I am the Paradigm Shift Theory: Explaining Students’ Sustainability Outcome Comprehension Experience

Students receiving a liberal arts education develop the prosocial outcomes of inclination to inquire and lifelong learning, well-being, leadership, intercultural effectiveness, post conventional moral reasoning, and reflective judgment more effectively than career track institution counterparts. Researchers in efficacy of the liberal arts as well as in sustainability education have expressed the need for descriptive theory to guide further research towards understanding of learners' comprehension experience of these essential outcomes and for developing effective sustainability education. In an effort to describe characteristics most common to the successful sustainability student the author found that these characteristics were in essence identical to the prosocial outcomes of liberal arts students. Through a constructivist grounded theory approach, the author sought to describe students' comprehension experience of sustainability (i.e. prosocial) outcomes. Four central phenomena were synthesized from the data: nature as resolve, fear mastery, paradigm shift, and new normal. These phenomena were used to construct I am the paradigm shift theory which describes students' comprehension experience of sustainability outcomes. The importance of I am the paradigm shift theory is three fold: First, it provides additional understanding of perspectives on sustainability outcome comprehension hitherto quantitatively explored. Second, it describes the sequential and reciprocal experience of sustainability outcome comprehension. Third, the theory illuminates the influence of early efficacy, and esteem affirmation motivation and perseverance in outcome comprehension. Needs for further research and limitations of the study and also discussed.