Learning to Love Complexity: A Guide to Teaching Complex Socio-Environmental Problems

Keywords: Complexity, Geography Education, Socio-natural, Environment, Environmental Education, Socio-Environmental Problems, Climate Change, Coupled Human and Natural Systems
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Engaging with complex environmental problems such as Climate Change can be challenging for students. Sometime termed "wicked" problems, coming to grips with these issues requires that students, on the one hand, master scientifically complex and nuanced knowledge of natural systems, and on the other hand appreciate the social, cultural, economic and political forces that drive these problems and shape the fields of action available for their management. Navigating the knotty entanglements of exceedingly complex human and natural systems is challenging even for academics who have spent careers studying these phenomena, so it is not surprising that students new to these fields easily become overwhelmed when confronted with such complexity. This paper combines a review of existing literature with ten years of personal experience teaching complex socio-natural phenomena at the undergraduate level, to propose frameworks and strategies for engaging students in the critical study of complex socio-natural phenomena at both the course and the curriculum level that attends to, and seeks to balance or reinforce, theoretical and conceptual learning with grounded experience.