Designed as an educational hub for sustainability, the Irish ecovillage of Cloughjordan is dealing with a significant challenge: creating stronger synergies between its educators…
Abstract
Purpose
Designed as an educational hub for sustainability, the Irish ecovillage of Cloughjordan is dealing with a significant challenge: creating stronger synergies between its educators to maximize its impact on the mainstream. Based on the empirical findings of a study conducted in this community, this paper aims to identify the principal informational and organisational factors that might encourage the development of such synergies.
Design/methodology/approach
Coherently with practice-related and ethnographic methodological principles, data were primarily collected through participant observation and semi-structured, open-ended interviews.
Findings
The lack of collaboration and information sharing between educational practices is relatable to different understandings and meanings about education for sustainability that are amplified by some power asymmetries.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis of the community’s educational practices may have been limited by the many interruptions brought by the recent pandemic.
Originality/value
This is the very first study to explore the educational activities of the ecovillage of Cloughjordan, and one of the first ones to combine the notions of “information in social practice” and “communities of practice” to explore a real-life project.