I was in Plymouth on Thursday night to be at Stephen Sterling's professorial inaugural lecture.\u00a0 It was a fittingly splendid few hours. \u00a0Stephen was welcomed formally to his new role with an appropriately generous appreciation of his human and professional talents and this was before he'd even said a word. \u00a0There was even a brief cameo by way of pre-welcome \u2014 a witty but rather bemusing warm up act.<\/p>\n
Stephen spoke at length as was appropriate, and we were all encouraged to tweet, blog, etc ( not really sure if there is an etc., but ... ).\u00a0 I followed the talk by reading Debby Cotton's tweets \u2014 you still can here<\/a> .\u00a0 I was sitting next to her at the time, and so she was able to 'talk to me' without saying a word.\u00a0 I saw something of the point of tweeting (and whatever the verb is for reading them is) through this.<\/p>\n Stephen organised his talk round a Venn diagram whose three components were:\u00a0Sustainable education \u2013 Ecological consciousness \u2013 The sustainable society<\/p>\n He spoke about each and brought them together at the conclusion of his talk.\u00a0 It was a grand tour of his thinking over many years with many of his favoured alliterative lists on display, for example:<\/p>\n Learning by doing \/ default \/ design<\/em> \u2013 these map to reflection \/ reaction \/ anticipation<\/em><\/p>\n Levels of educational thinking: practice \/ provision \/ policy \/ purpose \/ paradigm<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He ended with a declaration of his possibilist<\/em> stance towards change, after Jacob Von Uexkull<\/a>, the founder of the Right Livelihood Award<\/a>. \u00a0Uexkull says that<\/p>\n \"\u00a0There are too many possibilities to be a pessimist. \u00a0Of course, there are also too many crises to be an optimist. \u00a0I always say, I am a possibilist\".<\/p><\/blockquote>\n