we can see is that the term transformative is slowly mingled with the term education. What is the result of this, then? Is it that actually all forms and practices of education transform and are transformative? Or is it rather the case that most people start to hang one more ornament on the Christmas tree, and those who want to actually focus on transformative education have to extend the term with the prefix “truly”? So there is no other choice but to take the little dolly and dress it in a fluffily fluffy princess dress so that every parent who visits the toy shop gets it: this one is “truly transformative”.
You could say I am rather cynical and tend toward the latter option. Why my cynicism can be interesting for you is because most often you need to choose between programmes, learning plans, and materials — between options that are all labelled the same, or at least similarly, and that sometimes offer more than there is behind. What I thought could be of your interest is to introduce transformative to you through three principles that can help you decide whether an education is “transformative” or truly transformative:
Principle 1: Look for understanding of and interest in your experiences!
Maybe you wouldn’t expect an organisation dedicated to teaching to have learning as their main principle. Yet, when it comes to transformative education, it is best to look for actions, projects, communication, and all sorts of attempts that put not just you as an individual, but all learners eager for change, in the spotlight. As Stephen Sterling put it in one of his blogs, “The sufficiency of the response of education institutions to the sustainability agenda depends on their ability to learn and change — that is, their ‘response-ability’.” Now, this not only goes for institutions, but for all ‘truly’ transformative educational organisations. So if you want an authentic experience of transformation, try to look for the voice of the learner and the ears and heart of the teacher.
By SEEd, you can find examples of these:
In our report of attitudes, experiences and expectations of young people regarding sustainability;
In reading and contributing to our Roots and Reach campaign;
In always welcoming new SEEd members;
In us working with academics like Dr Estelia Borquez Sanchez (King’s College London) and supporting work that is crucial for broadening our understanding. You can find her survey on how socioeconomic status and geographic location impact secondary teachers’ approaches to environmental education here.
Principle 2: Look for simplicity!
Transformative education is not about fancy terms and loads of complex graphs. Transformative education can be put into rather simple terms: it is deep engagement between learners and the world with the aim of being able to see its non-literal connections.
By SEEd you can find:
An accessible course with easy structure and flow for educators — SEEd Educator Changemakers CPD Cohort 2;
Opportunities to engage with a professional community of people who manage to break down complex terms into understandable chunks to build the grounds for understanding: Our Shared World’s Learning Lunches.
Principle 3: Look for long-term strategy! Be aware that transformation is never only about you!
“The concept of transformation implies critical examination of dominant assumptions, values, purposes, and practices. It cannot mean a sincere but ineffectual tweaking of ‘business as usual’,” says Stephen Sterling. So true! And isn’t ‘business as usual’ for most people about thinking about themselves, about their own learning or their kids’ own learning, without considering how that fits into long-term societal strategies?
SEEd doesn’t want you to need to choose between your learning and learning as a society, or between your child’s learning and learning for transforming education. So if you want to be part of learning for the sake of our future, you can:
See what we have achieved so far with schools in our Young Changemakers Programme;
Apply for Our Shared World’s Our Shared Ground Event;
Or apply to SEEd’s Youth Board if you are under 25 by sending me an email (lili@se-ed.org.uk).
A Blog by Ann:
Learning for sustainability – transformative and understanding change and your own learning.
You may have heard about the ‘new’ Climate Action Plans, Sustainability Leads or the National Education Nature Park initiatives from DfE. You may have also read in detail the CAR Report – especially the Climate Education or Citizenship Curriculum sections.
Given where we have been since 2010, the last 5 years with the Sustainability and Climate Change Unit in DfE, plus all those of you who have worked tirelessly in advocating for this work, we now find ourselves in an extraordinary place. But there is more to do!
What gives me the most hope for the next stages is the inclusion of the statement that climate knowledge will not be enough. Effective pedagogical approaches need to be implemented too. Linking that to the purpose of the extended citizenship curriculum means the concept of ‘responsible, active citizens’ as an educational goal is relevant to young people and our futures more than ever.
On this theme, we have just completed a pilot stakeholder event, through Our Shared World, on transformative learning. This is a phrase that seems to have become prevalent since UNESCO started talking about it in 2019. But what does it mean? What do different people understand it to mean? What teaching and learning methods does it entail? What is being transformed? A great report that sought to address these questions and some case studies (including SEEd) can be found here.
But it made me realise that, even though on our courses and resources we make our approaches transparent and explain why we use them, maybe its time to go more public. Our last newsletters show that our editor, Lili, also thinks this!
The Start of Our Action Learning – For nearly 30 years, I have been curious about a particular set of teaching approaches that I saw really had an impact on adults and students in terms of confidence, self-esteem, agency and understanding their own learning. It almost always led to better learning outcomes across the board.
I had been writing resources and manuals, won awards, taught teachers, museum educators and wildlife rangers but had always questioned what impact on their practice I was having. I then read an evaluation of Project Wild from the USA and the training offered to teachers. Despite hundreds of pages of teacher developed and tested wildlife and ecology activities, the results showed that teachers only used about 10 of the activities in total, and they were from the ones they were shown on a training day. Quite a few teachers only used them when they were doing supply or on special environmental days. It made me think.
Then having read John Huckle and Stephen Sterling’s 1996 book on Education for Sustainability, I found my purpose!
By sheer coincidence, on moving back to the UK in 2000, I got a job with WWF UK in Education and found I was sitting at Stephen Sterling’s desk. Over time, as I became Head of Education, then Social Change, our thinking and developing practice became clearer. This was our own action learning.
What Does This Transformative Learning Practice Look Like For SEEd?
Firstly, if sustainability is about questioning how we got here (socially critical thinking), it will include questions such as:
Why are things the way they are?
Has it always been this way?
Who decides?
When or where was it different and why?
You can see that this will start to include history, sociology and geography; even the history of science and definitely any politics classes. I even used it in Maths!
It does also mean we need to think about the systems we have created as humans and about the planetary systems on which we depend. This is big and requires us to understand the complexity of those systems. They are not just complicated where you can map all the elements and linkages, but they are complex. Complex systems are characterised by having uncertainty, unexpected outcomes or often no known solution built into them. They will include human processes as well (economic, cultural, geopolitical, and relationships) and the environmental systems which we depend on and are continuously learning about.
Systems thinking – seeing interconnectedness, dealing with uncertainty is therefore a key method. Our evidence shows how students and adults develop less shallow thinking and processes of change as they build their understanding of the system they want to change.
Is this different from teaching the Water Cycle in school? Yes it is, as firstly we need to include all those human interactions with it. Then we need to include possible unknowns or impacts such as the melting of the ice caps or the thawing of the permafrost. Then we might need to think about drought or flooding as weather patterns change. This may affect migration or even disease. It may affect our ability to grow our own food. It goes on… Including these makes the water cycle change from a complicated system to a complex one.
Once we start thinking about the human systems and choices we have been making (or others have made before us) we need to think about which we are in now and how they influence us. It becomes clear that we are then thinking about our participation in those systems, and if they are the problem, how can we as individuals change these vast systems? We need to work in the same way as those systems when they were created and how they evolved over time – by collaboration.
So collaborative, creative, participatory approaches are needed. This involves often whole communities/educational setting (Our Whole School Approach), even down to teams working together. It also involves not making assumptions about anyone or a group of people in society. Hence our Youth Listening Project. But it also means helping others address their assumptions.
For example, many people have come to us expressing their frustration at not getting anything done, saying: ‘I am the only person working on this’. Decades have shown us that this is often not the case. People will be working under the radar, or have also felt stymied by the system they are in. Thinking about how to engage others is overcoming the idea that you are battling on your own. Engaging others effectively is very powerful and we show young and old how to do this through facilitation processes and how to deal with pushback and difficult conversations (sometimes influenced by misinformation or, worse, disinformation).
Understanding how to communicate and work with others then is a key part of participatory approaches. Communicating rather than staying under the radar also has to be modelled and practiced. We use launches, celebration events, oracy, social learning with a wide range of community people and of course social media.
How Does This Affect Our Futures?
We live in a world that is very solutions focused – one that values quick wins. But the scale of change in our world is enormous. here may be some quick technological wins, but changing us humans and our own systems will be a long haul – unless a terrible crisis happens to us. Well, none of us wants to get to that state so we need to work, learn, share, revise and try again and keep trying. This is action learning (or action research in some situations). I personally have seen the impact of this in my own teaching career, at WWF UK and now at SEEd. We now have evidence of that impact through our Changemakers and Young Changemakers programmes. This is almost the most powerful method for transformative learning.
Thinking about where you might be heading and with whom requires some futures thinking and understanding your spheres of influence respectively. It really helps people become more realistic and effective in the change they want to make.
With all of these approaches there is underlying educational, psychological, sociological and behaviour change research and understandings. Often our job is to move from the myth of ‘Lets raise awareness and then everyone will behave in the right way’. It assumes we are rational human beings in our decision making and behaviours, but we are not.
There are many other myths but overall each of us has a particular mindset and set of assumptions and values that we live by. Acknowledging the diversity of these mindsets but understanding the universality of human values (see Common Cause) means we rethink how we are going to firstly understand ourselves, then understand others in order for us to work together.
Looking Ahead
All of this requires careful design, understanding emotions and emotional responses and building our own practice so we understand how best to help. As we at SEEd work in the education sector, it also means thinking about the purpose of education, which we still believe to be developing the knowledge, skills, values and competencies to:
Care for oneself
Care for others (near and far)
Care for the planet.
Thank you for reading to this point. It is an honour and a privilege (as Rab Nesbit said in Love Actually) to work on this with you and others.
If you want more insights into how to facilitate some of these practices, sign up for our new CPD course for educators or our adult Changemakers course. Or co-learn with your students by doing the Young Changemakers course together.
Ann Finlayson, SEEd CEO and Founder
There are, of course, many other ways of understanding TRANSFORMATION and a lot more examples that could be included here. Do let us know what you think and also do share your favourite examples with us to add them to our growing list! Email us at admin@se-ed.org.uk.
