moral and political dimension of achieving that transformative purpose. Then, we provide some illustrations of how training the virtue of practical wisdom in the classroom might look like. We conclude this chapter with some final remarks on the challenges that we might face when educating from virtues on sustainability.
4.2 A Call for a Different Paradigm of Education: From Reproducing Systems to Transforming Ourselves and Society
Education for sustainability (ES hereafter) aims at bringing innovative responses for a long‐term future of the economy, ecology, and equity of all communities, as mentioned in Section 4.1. Nevertheless, how to develop that goal is controversial. The debate can be structured around two main paradigms: the dominant transmissive and instrumental view of education; and the transformative and emancipatory paradigm (Foster 2001; Wals and Jickling 2002).
The transmissive and instrumental approach of education is focused on changing learners' behaviors; hence it implies a predetermined direction. Oriented to the promotion of certain ways of thinking and acting, it is built over a specific assumption: that learning occurs by mainly accumulating knowledge that is coherent with predetermined behavioral outcomes shaped by the requirements of market economies (Foster 2001; Vare and Scott 2007; Wals 2011). However, the complex, systemic and dynamic nature of sustainability challenges is marked by the diversity of views about the definition of the problems, which are intermingled with the definition of solutions, as clearly illustrated by the case of the climate crisis. Thus, the critical view of this approach resists an articulation of education that depicts sustainability as an “undisputed product” (Wals and Jickling 2002, p. 222), a linear mechanism that can be specified in advance by inducing the appropriate cognitive, conative, and affective skills (Gough and Scott 2003; Sipos et al. 2008). This paradigm ultimately accepts the assumption that we can agree on a desired behavioral outcome of an environmental education, and achieve it through carefully designed interventions (Jickling and Wals 2008).
This paradigm of education may be effective to deal with a type of problem in which the space of solutions, the systems of restrictions, and the performance function are definable, what make them fully solvable (Rittel and Webber 1973). However, the ill‐defined socioecological problems are not like that and, as a consequence, demand a different type of education: a transformative and emancipatory education, defined by its processes rather than by its outputs; this implies an open‐ended endeavor (Vare and Scott 2007; Barth and Rieckmann 2016). Furthermore, from this approach, education is characterized by enabling learners to think, feel, and act in a way that allows them “to cope with uncertainty, poorly defined situations and conflicting or at least diverging norms, values, interests, and reality constructions” (Wals 2011, p. 179). In sum, transformative and emancipatory education pursues the raising of critical awareness and, eventually, transforming problematic frames of reference (i.e. mindsets, habits of mind, and meaning perspectives, Mezirow 2003), with an aim to enhance citizenship for sustainability (Jickling and Walls 2008). Consequently, this type of education implies not only “doing things better” and “doing better things,” but “seeing things differently” (Sterling 2011, p. 25). This approach is transformative and yet emancipatory, given that it may allow learners to raise awareness on how certain worldviews or ideologies pervade education. Neoliberalism is an example of these ideologies: a view that functions as a form of governmentality, as learners may understand that there is no other choice at the systemic levels, hence making it difficult to question it (Davies 2006).
Under transformative and emancipatory education “knowledge is not fixed, cut up in pieces and handed over, but rather (co)created by transacting with prior tacit knowledge, the curriculum, and other learners” (Jickling and Wals 2008, p. 8). Therefore, the focus of education moves from knowledge acquisition to a collaborative creation by a learning community, delving into the depth of human existence in the world, as Jarvis (2005, p. 14) highlights from a holistic approach to human learning:
The combination of processes whereby the whole person, body (genetic, physical and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs and senses), is in a social situation and constructs an experience which is then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through any combination) and integrated into the individual's own biography.
Specifically, our moral norms have significant implications on democratic citizenship, on civic action, and, ultimately, on our capacity to address complex socioecological challenges (Mezirow 2003; Sterling 2011; Jordan and Kristjánsson 2017). In fact, cognitive understanding of sustainability challenges and the agreement on the need to reformulate technical, economic, and social structures have not proven to be enough to change paradigms (Maiteny 2005). Mustakova‐Posardt (2004) argue for the need to educate not only on critical systemic thinking, but also on critical moral consciousness.
The development of this critical moral consciousness is central for transformative ES, since it implies transforming ourselves to transform our social world. We defend that virtue tradition and character education may facilitate a productive space for such a moral development, allowing for an active dialogue between our inner and our outer world, i.e. between the moral and the political dimension of sustainability. Such space would be defined, as Dobson (2003) suggests, by the source of moral responsibility (i.e. “why are we obliged?”) rather than by the object of obligation (i.e. “we have the obligation to do what?”) (p. 48).
In short, virtue‐oriented approaches to socioecological problems might allow us to acquire new ways of being in the world directed by the ultimate purpose of collective flourishing, as we will develop in Section 4.3.
4.3 A Response from Virtue Tradition
As a first approximation, virtues can be defined as moral dispositions that guide thinking, feelings, and acting (MacIntyre 2007). Although there is not a unitary approach to virtues, three features are shared among the defenders of virtue ethics (Nussbaum 1999): concern with the agent, together with choice and action; concern with the agent's inner moral life (patterns of reasoning, motives, and emotions); and concern with the whole course of the agent's moral life (patterns of commitment, conduct, and passion). From this common ground, cultivating compassion, for instance, would involve not only carrying out specific actions that show compassion, but also (and more importantly) developing compassionate thoughts, emotions, values, and attitudes (Hartman 2006). In other words, a compassionate character includes perceiving the necessity of compassion, experiencing it permanently, and driving one's life from feelings of compassion. Subsequently, concerning the role of good character in addressing ill‐defined socioecological problems, virtues might enhance more sustainable ways of life based on inner feelings and dispositions for sustainability, rather than on a list of externally defined practices to be performed.
We specifically follow an Aristotelian approach to virtue (Aristotle 2014, hereafter Nicomachean Ethics, NE), mainly because of its aim at forming souls of excellence for the common good: eudaimonia, normally translated as “flourishing,” “true happiness,” or “a life worth living” (Hartman 2006; Kristjánsson 2015; Roberts 2017). As a non‐instrumental goal or an end in itself, eudaimonia cannot be achieved without actualizing virtues (Kristjansson 2016; Roberts 2017). In addition, although Aristotle leaves the constituent and preconditions of eudaimonia open, he applies a political stance to it and considers it as a common good (Kristjansson 2016). In this regard, it is noteworthy that previous work in the field of environmental virtue ethics brought character traits to the field of environmental issues (Cafaro 2015); some examples are virtues of communion with nature, sustainability, respect for nature, stewardship, and environmental activism (Sandler 2018). In the same vein, we should highlight proposals of new virtues oriented to include interconnectedness with nature, such as the virtue of acknowledged dependence (Hannis 2015) and the virtue of harmony with nature (Jordan and Kristjánsson 2017).
Building on this literature