What follows is a critical appreciation of the Education for Sustainable Development – draft guidance for UK higher education providers, which has been produced by an expert group in collaboration with the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA).
This guidance is for higher education practitioners who wish to include learning about sustainable development in their curricula and thus offer students the chance to think and learn about sustainable development as an element of their academic experience. It offers general guidance on approaches to teaching, learning and assessment which it hopes that those with responsibility for designing and delivering programmes of study may find helpful. This guidance is intended to serve as a reference point for educators working with students in order to foster knowledge, understanding and skill in the area of sustainable development. The guidance acknowledges that there are many ways in which this may be achieved and does not set out to be prescriptive about delivery. Rather, it offers an outcomes-based framework for use in programme design, delivery and assessment across all disciplines, and relates primarily to undergraduate provision and assessment at level 6. The guidance complements the UK HE Quality Code that sets out the expectations that all providers of UK higher education are required to meet and which is used in QAA review processes.
There are two main aspects to the guidance:
- the identification of graduate outcomes – what students will be able to know, do and understand after a period of learning covered by this guidance
- guidance on teaching, learning and assessment – the ways in which educators can enable students to achieve and demonstrate the graduate outcomes.
What follows relates to the first of these.
The heart of the matter
The graduate outcomes are at the heart of the guidance. These are set out in terms of knowledge and understanding, skills, and attributes. The knowledge and understanding section is sub-divided into contextual understanding (4 learning outcomes), natural systems and their limits (10 learning outcomes), and structures and societies (10 learning outcomes). This skills section is sub-divided into critical skills (7 learning outcomes), putting theory into action (10 learning outcomes), and negotiation (8 learning outcomes). In terms of attributes, students are to be encouraged to reflect upon their own attitudes and behaviours, enabling them to consider alternatives that could contribute to more sustainable global societies (11 learning outcomes). Although there are a lot of learning outcomes (50+) here, the ambition of the guidance requires this.
A tour de force
In many ways this is a tour de force, and clearly represents a lot of thought about higher education and sustainable development, how they interact, and what might result, in terms of student learning, were institutions to take all this seriously. The rationale for their being a good and very necessary fit between sustainable development and HE is well done.
A valid representation
The power of all this lies in its representation, not just of the concepts underpinning the need for sustainable development, but also, in a way that has to be admired, the group has produced a set of learning outcomes that represent the operationalisation of sustainable development. In other words, it’s not just about knowing about, but about doing, and becoming. Had it been restricted to knowledge and understanding, then it would have been much less of a document. In this sense, the guidance embodies a welcome and unusually sophisticated view of sustainable development which is set out, and may be defended, as a coherent view. Sure, one might disagree with the view, but I suspect that many of those who read it, and who think about such things, will see it as a (but not, of course, the) valid representation of sustainable development issues.
Such a pity about Brundtland
As such, it seems a pity that something as naïve as the quote from Brundtland, with its narrow emphasis on need, is espoused and promoted in the guidance. Universities are full of people who will see the conceptual poverty of this. The document’s preferred definition of education for sustainable development goes someway to make up for this, but it is hard to understand why there was not a greater emphasis on presenting a clear explanation to readers of the nuances (and problems) around the idea of sustainable development, given that readers will not be as familiar with these, or understand their significance, as the authors obviously are.
A quibble – or two
It is, of course, easy to quibble at the margins of what has been produced. For example, I can see a learning outcome (or two) in the natural systems and their limits section that I’d argue would be better placed in contextual understanding, and I am sure that the group will get lots of feedback like that. Then there will be others who will surely suggest additional learning outcomes across the piece, or even suggest that a few are somehow inappropriate. In a draft document, that is to be expected, especially as the writing group, though expert, was fairly narrowly drawn.
Selecting from culture with validity in mind
I do wonder what specialist groups will make of particular sections. Here, I am thinking in particular of the natural systems and their limits and structures and societies sections. Universities are full of academics who know a lot about these issues – we might call them natural and social scientists, many of whom are rightly classed as international experts. Indeed, such academics will be very familiar with some of the learning outcomes on offer. I’d hazard that they may be harder to please than I have been when it comes to seeing the various learning outcomes as representing, even if loosely, their disciplines. The authors might rightly argue that such learning outcomes do not set out to represent all that is to be found in a natural science degree, or a sociology one, but curriculum is always a selection from culture with validity in mind, and it will be important that discipline experts agree with the selection that has been made here. It is not clear how much consultation there has been about all this.
A tension – or two
For me, there is something of a tension in the guidance about whether it is setting out to help institutions or practitioners. The title, with its reference to “providers”, implies the former, but most of the contents suggests the latter are the focus, and I take that to be the case.
There is another tension which is about whether the authors are trying to stimulate a change to the education and learning that goes on in HE (with sustainability in mind), or whether they are trying to effect the introduction of education for sustainable development. The introductory parts of the document suggest it is the first of these, but then we find: “The guidance is not prescriptive about how education for sustainable development should be delivered, … .” and “Education for sustainable development can be delivered …” . Of course, on the ground, the outcomes may well be the same, but, psychologically, it will surely be better if practitioners think that they, and their disciplinary interests, are the focus here, rather than an abstract idea which, as it is discussed in some parts of the guidance, looks suspiciously like a substantive parallel course of study. My own reading of the text suggests that the guidance has been produced from this introducing ESD perspective whereas, if is it going to be successful, it has to be embraced by the “non-ESD community in HE” (as one of the report’s authors recently put it); that is, all those HE practitioners who work outwards from their own disciplinary and student interests. In this sense, the authors should ask themselves whether they have really produced a document for the sector, or for themselves.
It’s wide, but is it deep?
In relation to any knowledge and understanding learning outcomes, there are usually issues of depth to consider. For example, take these three outcomes:
- understand root causes of unsustainable development, including environmental, social and economic actions, and the links to cultural considerations
- understand the need for decisions about natural resources to involve judgements not just about economic viability but about risks to future ecological, social or cultural wellbeing
- understand how global power structures and political systems influence environmental, social and economic policy, and be aware of the main mechanisms by which these structures change
These are issues and questions that young people at school might well encounter, and which could also feature in Masters degree programmes. Given that all these (and many of the other learning outcomes) can be written about in a short paragraph, as well as in a thesis, you have to ask how much understanding are we talking about here? With this question in mind, what is set out here looks more like learning headings than particular outcomes. I think that this argument probably applies to most, if not all, the learning outcomes set out here, and begs questions about who will determine appropriate depth.
A question of parts and (w)holes
The introduction to the graduate outcomes section says this: “The outcomes are not intended … as a rigid checklist, since the context within each discipline will be different. It is anticipated that practitioners will use this section as a framework for programme design and delivery.” Indeed. What is set out here is obviously not a degree programme, or even a significant part of one, even though it does cover a lot of disciplinary ground, and has 50+ learning outcomes associated with it. It is a pretty sophisticated outcomes-based framing of sustainable development and you might hazzard that, were you (heaven forfend) to set out to write a sustainable development degree programme, then all this might be in it, one way or another.
But herein lies a problem, because of this framing there is a sense that it’s all or nothing; a sense that you cannot adopt a pick ‘n’ mix approach to these learning outcomes because, if you do, then you have lost the essence of what the whole is. Clearly, it would be absurd to think that you could only adopt one of the 50-odd learning outcomes that are set out here and claim that you are somehow addressing sustainable development. The same argument would obviously apply to two outcomes, and to ten, and probably to 25 as you cannot really have half a framework. Or would it? The guidance says nothing about this, for me, rather important representational question which is at the heart of the validity of what ensues, on the ground, from all this.
When does all this end?
What is set out here frames an education for life-long, active citizenship and learning in both workplace and social contexts. As such, pertinent though all these outcomes and attributes undoubtedly are to an HE experience, it is doubtful whether they can all be fully developed within the period of a university degree. In part, this is because of the limited time available, but, more crucially, because it is the making of real-life decisions, that most fully enables, in an iterative, developmental manner, the capacity for exercising such citizenship. In this sense, it seems reasonable to assume that most of what is set out here will continue to be developed in the workplace, or just in life. It is not obvious that the authors understand this; rather, the guidance seems to assume that the end of a degree is, in fact, the endpoint of such development.
Useful questions
There is a section at the end of the guidance on questions that educators may (this should be “might”) ask themselves. It begins: “Educators may find it useful to ask themselves certain questions in order to generate ideas and reflect on their practice. They may also find it useful to think about some of the questions that students may want to ask.” Some examples of such questions are then helpfully provided. I think if non-ESD practitioners get this far, the authors ought to be very pleased. Rather inevitably, perhaps, the first question is about education for sustainable development, although what then follows does seem potentially helpful. Indeed, it would be surprising if some of them at least had not already occurred to a reader who was paying attention and taking the issues seriously. In this sense, such a listing at the end of the document is a useful reminder to readers.
Who’s to teach all this learning?
When I read these useful questions, one seemed to be missing. It goes something like this: ‘Have I the skills / capabilities / competencies / etc to do all this with my students?’ This was in my mind because this guidance reminds me of a resource produced by UNESCO-UNEP in 1987, as part of its International Environmental Education Programme: Strategies for the Training of Teachers in Environmental Education. This set out what were called desired teacher competencies, divided into two linked categories: (1) foundational competencies in professional education and (2) competencies in environmental education content. The resemblance between these two documents, 25 years apart, is striking, but is unsurprising given that the same issues were, essentially, being addressed. UNESCO-UNEP focused on the teacher and teaching, and this guidance has focused on learning processes and outcomes: which are two sides of the same coin.
Mentioning the UNESCO-UNEP guidance is pertinent here for two reasons. Firstly, it reminds us to ask who is going to do the teaching that will lead to all these learning outcomes, as it does seem optimistic to suppose that such competencies already exist. Secondly, nothing ever came of the UNESCO-UNEP project, in large part because its long lists of what other people needed to know and do were just too demanding. The risk must be that this will apply here as well, especially as this guidance has not, as far as I understand, been developed in conjunction with those who are expected to use it.
Uncanny literature
Finally, there is an uncanny coincidence between the membership of the expert group and the authorship of the literature cited in the report. This is just evidence, of course, of the care with which the expert group was assembled.
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