"Empirische Forschung zur Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung – Themen, Methoden und Trends" is the impressive title of my latest book – well, not really, it's a book that I have a modest chapter in. The editors are Matthias Barth and Marco Rieckmann. Most of it is in German, but, needless to say, my chapter isn't! Its title is:
Sustainability and Universities: An Examination of Conceptual Frames, Graduate Attributes and Learning Outcomes
... and it pulls together a number of themes that I've been writing about in recent times. In particular, it explores how universities address sustainability in their approaches to learning and teaching, and how learning outcomes and graduate attributes that relate to sustainability can be conceptually framed. It uses the idea of loose and tight sustainability framings, each of which can offer different kinds of evidence that sustainability is taken seriously by an institution. It examines four initiatives (from Australia, Canada and the UK) in order to explore the question of whether a transformative orientation is necessary if students are to learn effectively about sustainability.
This is how it ends ...
For any education-focused organisation that has an interest in sustainability, it seems inevitable that what it teaches will come to reflect that interest in some way. Indeed, it can be the case that such interest will have developed through teaching focused on sustainability. In a university, both the interest, and the teaching, may well also have developed out of research activities. Once such an interest is firmly established, then there is likely to be a growth (in both breadth and depth) in such teaching, in not only the formal curriculum, but in the informal or co-curriculum. There also may well be a growth of the ways that such teaching draws on the sustainability-focused work of the institution more widely to illustrate issues and facilitate learning. Thus, over time, teaching, research and operations develop a focus on sustainability and become helpfully intertwined.
The catalytic role of interested and committed individuals and small groups in this development should not be discounted. As Sterling & Gray-Donald (2007) note, in their discussion of transition pathways within institutions, many such journeys start with individuals. Although every institution will have its own development pathway, there have been attempts to illustrate the influences on these and their evolution. See, for example, Webster & Johnson (2009) and Scott (2013) for school-based examples.
When this is in place and developing, a question prompts itself. That is, to what extent does an institution need to be on a developmental and possibly transformative pathway to being sustainable itself in order to optimise educational outcomes. In other words, is a tight frame needed, or will a loose(r) one do if students are to learn effectively? Whilst being socio-economically transformative remains an ideal, it does seem persuasive that a focus on transformation, per se, is not necessary to make progress towards that goal, and, anyway, it is likely to be small-scale, on-the-ground, developments that are needed to create the conditions for transformation.
My view is that it does need something like the conceptual framing, and deliberative approach, that graduate attributes necessarily demand if something as difficult as whole-institution curriculum reform and transformation is to be realised in institutions such as universities. This is not to argue that the frame has to be a tight one like UBC’s, or the looser sort offered by other institutions, as each clearly has advantages and costs. It is to argue, however, that there has to be a guiding conceptual frame of some kind, as meaningful attributes, and hence curriculum, cannot sensibly be conjured up out of the vacuum, or safely left to the whim of charismatic individuals or itinerant experts.
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