Version 3.2
A curriculum for moving undergraduate biology students towards Degrowth principles
Traditional science education in the Global North needs rapid transformation to better prepare students to address the pressing environmental and social challenges of the Anthropocene. In the United States, university-level science education is typically focused on delivering content without a context that explains how scientific knowledge has contributed to exploitation and how it could, in principle, be used to reduce global inequalities. This non-contextualized experience is the primary way that students gain skills and credentials to succeed in many careers that in turn help to maintain or expand capitalist structures. What is urgently needed are educational activities in mainstream university curricula that build skills and content knowledge in a new framework that emphasizes Anthropocene challenges and pathways towards global justice. Here we describe a university course that delivers core biology knowledge within a Doughnut Economics organizational framework emphasizing a social foundation for all without creating global ecological overshoot. The course, Biology of Sustainability, helps students understand central biological concepts (such as homeostasis, interactions, and evolutionary change) and develop core biology competencies (such as critical thinking and scientific reasoning) within themes of climate change, chemical pollution, agriculture challenges, and global health issues that are central to Doughnut Economics. We argue that embedding the Doughnut Economics framework into mainstream STEM courses can help students better align their professional and personal ambitions with degrowth principles.
Info
Day:
2023-08-30
Start time:
10:30
Duration:
00:15
Room:
ZV-8-5
Type:
Paper Presentation
Theme:
Technology and science for degrowth
