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Session Submission Summary

Imagination and Innovation for Sustainable Futures: Education in Challenging Times

Sun, April 6, 12:25 to 1:55pm, Marriott, Floor: Fifth Level, Grand Ballroom J

Session Type: Invited Session

Abstract

The title for this year’s ESAI symposium at AERA is borrowed from our annual conference. Sustainable futures can be thought of as hinging on actions in the present that meet our ecological, societal, cultural and economic needs without compromising the ability of future generations to do so in their time and turn. This symposium is centered on the question of how imagination and innovation in education can contribute to that outcome. While there is growing consensus that current models of development, consumption and the education systems that replicate them are unsustainable, there is much less agreement about what can be done to solve this. These are challenging times for education and it is tempting to see the current difficulties as primarily related to funding. While the economic challenges are indeed stark, they can be seen as part of a larger global set of problems and practices. Societies globally are dominated by serious inequalities and unsustainable societal practices. The impacts are already being felt.
ESAI argues that education as both practice and theory can make a significant contribution to sustainability at both local and global levels. Education as practice manifests examples of imagination and innovation in the daily realities of classroom, laboratory and lecture hall interaction. Education as theory sits at the nexus of a range of disciplines and can contribute to the development of important synergies and new ways of thinking in addressing real world problems. Educational theory and practice can interrogate, criticize and support one another. ESAI believes that Ireland’s higher education sector, in particular, has the potential to empower researchers to forge creative, multi-disciplinary partnerships that help determine the solutions to sustainable futures.
This objective of this symposium is to consider these issues in the Irish context, and in doing so, facilitate and progress the idea that education as both practice and theory can make a significant contribution to sustainability at both local and global levels. The symposium incorporates four papers in all.

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Papers