 |
The Guide Beside is developed and delivered through the VAEE with funding from the Department of Sustainability & Environment |
|
|
||
| -Home -About the Guide -Casestudies -2007-Stage 3 -Draft Modules -Using the Guide -Key Documents -Workshops, Forums -Links -FAQ's | |||
|
|
About Guide Beside Approaches Extensive action research with many sustainability facilitators in Victoria over several years has revealed that two key approaches are needed. These are the basis of Guide Beside Approaches: Transformative means real, deep and long lasting change, at both individual and organisational/community levels. Collaborative means drawing on the interactions and synergies in the group or community of practice, which lead to outcomes that are greater than for any individual effort. Transformative & Collaborative Together means:
Why learning and change? Aren't they the same? A distinction is drawn between learning and knowing what is needed to change, why and how, and the actual process of change itself. Knowledge, awareness and even attitudes are important contributors to change, but in themselves rarely produce change. People can possess deep knowledge and strong attitudes for change, but not actually take the step to make the change itself. This has been demonstrated many times through research, and is common to the experience of sustainability facilitators. According to a major South Australian review of what leads to change: " The overall findings...are quite clear...Successful behaviour change will not occur via informationcampaigns alone...Additional forms of intervention are required to create initial adoption of desired behaviours, and to create sustained behaviour change." - Sexton Marketing Group 2007, A review of behaviour change models to achieve sustainable environmental behaviours, Executive Report to the Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resource Management Board. This sounds like a talk fest. What about real tangible outcomes? It is exactly the opposite! Most tough talk about'getting the facts out there' to get real change ignores the large body of research and practical experience that shows how ineffective information alone is at creating change. We would like to think that all that is needed is to convince people of the logic, and it can be convenient to blame them when this doesn't work, and hope that more facts, presented in better ways, will do the trick. This helps us feel in control and confident, but it will not get the change we want. We now know unequivocally that people do not change in entirely logical ways, as a result of knowing more about an issue. Collaboration & transformative learning and change needs to be carefully and strategically planned, so that all elements fit together in ways that produce actual change. We have to move beyond linear and logical approaches, to embrace systemic and interactive approaches because research and experience tells us unequivocally that these are what we need to get the changes we want for sustainable living. More About the Guide Beside? The interactive, action research oriented project to develop the Guide Beside (GB) program has been funded by the State Government of Victoria Department of Sustainability and Environment, as part of the Learning to Live Sustainably Strategy . The project has been coordinated and delivered through the Victorian Association for Environmental Education ( VAEE ), the collaborative leader for environmental and sustainability learning in Victoria.
Who is the Guide Beside for? The Guide Beside is a practical resource guide for facilitators of sustainability education and behaviour change in communities. It is an approach for intended for the wide range of sustainability facilitators, across waste, water, energy, transport, integrated environmental or natural resource management etc., and also across State and local governments, agencies, businesses, consultancies, education institutions at primary, secondary and tertiary level, as well as those working in the voluntary sector. How did the Guide Beside come about? “We cannot learn, how to facilitate collaborative transformative approaches for change through conventional sit-and-listen training – we need professional learning that itself is active and collaborative, and involves changing ourselves”. At the local, national and international levels it is clear that awareness alone does not lead people to act for sustainability. The alternative to this ineffective and inefficient ‘transmission of knowledge’ model for change is a reflective, participant-based approach that is widely referred to as ‘collaborative’ and ‘transformative’. The GB therefore arose out of the need to move beyond this do-as-I-say approaches to change, to find ways for those of us who work as agents of learning and action for sustainability, to learn ourselves how better to facilitate collaborative transformative processes with others. It was clear early on that the professional development coming out of the project would look and feel different, and be organised in different ways to the standard do-as-I-do expert sessions, or the run-through of what has been found to work for some participants. What is needed instead, is a parallel of the collaborative transformative approaches we want to use with program participants, but applied to our own professional learning. The problem is, we have not had a lot of shared experience or developed understanding of this approach. Through the GB project we have found that many sustainability facilitators, in pockets of activity and practice, have invented their own versions of the collaborative transformative approach with the participants and constituencies they are working with on the ground. However, these facilitators have had limited opportunities to share these ideas, and learn from one another, or from research and consolidated experience. And they have had even less opportunity to sort through and practice what works for them, using the same collaborative transformative processes they are wanting to use with their participants. As a result of these findings and in response to the Learning to Live Sustainably Strategy , a set of principles for effective sustainability facilitation was developed (view these Principles on Using the Guide) and a network of practitioners was built, who have a shared a focus for developing, implementing and improving professional learning for effective sustainability facilitation. With this came the knowledge that there was a need to devise and support practical, interactive and reflective learning situations for sustainability facilitators; to maximise the likelihood of learning to facilitate transformative change processes, rather than just learning about how to do these. In addition to this, it was recognised that there is also a need to devise and support practical, reflective learning for the planning, organisation and evaluation of integrated sustainability programs and projects. This entire process was crystallized in a few words by Vox Bandicoot Inc. in their Sustainability Street program: "What type of sustainability learning and change practitioner are you? The Sage on Stage, or the Guide Beside?" The GB approach has been derived out of three stages of framing and testing, over two and a half years.
So far these stages have been: Stage 3: The Practical Guide Beside - integrating Workshops, Manuals and Resources |
|
|||||||||
| - Privacy Policy - Disclaimer | |||||||||||
