talk
february 2009
2:00pm - 2:50pm
Educating for Sustainability: the Role of Tertiary Education
Fri 20th February 09 | 2:00pm - 2:50pm
Think tent
hosted by | Oases Graduate School and Community Learning and Research Centre
"I will introduce the conversation by reflecting about the role of tertiary education in sustainability, critiquing the traditional ‘hands-off’ modalities in which tertiary education (especially in the ‘positivist’ mould) have ‘produced’ knowledge and how, during the last 15 years in Australia even these attempts have been severely curtailed. Educational standards and pedagogical approaches have deteriorated, new and alternative attempts have been curtailed. I will then offer an abbreviated story of oases Graduate School and introduce the audience to its principles and pedagogy. Finally, I will invite the audience to engage in a conversation, based on their experiences of learning (and possibly teaching), about how they could be transformed towards more sustainable and transformative learning-teaching relationships and processes."
Jacques Boulet
Jacques Boulet has lived, studied and worked in five continents, obtaining a Social Work Undergraduate Degree in 1965 in Leuven, Belgium. He worked for 3 years on a major Community Development project in Africa, did a Post-Graduate Diploma in Community Development and Social Planning at the Institute for Social Studies in Holland and subsequently acted as a curriculum developer in Social Work education programs in Germany throughout the seventies. He completed his MSW and PhD (in Social Work and in Sociology) between 1980 and 1985, at the University of Michigan (US). He became Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at Melbourne University and RMIT between 1985 and 1996, leaving academia in 1997 to become involved in the Borderlands Cooperative, a community learning and action centre in Hawthorn/Melbourne. He is Head of School at oases, an accredited program in Integrative and Transformative Studies and an Adjunct Professor at Deakin University.
oases Post Graduate Program ~ learning for personal, social and global response-ability After more than four years work by a dedicated group of academics, activists, artists and spiritual leaders, a much needed and long overdue, nationally recognised Post Graduate Program in Integrative and Transformative Studies is now being offered, conferring qualifications of Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma and Masters Degree in Integrative and Transformative Studies. No one can deny that new ways of thinking and living are required to respond to the challenges facing us and our earth. oases responds through an accredited post graduate program to help us work towards vocational, social and ecological sustainability. It supports and facilitates collaborative thinking, purposeful dialogue and mindful action; processes that are essential to creating sustainability. We aim to use our learning as a platform from which to engage each other and the broader community in thinking, dialogue and actions that really change the course of the future. This course would suit anyone interested in doing sustainable, sustaining work, whilst pursuing knowledge about how to do it and undertaking relevant projects doing so. Our academics have extensive experience across many disciplines and large & small business settings in Australia and internationally. We have about 20 members with PhD qualifications and others with experiences in all areas of the social, aesthetic, ecological and spiritual pools of knowledge.
info@oases.edu.au