**Abstract**

The chapter describes the features of Green Pedagogy, originally developed in Austria in German where it is still being actively researched. Green Pedagogy offers a structured approach to lesson planning to achieve embedded sustainability competencies within a specific vocational or academic field. The Green Pedagogy approach achieves sustainability competency through a controlled appeal to the emotions and the explicit uncovering of learner values to take on new ideas and new perspectives in a more sustainable direction. The approach is compatible with many recommended Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) pedagogies such as project-based teaching and the case study approach. The approach also implements several more general evidence-based pedagogical strategies such as concept change. The key feature of Green Pedagogy is that the process ends with locally based action whose wider implications are explored. We relate some of the challenges involved in translating a pedagogical approach from one language to another as the ProfESus Erasmus project aimed to disseminate Green Pedagogy to a global cohort of teachers of home economics in English. Reactions of participating teachers in the piloting of the training are explored and some practical solutions offered.

**Keywords:** Green Pedagogy, home economics, pedagogy, sustainable consulting, sustainability education

### **1. Introduction**

Green Pedagogy is a six-step framework for planning learning experiences from a sustainability perspective that can be applied at many different educational levels and in many different academic and vocational directions. A notable feature of Green Pedagogy is that students not only learn about topics from a sustainability perspective but that they also apply what they have learned directly, to affect their immediate environment, as well as being led to reflect on the potential of their local action for the future. These last two steps of Green Pedagogy ensure that a sustainability perspective is one of empowerment and personal growth rather than simply a source of despair and paralysis in the face of large and intractable problems. Green Pedagogy, as other sustainability approaches, is based on an onion model of wellbeing that assumes that economic wellbeing is dependent on social justice, which in turn is dependent on environmental wellbeing, the so-called strong sustainability model shown in **Figure 1**. This contrasts to the primacy that is usually accorded to

**Figure 1.** *Nested strong sustainability model.*

economic wellbeing in many day-to-day decisions. The final two stages of Green Pedagogy are the way in which the approach builds sustainability competence by automating a sustainability response in the learners; in other words, building a sustainable mindset by making visible the sustainability values upon which daily problem solving can be based.

This chapter is narrated from the perspective of a project that involved the practical transfer of the Green Pedagogy concept from its Austrian-German origins to English in a specially developed blended learning teacher-training course. The linguistic challenges reflect to an extent those faced more commonly in the other direction, from English to a local language and context. The European ProfESus project developed a training course for home economics teachers to help them promote a sustainable mindset in their learners by applying the Green Pedagogy approach and this experience will be used as a case study to illustrate the application of the approach and how it is received both by in-service teachers and student teachers. The coordinating institution of the project, University College for Agrarian and Environmental Pedagogy (UCAEP) in Vienna, Austria, is home to the well-developed Green Pedagogy, which formed the pedagogical basis of the course developed by the project for deployment at European level and beyond. This chapter describes the challenges and successes of translating and transferring a specific pedagogy across languages, cultures and contexts.

Globally, home economics has diminished as a school subject but there are indications that governments (such as Australia's sustainability curriculum) may recognize the value of strengthening home economics at the school level, given rising global levels of food waste and lack of knowledge about healthy eating and food preparation. There is therefore a direct link between home economics and the issue of sustainability, but several other school subjects exist for which this pedagogy is suitable.

#### **2. Background to Green Pedagogy**

Green Pedagogy or *Grüne Pädagogik* [1] was developed at UCAEP in Vienna as a way of promoting a strong sustainability mindset [2–6] in learners. The main aim of the approach is to uncover and explore the values of the learners by provoking emotions and to extend their perspectives, especially regarding the wider range of potential stakeholders, to guide learners to an actionable vision that it is possible to

**217**

*Green Pedagogy: Using Confrontation and Provocation to Promote Sustainability Skills*

apply in their local context; a "glocal" approach. The approach has been developed by UCAEP in detail [1] since 2010 when it was first introduced as a way of connecting the agrarian, environmental and pedagogical training strengths of the College. Green Pedagogy was deliberately developed as a practical, implementable pedagogy as a counterpoint to the political policy imperative of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) which has its roots in international organizations such

Implementing Green Pedagogy was a central aim of the ProfESus Erasmus+ European project to develop a teacher-training course for home economics teachers that was proposed and led by UCAEP over two and a half years from 2016. The aim of the course was to train home economics teachers to help their students develop professional competencies that were more sustainable. The 8 ECVETS/ECTS blended learning course included several innovative aspects, but one of the main aims was to spread the practice of the Green Pedagogy approach out of Austria to

The first obstacle faced by the pan- European project group with partners from Italy, Latvia, Denmark and Finland as well as Austria, was that there was no description of *Grüne Pädagogik* in English. A literature search for Green Pedagogy in English in 2016, when the project started, led to few results. Those results that did occur were mostly where the concept of Green Pedagogy was used in the same way as the adjective 'green' is used in many English contexts to mean something environmental, sustainable or organic but that did not refer specifically to the Green Pedagogy approach which had been painstakingly developed over several years in Vienna. The first challenge is that the developers of *Grüne Pädagogik* had adopted an adjective that was in general use in English but had no specific reference to their work although, as we shall see later, this was not to be the only linguistic challenge

Most descriptions of sustainable education such as Sterling's Future Fit [7], and The Natural Step [8], describe a holistic, multi-faceted and long-term process approach and Green Pedagogy is no exception. This leads to a barrier of complexity when translating from German to English. However, since the Green Pedagogy approach is based on some well-known pedagogical theories such as constructivism [9, 10], experiential learning [11] and conceptual change [12], these provide

The aim of Green Pedagogy is to go beyond surface learning, beyond knowledge and skills and to target long term attitudes or mindset. Attitudes can be further subdivided into values and collaborative skills [13]. By targeting attitudes, the aim is to achieve deep learning about sustainability based on a more conscious understanding of how actions, such as the way in which one plans and prepares a meal in the home economics class, support or negate existing values. In this way, sustainable practices cross over into other areas of the learners' lives at home, at work and in their community in the form of deeply ingrained sustainability competencies such

The Green Pedagogy approach to embedding sustainability in the classroom can be summarized in **Figure 2**. Already in translating the diagram from German

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96432*

as UNESCO.

involved.

the rest of Europe and beyond.

familiar footholds into the approach.

as those developed by UNECE [13].

**4. What is Green Pedagogy?**

**3. Aim of Green Pedagogy**

#### *Green Pedagogy: Using Confrontation and Provocation to Promote Sustainability Skills DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96432*

apply in their local context; a "glocal" approach. The approach has been developed by UCAEP in detail [1] since 2010 when it was first introduced as a way of connecting the agrarian, environmental and pedagogical training strengths of the College. Green Pedagogy was deliberately developed as a practical, implementable pedagogy as a counterpoint to the political policy imperative of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) which has its roots in international organizations such as UNESCO.

Implementing Green Pedagogy was a central aim of the ProfESus Erasmus+ European project to develop a teacher-training course for home economics teachers that was proposed and led by UCAEP over two and a half years from 2016. The aim of the course was to train home economics teachers to help their students develop professional competencies that were more sustainable. The 8 ECVETS/ECTS blended learning course included several innovative aspects, but one of the main aims was to spread the practice of the Green Pedagogy approach out of Austria to the rest of Europe and beyond.

The first obstacle faced by the pan- European project group with partners from Italy, Latvia, Denmark and Finland as well as Austria, was that there was no description of *Grüne Pädagogik* in English. A literature search for Green Pedagogy in English in 2016, when the project started, led to few results. Those results that did occur were mostly where the concept of Green Pedagogy was used in the same way as the adjective 'green' is used in many English contexts to mean something environmental, sustainable or organic but that did not refer specifically to the Green Pedagogy approach which had been painstakingly developed over several years in Vienna. The first challenge is that the developers of *Grüne Pädagogik* had adopted an adjective that was in general use in English but had no specific reference to their work although, as we shall see later, this was not to be the only linguistic challenge involved.

Most descriptions of sustainable education such as Sterling's Future Fit [7], and The Natural Step [8], describe a holistic, multi-faceted and long-term process approach and Green Pedagogy is no exception. This leads to a barrier of complexity when translating from German to English. However, since the Green Pedagogy approach is based on some well-known pedagogical theories such as constructivism [9, 10], experiential learning [11] and conceptual change [12], these provide familiar footholds into the approach.
