Place-Sensing through Haptic Interfaces: Proposing an Alternative to Modern Sustainability Education

Viktor Swillens, Mathias Decuypere, Joke Vandenabeele and Joris Vlieghe
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Viktor Swillens: Education, Culture & Society, KU Leuven, Vesaliusstraat 2, P.O. Box 03761, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Mathias Decuypere: Methodology of Educational Sciences Research Group, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, P.O. Box 03762, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Joke Vandenabeele: Education, Culture & Society, KU Leuven, Vesaliusstraat 2, P.O. Box 03761, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Joris Vlieghe: Education, Culture & Society, KU Leuven, Vesaliusstraat 2, P.O. Box 03761, 3000 Leuven, Belgium

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: In this article we address the issue of how an instrumental approach to sustainability education has dominated the scientific debate of the last 20 years. By conducting interviews and focus group interviews, we have investigated a community arts initiative in the Flemish city of Antwerp in which artists together with local inhabitants engaged in activities around two art installations and address the sustainability of a particular living environment. Our empirical study of this place-based initiative that we call a ‘critical zone observatory’ has been enriched by the work of Bruno Latour, Richard Sennett and Hans Schildermans. We conclude that a temporal and spatial shift in sustainability education (research) is needed from (1) development (a steady movement towards a planned future) and (2) human stewardship (the capability of people to shape their passive living environments) to (1) what we call co-sperity (a collective hope in the present) and (2) inhabitation (an attached and undetermined engagement with the dynamic of one’s habitat). By proposing a collective study pedagogy as an alternative to individual training, we suggest a need for future research on critical zone observatories.

Keywords: sustainability education; community arts; study practices; place-based education; critical zone observatory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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