Democratization of Higher Education - Transformative Teaching and Learning in Practice

Any sincere attempt to solve the existing social-ecological problems must aim to change the societal relationships at their core. Thus, only a full shift towards a democratic organization warrants the chance to vanquish suppressive and exploitative societal relationships including the domination of wo_men over nature. Indeed, democratization might be the only chance for a social-ecological transformation of society and a sustainable living. In addition, a whole-hearted strengthening of democracy within society helps to address rising authoritarian tendencies within all nations.

Taking this into account, the participants of this workshop will unveil the power structures within universities and the effect they have on decision-making processes. This includes the power structures that arise due to the governance of a university as well as the power structures that are inherent to the professor-student-relations.

The workshop makes use experiential learning. First a group activity on power is done and then reflected against the background of the participants' own experience in decision-making at their universities and within their teaching which leads to a discussion on how to democratize higher education and to facilitate a social-ecological transformation within universities.

At the end, the workshop leader will showcase one module: “Critical Sustainability” is the compulsory module of the Sustainability Certificate at TU Berlin. Each semester around 100 students from over 40 different study programs and over 10 countries reflect upon democratic decision-making and practice it in a transformative learning setting which includes elements of the aforementioned pedagogy of democracy. Furthermore, this module showed that there is no particular difference between analogue and digital teaching/learning when participants start to perceive themselves as political actors that can contribute to a social-ecological transformation of society and its democratization.