Thanks to the NAEE weekly news round-up for an alert to the forthcoming EAUC (Scotland) ESD webinar which will explore integrating environmental sustainability into HE/FE learning and teaching. EAUC says:
“While sustainability is all about the interconnections between the social, economic, and environmental, we have heard some of you say that specifically integrating complex environmental topics into teaching is tricky. While there is some great stuff happening, for example around tangible issues such as waste and recycling, addressing more abstract-feeling aspects like climate change or biodiversity can feel daunting when we don’t feel like we are experts in these fields. In this, we want to explore ways you can build confidence to integrate these topics into your teaching – both through gaining knowledge as well as through using teaching methods that allow you to feel comfortable with not knowing everything. We’ll have speakers from university and college contexts talking about their work as well as facilitated discussions with your peers."
What struck me quite forcibly about this text was this:
"While there is some great stuff happening, for example around tangible issues such as waste and recycling, addressing more abstract-feeling aspects like climate change or biodiversity can feel daunting when we don’t feel like we are experts in these fields"
Is biodiversity really "abstract"? Is climate change? And what's this talk of not being experts? Aren't universities stuffed full of academics who are expert in such matters, particularly climate?
Maybe they are busy teaching biodiversity and climate change rather than ESD. I wonder if that's the problem. It was certainly the case that in the fledgling days of ESD in HE, such experts were never thought to be people with much to contribute as opposed to those who carried a torch for ESD. It was all such a great shame.
Responses
When I developed a sustainability program degree, I was adamant that the program retain its independence of structured academic disciplines, while involving them within the program. I believed ESD was more transdisciplinary (multidisciplinary, whatever) and should teach broadly across the whole spectrum, instead of being restricted to a disciplinary focus that seems to be the case of many 'experts.' No easy task in front of us.