Critical and Reflective Thinking: the ability to reflect critically on sustainability challenges. Fiona Tilley, Claire Marsh, Lucie Middlemiss and Bradley Parrish (University of Leeds, Sustainability Research Institute)
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‘Critical & reflective thinking’ is acknowledged as one of the key skills within Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education Institutions (Dawe et al, 2005). In this chapter we outline why the skill is important for all professionals who will contend with sustainability and provide two examples from our experience of teaching sustainability of how this skill can be developed through participatory learning experiences. Professional people are tasked with the design and implementation of strategies to address systemic societal problems in a variety of contexts. It is increasingly acknowledged that such challenges cannot be addressed using ‘one-size-fits-all’ blueprints. The complexity of ecological, social and economic systems means that such approaches often struggle to achieve their stated ambitions because they are based on an incomplete understanding of the systems involved and can fail to fully engage the people whose cooperation is vital for success.
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