(Be)Coming and (Re)Membering Through Kitchen Based Learning as Sustainability: An Innovative Living Learning Systems Model for Higher Education

Abstract

Higher education tends to situate sustainability epistemologically as transmissive education about and/or transactional education for sustainability. Sustainability educators argue that these approaches remain part of the dominant dualist and reductionist way of teaching and learning—a weak sustainability. What is needed is a transformative learning process as sustainability. Numerous sustainability educators and practitioners propose a strong sustainability supported by ecological relationality. In this chapter, I draw from ecological living systems principles (Capra in The hidden connections: a science for sustainable living. Anchor Books, New York, 2004) and relational agential realism (Barad in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 10: 87–126, 2007) to illustrate an innovative pedagogical approach of the environmental sciences. Calling it kitchen-based learning it uses cooking, eating and sensing as a relational transformative learning process towards (be)coming and (re)membering social and ecological sustainability. A vision for tomorrow’s campus in higher education is to include innovation in pedagogy giving attention to how students learn as a process of educating as sustainably.