Threshold concepts and sustainability: features of a contested paradigm

Abstract

Threshold concepts describe the core concepts that people must master if they are to effectively think from within a new discipline or paradigm. Here, I discuss threshold concepts relevant to the science and practice of sustainability, unpacking the persistent challenges and critiques that sustainability has faced over the decades. Sustainability is immensely popular, but also endlessly critiqued as being naïve, vague, and easy to co-opt. I argue that these challenges can be traced to sustainability’s status as a robust, alternative world view to the industrial, neoliberal paradigm. The threshold concepts discussed below are troublesome, and new learners face significant challenges when trying to learn them and move into the paradigm. Here, I review five threshold concepts that are widely discussed as important to sustainability: complexity, collaborative institutions, multiple ways of knowing, no panaceas, and adaptability. This list is not intended as comprehensive but exemplary of sustainability as a pluralistic paradigm. Recognizing the special status of these and other threshold concepts within sustainability, and the linkages and dependencies among them, is an important advance for sustainability education and practice. I also offer some suggestions on classroom activities that have proved effective in helping people through the process of learning these concepts.

Applying the food–energy–water nexus concept at the local scale

“…as individual components. Cross-domain thinking aids sustainability by identifying how an action can have unintended negative consequences or how an action may be harnessed for wider benefit 34 . With respect to environmental security, such thinking can aid resilience by revealing weaknesses in the supply of food, energy and water, as well as functional redundancy that promotes resistance to disturbance 14,35 .…”

The imperative of embedding sustainability in business: A model for transformational sustainable development

“…Sustainability as a discursive paradigm needs to continually evolve beyond the status quo (Loring, 2020). Participants reflected this through strong consensus on taking into account ecological society.…”

Educating During the Great Transformation

“…Rather, our relationships constitute us and "then our individuality grows out of our relationships-not the other way around" (de Quincey, 2005, p. 12). As Indigenous people say, "we are our relations" (Louis, 2014). Not only do we participate in a fluid world, experienced through our bodies, but we are embedded in human, natural and cosmic relations.…”

“…(p. 14) Indigenous knowledge systems are profoundly relational. The first Cree word I was taught by my Cree teacher and colleague Claudine Louis, was Wahkohtowin, which means "all my relations" (Louis, 2014). As a verb language, this means "the act of being in relation", not just with past or present humans, but also with trees-the standing ones, birds-the winged ones, insects-the crawling ones, fish-the finned ones, animals-the four leggeds, the medicine, food and other plants, the elementsthe Thunderbeings, Four Winds... and the planet's Grandfather Sun, Grandmother Moon and Mother Earth.…”