Abstract :
[en] THE CONFERENCE RATIONALE
Environmental studies and management are singular in that they entail the development of holistic
thinking and action for which a transversal approach is a must. We are testing this singularity in a
range of themes as diverse as biodiversity management, agro-ecology, community participation, and the study of environmental science and technology. Unlike the “pure” natural sciences, environment and sustainability studies entail an “ecological” approach for which the various types of knowledge (biological, chemical, physical, etc., but also legal, economic, sociological, and so on) have to be tamed in order to be able to link them up. It is more a matter of grasping the many social and technical dimensions of the issues that are studied and taught than of making forays into a so-called interdisciplinarity in which the tensions between (scientific) fields replace the tensions among the tangle of practices and practical knowledge that are manifested by the stakeholders themselves.
The boundaries of environmental issues are by nature moving, changing, and closely related to the
technical development and needs of society. They often put themselves forward at the outset in the
form of controversies, scientific and technological uncertainties, and the complex network of
interdependencies that they reveal. As such, they challenge the separations between scientific
disciplines. Far from the usual practices of university education and training, such controversy,
uncertainty, and complexity can be seen as genuine resources for quality education that is open to the realities of today’s world. From this standpoint, they also raise new challenges of collaboration
among the staff in charge of the education and training.
If we take a pragmatic approach (Dewey 1938), such subjects lend themselves excellently to the
mobilization of ‘situated’ approaches, that is to say, learning approaches that focus more on active
experience (Masciotra and Morel 2010). This entails either having students experience real-life
situations that are shared by the practitioners themselves or putting them directly in a situation.
Their learning will come then from what they make of the situation and how they experience it.
What kind of university graduate do we need? Alongside top specialists who focus on mastering
specialized techniques and knowledge, more and more importance is being given to the training of
environmental ‘general practitioners’ who are able to circumscribe issues and challenges that often
lead them away from the territories of their original disciplines. In that respect, acquiring the skills
needed to explore unstable and non-stabilized environmental situations is a must. When they hold
managerial or leadership positions they will have to cope with a range of stakeholders, each of whom often has very different types of knowledge, ways of acting, world views, and responsibilities that must be brought together. Linking up these different elements is as much a necessity as a challenge.
How can we prepare our students for such trials? How can we equip them with the theoretical,
methodological, and human resources required to cope with such situations?
Given that one of the particularities of environmental education and training is to avoid cutting the
subjects’ scientific and technical dimensions off from their political and social dimensions, it is
important to explain very clearly and to develop a genuinely critical mind in such programs. This
means not only the critical mind that prompts one to develop or use such and such technical
analytical protocol strictly, but, more basically, the critical mind that evaluates the societal
consequences of a given piece of knowledge, theory, organizational choice, management scheme,
and so on. The demands that employers make of their young university graduates have more to do
with their abilities to take stock of existing technologies and policies, and even alternatives thereto,
reliably; deal with specific problems in the field; and understand their implications for society, much more so than the ability to provide optimal hypothetical solutions.
Aims of the seminar
The purpose of the seminar is threefold:
1. The starting point of this seminar is to exchange experiences on courses or seminars that are
aimed at recognizing and taking account of the controversial, complex, and uncertain nature
of environmental issues and their management.
2. Once these empirical foundations have been laid, we shall then share theories or conceptual
propositions that make it possible to equip these teaching approaches and to give them
theoretical and methodological foundations.
3. Finally, we shall focus on the transition from practices to teaching methods/instruments as
pedagogical innovation, that is to say, we shall ask about the value, use, and transferability
of these initiatives outside the contexts of their creation: How can a course or seminar be
turned into a teaching instrument for other curricula (as for natural sciences or applied
sciences), even in other areas of education? The purpose of all this being to enable a
broader, heterogeneous student body to benefit from an approach that invites them to
experience this environmental complexity.
