What is the best way to get effective learning and change that
fosters environmental sustainability in communities and businesses?

This is the question that the Guide Beside program has been seeking to answer since it began in 2005!

The Guide Beside (GB) is a new and evolving approach to professional learning,
for those who facilitate, train, lead, educate or use learning and change programs to achieve environmental sustainability outcomes. Guide Beside workshops, forums and specific programs are designed to assist experienced and not so experienced facilitators to acquire and further develop the best available practices, for use with participants in their learning and change programs.

The basis of the GB approach is collaborative, transformative learning – hence the origins of the name of the project: “Be a guide beside, rather than a sage on stage”. To view the principles of collaborative, transformative learning, developed in Stage 1 of the project, go to GB Principles>> in the Using the Guide>> section of this website.

One principle of the GB approach is to shift the balance of how we work with sustainability program participants, from more transmissive (telling participants what to do) to transformative (developing a variety of ways that participants can learn, become enabled, explore and invent):

The GB approach is for those working in communities, councils and shires, businesses, education settings, consultancies and special projects - wherever sustainability is fostered. More on the background of the GB >>

Development of Guide Beside Approaches, funded by the State Government of Victoria's Department of Sustainability and Environment as part of the Learning to Live Sustainably Strategy, is currently under way in Victoria, piloting and putting into practice innovative professional development for facilitators of environmental sustainability.

This website provides background information, links and guidance on how facilitators can use the Guide and become involved in the process. This website also provides a space for forums and networking for practitioners involved in sustainability education and behaviour change for communities and businesses.

Why we need professional development

Beyond the obvious reasons that we can all improve our approaches to facilitating change for sustainability, we need to learn new approaches that go beyond our existing models of education for change, which include much of our own educational experiences. Both research and practitioner experience, integrated and developed through action research in the Guide Beside projects (2005-2007) show that existing information and expert talking head approaches are VERY INEFFICIENT and INEFFECTIVE in producing change. There are now well- documented and practiced methods for fostering effective behaviour change, and we need to learn and use these, just as we choose the best technological approaches for generating electricity and reducing water use.

Why collaborative and transformative?

Collaborative: because research and experience has shown that effective change tends to happen in groups, and relies on trusted realtionships, encouragement, support and inspiration, as well as prior knowledge, practical capability and do-ability.

Transformative: because real lasting and effective behaviour change involves a shift in how we view ourselves (our identity) and not, as was previously believed, a download from awareness and knowledge in our frontal brain to produce change.
For further information on 'collaborative' and 'transformative' mean, see About the Guide Beside.

Develoment of GB approaches