Towards an ecological university? The value of a critical and imaginative pedagogy.

Abstract

One of the main transformative directions that crosses the sphere of higher education concerns the possible roles to be assumed in the multiple challenges arising under the sign of sustainability. The shift towards an ‘ecological university’ involves epistemological, ethical and political issues and is intertwined with all three academic missions.

The construct of ‘sustainability’, however, is at the centre of a heated debate due to a semantic breadth that risks turning it into an ‘empty signifier’, exposed to instrumentalisation, mystification and reductionism structured on the assumptions that govern the knowledge economy. In this sense, in order not to fall back into educational processes that are flattened by instrumentality, it becomes urgent to interrogate and critically examine the way in which the demands connected to sustainability are translated into practices and guidelines for action. The article will address these questions drawing on the existing inteernational debate and proposing reflections emerging from an European project.