{"id":3300,"date":"2013-02-21T08:29:03","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T08:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=3300"},"modified":"2013-02-21T08:29:03","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T08:29:03","slug":"learning-in-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/02\/21\/learning-in-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Transition in Learning in Transition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest South West Learning for Sustainability Coalition<\/a> seminar was held on February 14th<\/sup> in Totnes.\u00a0 The topic was Learning in Transition<\/em>. \u00a0Appropriately, we met in the Totnes<\/a> Transition Network meeting room.<\/p>\n

Ben Brangwyn<\/a> opened the seminar with some background to the Transition movement, and he then talked about the <\/em>idea and practice of Transition, which morphed into a focus on Transition as learning.\u00a0 Ben\u2019s input focused on Transition as a means of our coming to terms with the very different socio-economic issues we shall be facing as resources and energy become scarcer and more expensive.\u00a0 His point was that we are running out of technological fixes \u2013 something not everyone there agreed with, at least for the short-to-medium term. \u00a0For Ben, Transition answers the question of how to reduce atmospheric CO2<\/sub>, whilst increasing social resilience and human happiness.\u00a0 It represents a model of working and coming together, increasing connectivity around local business and enterprise, with much of this invisible to the casual observer, which was, I thought, a well-made point.\u00a0 All this was engaging for the audience and it stimulated much discussion; around, for example, the value base of \u2018resilience\u2019 as viewed from the Transition viewpoint.<\/p>\n

The afternoon saw Isabel Carlisle<\/a> talk about Schools in Transition<\/em> and issues around evaluating effectiveness.\u00a0 Isabel talked about her work with three schools, two of which, the Crispin Academy<\/a>, in Street, and KEviCC<\/a>, in Totnes, are in the region.\u00a0 The third, Wellington College<\/a>, is in farthest Berkshire. \u00a0The emphasis in all this, it seems, is that \u201ca school in Transition is on a journey to resilience.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 It also has to be on a journey to greater sustainability across campus, curriculum and community, and I was struck (again) by the challenge of evaluating all this.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bigger problem than this, of course: setting appropriate(ly challenging)\u00a0goals and targets is much more demanding than mere measurement.<\/p>\n

Of course, schools cannot, in and of themselves, be resilient, just as a family cannot.\u00a0 Unless, of course, resilience implies mutual interdependence, as I think it must.\u00a0 If this is so, a town cannot be resilient either, which seems to me to be the fault line running though the idea of a Transition Town<\/em>. \u00a0If it were up to me, I\u2019d drop the \u201cTown\u201d \u2013 not to mention the local money side-show.<\/p>\n

All told, it was a very enjoyable day: a stimulating meeting, good conversation, excellent non-chain coffee, a horse-free Devon Pasty, and easy train travel through Glorious Devon, and Flooded Somerset.\u00a0 I also came away from the meeting with a list of books that other people clearly thought I needed to read.\u00a0 That\u2019s never a bad outcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest South West Learning for Sustainability Coalition seminar was held on February 14th in Totnes.\u00a0 The topic was Learning in Transition. \u00a0Appropriately, we met in the Totnes Transition Network meeting room. Ben Brangwyn opened the seminar with some background...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}