After the introduction of the term, sustainable development, a variety of academicians from different disciplines tried to conceptualize it in their own way, drawing on these views, many different degrees but with similar titles have been established in many universities all around the world. Masters program in Sustainable Development (MSD) at Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) is one the most recent ones. Before starting this study, it was investigated that the expectations of the different actors in this program are not fulfilled completely. Presence of many different ideas and perspectives in addition to the high number of actors involved in the situation made the situation too complex to be fixed easily. Therefore, the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), as an appropriate approach for improving complex problematic situations, is used to reform the organization of the MSD in coming years. The process of identifying the challenges of this program and then improving some of them in practice are described in this thesis. Alongside the action phase, the applications of Systems Approach in transformation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are explored. It is investigated that three levels of learning, i.e. basic, meta- and epistemic learning, and accordingly three levels of organizational change, i.e. the first, second and third order, need to be recognized, if an ESD program is to be different from the unsustainable trends of education.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-144408 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Karim, Sanaz |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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