Learning for Planetary Habitability: A Lived Experience Study With Senior Earth System Scientists

Abstract

This autoethnographic study investigates the lived experiences of seven senior Earth system scientists to explore the human process of learning about the Earth as a whole, life-sustaining system, and to learn what it is like for these experts to communicate their knowledge and live with that knowledge. At the core of the thesis, seven scientist-interview chapters offer an immersive, introductory curriculum grounded in holistic, personal, experiential material to facilitate non-specialists’ qualitative learning about complex Earth system phenomena. The material demonstrates what human Earth learning experiences can look like at a time when Earth learning is not generally practiced and not well-charted for non-specialists. The thesis invites citizens, educators, and researchers to engage with the experiential material, and to experiment with and develop pathways for a whole-system approach to Earth learning that may enable societies to attain lasting alignment of human systems with the life-sustaining Earth system.