Higher Education and Social Change: Long-Term Outcomes, Imperatives, and Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

People have always lived in ‘interesting times,’ but never before have societies been so large and complex in terms of population, infrastructure, human-modified and tended landscapes and human-made products. Never have societies been so integrated in terms of economic and provisioning systems, transportation and communication.

The traditional comprehensive university structure, with its divisions of knowledge-making, teaching and departmental organization that revolve around purportedly distinct academic disciplines, is largely a product of the 19th Century. Today, scholars at many institutions routinely cross disciplinary boundaries to engage in innovative teaching and knowledge-making that address the complex challenges of societies. These boundary crossers create some of the most fitting educational and research experiences emerging from academic institutions embedded within the current context of converging global crises: climate change, pollution, deepening social inequity, political opportunism and corruption and threats to maintaining and advancing democracy and human rights.

Many have long called for higher education to better serve as an agent for broad-based social engagement, engagement with nature and personal development rather than primarily as an engine for training employees for the business-as-usual world (Benz, Marlatt, Shapiro, & Fortune, 2026; Brookfield, 2005; Cajete, 2000; Evans, 2012, 2015; Friere, 1970/2000; Grande, 2004/2015; hooks,1994; Kahn, 2010; McLaren & Jaramillo, 2007; Mezirow & Associates, 2000; Nicolescue, 2002; Peniche Camps, Mejía Ponce de Leon and Chávez Gómez, 2024; Peters, Jandrić, & Means, 2019). The Editors of this Special Issue are committed to answering this call in our professional lives through transdisciplinary academic work in areas such as sustainability, permaculture and climate education.

For this Special Issue, we call upon other committed colleagues to contribute further impetus for transformative education that promotes the long-term health and vitality of human-nature systems, inclusive of the diversity of all humans and the more-than-human world. We invite articles, conceptual papers and reviews that offer insights into the past, present and future of higher education. We seek perspectives on long-term outcomes, imperatives and roles of higher education in societies as well as case studies of transformative innovations in teaching, learning and knowledge-making. Authors are encouraged to take critical or transformative stances, or both.

The following are examples of subjects of potential interest for this issue, but contributors are encouraged to address subjects beyond those offered here:

1. Historical roles of higher education in social change,
2. Roles for higher education amidst current social challenges,
3. Teaching for social change,
4. Relevant academic subject foci,
5. Complicity of higher education in current social and ecological problems,
6. Long-term approaches for addressing social problems through higher education and
7. Exploration of recommended or realized changes in the following areas:
   • Research methodologies, methods and programming,
   • Pedagogy (experiential education, project-based learning, transdisciplinary engagement, indigenous approaches, etc.),
   • Co-curricular programming,
   • Democratic and community engagement,
   • Faculty incentives and rewards,
   • Institutional infrastructure,
   • Institutional structure and governance.

In service to a more inclusive, just and sustainable future, we invite contributors to share work that advances higher education’s abilities to play substantive roles in addressing the social problems of our times.

References

Benz, V.M., Marlatt, J., Shapiro, J.J., & Fortune, L.D. (2026). Mindful inquiry in social research. Updated Ed. Sage.

Brookfield, S.D. (2005). The power of critical theory: Liberating adult learning and teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.

Evans, T.L. (2012). Occupy education: Living and learning sustainability. Peter Lang.

Evans, T. (2015). Finding heart: Generating and maintaining hope and agency through sustainability education. Journal of Sustainability Education, 10. http://www.jsedimensions.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Evans-Heart-JSE-Nov-2015-Hope-Issue-PDF.pdf

Friere, P. (1970/2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (30th Anniversary Ed.). Continuum International Publishing Group.

Grande, S. (2004/2015). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. (10th Anniversary Ed.) Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Kahn, R. (2010). Critical pedagogy, ecoliteracy, & planetary crisis: The ecopedagogy movement. Peter Lang.

McLaren, P., & Jaramillo, N. (2007) Pedagogy and praxis in the age of empire: Towards a new humanism. Sense Publishers.

Mezirow, J., & Associates. (2000). Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress. Jossey-Bass.

Nicolescue, B. (2002). Manifesto of transdisciplinarity. State University of New York Press.

Peniche Camps, S., Mejía Ponce de León, A., Chávez Gómez, P. (2024). Perspectiva ecológica, transdisciplinar sistémica: Retos de la reforma curricular universitario. Universidad de Guadalajara.

Peters, M.A., Jandrić, P., & Means, A.J. (2019). Education and technological unemployment. Springer.

Prof. Dr. Tina Lynn Evans
Dr. Krista Hiser
Dr. Harold S. Dutton-Treviño
Guest Editors

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• transformative education
• education and society
• social change and education
• transdisciplinarity
• societal roles of education
• education and sustainabity
• social activism and education