Foundational climate education in STEM: a modern ‘vorkurs’?

The Climate Emergency presents an urgent challenge for educators; to prepare students for academic or professional careers in a context where society must change, at pace, in wholesale and unknowable ways to support a sustainable future. Core amongst the skills required for this societal transition will be traditional engineering and science expertise (STEM), but also outstanding holistic and ‘systems thinking’ cognisance and appraisal; skills associated with learning through problem-based and challenge-based pedagogies, (PBL and CBL), multidisciplinary approached and messy open-ended ‘wicked problems’.1 Traditional specialist departmental curricula in Higher Education are not built on these pedagogic principles. Proponents of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) argue that transformation of established higher education delivery is required to achieve this shift.2
Perhaps STEM subjects can learn from established teaching methods in Art and Design Education?

This provocation explores the origins and development of the ‘foundation year’ in Arts Education as a means of developing holistic thinking, heuristic skills and learner agency; and reviews this against three years’ delivery of a new ESD course to STEM students, seeking to stimulate similar learning. Student feedback and reflections from past cohorts evidence the personal and academic development of students across the course. The paper concludes by positing the efficacy of this method in developing critically-evaluative, resilient and engaged students with a clear sense of purpose in tackling the Climate Emergency.