ABSTRACT

This book is a comprehensive guide on how to teach sustainable consumption in higher education. Teaching and Learning Sustainable Consumption: A Guidebook systematizes the themes, objectives, and theories that characterize sustainable consumption as an educational field.

The first part of the book discusses approaches to teaching and learning sustainable consumption in higher education, including reflections on how learning occurs, to more practical considerations like how to set objectives or assess learning outcomes. The second part of the book is a dive into inspiring examples of what this looks like in a range of contexts and towards different aims – involving 57 diverse contributions by teachers and practitioners. Building on the momentum of a steady increase in courses addressing sustainable consumption over the past decade, this guidebook supports innovative approaches to teaching and learning, while also bringing to the fore conceptual debates around higher education and sustainability.

Overall, this book will be a seminal resource for educators teaching about sustainability and consumption. It will help them to navigate the specifics of sustainable consumption as a field of scholarship, and design their teaching approaches in a more informed, competent, and creative way.

part II|300 pages

Examples of teaching and learning sustainable consumption

chapter 5|5 pages

The good life game

Bargaining needs and resources

chapter 6|4 pages

A letter to Aadya

Uncovering social injustices in fast fashion

chapter 7|4 pages

Clothing libraries

On-campus stores as real-world experiments for sustainable fashion

chapter 8|6 pages

How to draw the economy?

Putting care and nature back into economic models

chapter 9|6 pages

Powering practices

Developing scenarios for energy futures

chapter 11|4 pages

The story of your gadget

chapter 12|4 pages

From trash to treasure!

Turning junk into Christmas-time gifts

chapter 13|6 pages

Practice makes perfect!

Exploring how practices cause consumption problems, and are also part of the solution

chapter 14|5 pages

A playful take on non-financial disclosure processes

Speed dating with organizations and frameworks

chapter 15|4 pages

Decarbonise!

A playful pathfinding approach to a sustainable future

chapter 16|7 pages

Let's report a future practice

Interview roleplay as a way to flesh out alternatives

chapter 17|5 pages

Company walk'n'talk

Learning by sharing about corporate sustainability practices

chapter 19|5 pages

The supermarket sweep

What do labels (not) tell us?

chapter 20|5 pages

To build or not to build?

Roleplay for conflict management

chapter 21|9 pages

Theoretical theater

Personifying theoretical ‘Characters’ to facilitate critical thinking

chapter 22|8 pages

The change point toolkit for teaching

Designing creative interventions

chapter 23|5 pages

Consumption detectives

An imagination exercise

chapter 24|5 pages

Speak up!

Debating critical voices

chapter 25|4 pages

The clothesline for sustainability

Can individual actions contribute to strong sustainable consumption?

chapter 26|3 pages

Go Bananas!

What everyday foods tell us about sustainability

chapter 27|4 pages

Creature of habit!

chapter 28|4 pages

The power of one?

Engaging students to reflect on individual agency to confront environmental issues

chapter 29|4 pages

Pizza policy misto

Our perfect recipe for sustainable food consumption

chapter 30|10 pages

Contemplating consumption

A meditation and mindfulness exercise

chapter 31|4 pages

Walk'n'Write

Reflecting on efficiency, consistency, and sufficiency

chapter 32|4 pages

It's all about the message

Promoting sustainability through communication design

chapter 33|5 pages

Second-hand clothing experienced first-hand

Sustainable consumption through situated learning

chapter 34|5 pages

Dressed for sustainability success

A capsule wardrobe project

chapter 35|5 pages

Listen up!

The role of podcasts for understanding environmental issues as a social construct

chapter 36|4 pages

Create a website

A hands-on approach to communicate sustainable consumption

chapter 37|5 pages

Organizing for impact

Strategic planning and community collaboration for social change towards sustainable consumption

chapter 38|5 pages

Who knows where the money goes?

Using a spending diary to reflect on consumption habits

chapter 39|6 pages

Learning to change myself

Personal approaches to sustainable consumption

chapter 40|4 pages

Extracting sustainability

Exposing the impacts from mining to supply the electronics industry

chapter 43|5 pages

Uncovering economies of sustainability

Looking at alternatives to the status quo

chapter 44|4 pages

Learning from the past?

A socio-historical approach to food practices

chapter 46|4 pages

The 21-day sustainability challenge

chapter 47|5 pages

Whodunnit?

Role-playing to understand stakeholder perspectives through corporate scandals

chapter 48|6 pages

Brave new world?

Getting in a digitalized and globalized state of mind

chapter 49|6 pages

A change is gonna come

Designing campus interventions to promote behavior change for sustainable consumption

chapter 50|6 pages

I can't get no satisfaction

Deliberating needs and satisfiers in sustainable consumption

chapter 51|4 pages

Business Origami!

Piecing together product life cycles in the product-service system

chapter 52|4 pages

Covering one's tracks

An ecological footprint game and debate

chapter 54|5 pages

From field research to design fiction

From clarifying the present, to designing the future

chapter 55|5 pages

What we eat and why

Narratives of food justice

chapter 58|5 pages

What I am wondering …

A teacher training program on how to find and answer questions of sustainable consumption

chapter 59|5 pages

Feel and think!

Teaching aspiring school teachers to teach slow fashion

chapter 60|8 pages

Future voyaging

The power of imagining the future today

chapter 61|5 pages

Don't just learn the lesson, live the lesson

Study abroad trips for collaborative and community-based sustainability