A question from Kerry Shephard – and a response of sorts

Otago University's Kerry Shephard writes to SHED-share ...

I have run an annual academic professional development event (a workshop) on 'Education for Sustainability' at my HE institution for the past five years. It supports what must be identified as a minority academic interest in the institution and it would be difficult to argue for more support of this kind purely on the basis of academic demand. But I am minded to develop something more; something that will engage the interests of more university teachers, but still address higher education’s contribution to ‘sustainability’.  I have had in mind, for some years now, the development of a ‘special interest group’, with a focus on professional development, sharing and mutual support for our teachers.  The theme of this SIG is the topic of this note.

In parallel to this, I work with a multi-disciplinary research group. We research how undergraduates’ environmental concerns are changing and also how university teachers conceptualise their roles with respect to education for sustainability. We probably did not need to research this latter topic to realise that university teachers’ conceptions of their role dictate what and how they teach, but our research brings this into sharp relief.

Put bluntly, many university teachers are so profoundly not 'for' anything outside of their disciplinary-focus that 'education for sustainability', or 'for sustainable development', are extraordinarily problematic for our purposes. Irrespective of these same teachers’ personal lifestyles, the terms (implying as they do, advocacy) divide rather than unite. Add to this, inherent problems for many (perhaps particularly our sustainability hard-liners) with any mention of ‘development’. Put into the mix an almost allergic reaction to the word 'sustainability' (perhaps particularly, but not exclusively, from colleagues in the life sciences who may focus on ecology, environment or conservation) and an equally challenging response to the 'environment' from those whose focus is (perhaps justifiably from their disciplinary or cultural perspective) essentially anthropocentric. My own enthusiasm for ‘critical and systems thinking’ (as unifying concepts that may help us to bring together our disparate, and subjective, imperatives) are admittedly too esoteric, or even academic, for our purposes.

The term ‘special interest group’ implies, and rather depends on, something in particular that we are especially, and collectively, interested in.  What is it? Perhaps if SHED-share can solve this one, we will have some hope of uniting higher education around a common mission…but for now some ideas on what our 'special interest' should be would be great.  Do colleagues in other institutions have something equivalent that does unite, rather than divide?

Here is my response:

Kerry; thanks for posing this question.  My experience suggests that your situation and concerns are not unique, but I do not suppose you thought they were.  I offer a few observations:

1.  It is a strength of HE that it contains so many passionate experts focusing on important issues.  It is clearly a weakness that they put so little store by others’ expertise in doing so. A long while ago, the American scholar John F Disinger wrote this:

though EE is ideally interdisciplinary – an eclectic assemblage of interacting disciplines – its practitioners typically approach it as if it were multidisciplinary – an eclectic assemblage of discrete disciplines.  Because EE’s practitioners typically are grounded in no more than one of the multiplicity of disciplines involved, logic leads them to approach EE through the intellectual filters of their own disciplines.  Thus, practitioners in EE typically continue to talk past one another, rather than with one another.

For EE read ESD.  For the majority, I do not think that they find what you (and I) are uninterested in unimportant, they just find it less important to them than what they do, and that it hasn’t much to offer to what they do.  For them, such a stance will be rational.  I suspect you will never win the argument around relative importance, but you might have more chance around getting them more ‘on board’ by helping them do an even better job than they currently do in relation to their students’ learning.  Question is: how?

2.  I don’t like the idea of a special interest group.  Well, it’s the “special” that makes it problematic, given that there isn’t anything at all special about it in the high-value / exclusive sense of the word.  I guess you mean particular interest group, but SIGs will always be preferred to PIGs, I guess.  But I’d say find a term that will draw others in rather than push them out.

3.  So, what do you all have in common?  This might be something to do with graduate attributes (an idea which is in vogue I feel, but none the less important for that), and also with employability which is, of course, related to attributes.  My own feeling is that sustainability now has a strengthening purchase in relation to how we work in the wider (greening) economy, and with how we live one with another, and with the earth more widely, such that attributes with their relation to employment and to social interaction offers something that everyone can make a contribution to irrespective of discipline.  Personally, I find the Melbourne attribute list [ http://www.unimelb.edu.au/about/attributes.html ] to be a fine starting point.

All this is also something that may even gain institutional approval.  Now, that would be a turn up … .