Within Education for Sustainability (EfS), there is a need to infuse pedagogic and assessment strategies that prepare our learners to promote sustainable development (UN, 2015), to respond appropriately to complexity, uncertainty and continuous change, and furthermore to become change agents for sustainability (UNESCO, 2014).  The sustainability challenges that we face are complex, multi-faceted, impacted by and impacting on multiple variants and contexts, and may become insurmountable if we cannot overcome consumerist, anthropocentric views of the world. So, how can we help our participants to become more critically aware, engaged or indeed resilient in the face of sustainability challenges of immense natures, such as those associated with climate change (loss of biodiversity, migration of plants, animals and human populations, and so on)? The first step in this process is to improve participants’ criticality of complexities that exist within, and interdependencies across, self, society and sustainability (Tillmanns et al., 2014; Hopkins, 2012).

This research study set-out to explore the extent to which disruptive pedagogies, and related assessment strategies, foster criticality within EfS in higher education.  The pedagogic intervention involved the deployment of Visual Cues, which took the form of images or videos (accompanied by critical questions) that sought to create dissonance, to disorient or to challenge the mindsets of participants.  These Visual Cue interventions were loosely modelled on Mezirow’s concept of Transformative Learning (1991, 2009), thus, each Visual Cue acted as a disorienting dilemma, and included opportunities for critical reflection and rational discourse.

The assessment strategies involved the deployment of two tools: the revised New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) instrument (Dunlap et al., 2000), which was used to assess participants’ ecological worldviews; and, a structured Reflective Diary, which was used to enable participants to articulate their cognitive and/ or emotional reactions and development throughout the intervention.

At the outset of this study, the participants completed the New Ecological Paradigm instrument, a standardised scale used to assess ecological worldviews, and other factors such as: the Reality of Limits to Growth; Anti-anthropocentricism; the Fragility of Nature’s Balance; Rejection of Exemptionalism; and, the Possibility of Ecocrisis. Participants were presented with an overview of the results from the NEP survey towards the end of the course, and were asked to critically reflect within their reflective diaries on the results of the NEP survey with respect to their developing understanding of sustainability.   Therefore, the NEP survey information was used from an Assessment-For-Learning perspective to enable participants to further critique their own dispositions and attitudes towards environmental issues.

The Reflective Diary was integrated as an alternative way of assessment (Gulwadi, 2009), to encourage learners to make sense of the complexity of sustainability.  Participants had to complete 8 reflective entries in their diary; the first and last entries reflecting on their initial and ultimate understanding of sustainability and education for sustainable development, with the other six reflections focused on specific sustainability issues or scenarios (Visual Cues).  A structured template for reflection was provided for the latter, partially filled in-class by the participants and completed at home, where participants recorded thoughts and/ or feelings arising from initial exposure to the Visual Cue, reflected on learning from group discussions and on what they learned about themselves and the thematic area from the intervention/s, and also on how the pedagogical processes employed within the Visual Cue intervention influenced the process of learning.  The Reflective Diary was thus used in the contexts of Assessment Of-, For-, and, As- Learning.

This paper specifically reports on the extent to which the assessment strategies enabled critical thinking on, or reorientation of, worldviews, dispositions, and/ or perspectives with respect to sustainable development. 

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