Bill Scott's blog
Thoughts on learning, sustainability and the link between them
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New UNESCO reports on the DESD
The UNESCO website has two reports on progress in the Decade. There is a full version, and an abridged one. Oddly, the latter is almost as long as the former, but it has much less text and a lot of...
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QAA and ESD – a serious case of conceptual clarity disorder
I've been reading the QAA's UK Quality Code for Higher Education, and commenting through its consultation process on Chapter B3: Learning and Teaching. This followed a request to SHED-SHARE members: The new UK Quality Code is a revision of the...
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Bath slips in the green league – despite grade inflation
It's green league table time again. This year, the University of Bath has slipped in the table from 31st to 57th position and lost its 1st class honours rating as a result. I could find no publicity about this on its...
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Last word on Rio – promise
I was planning an extensive final comment on the substantive Rio issues (as opposed to the education ones), but I read Paul Vallely in the Observer this morning who said everything I wanted to (and more) in what I felt...
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The Rio+20 Education text
I have finally gotten hold of the Rio+20 final text via the UN. Whilst there are numerous references to education / training / capacity building in a wide range of contexts, there's also a section on Education as one of an...
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Is Tom Lehrer advising Gloucestershire?
The University of Gloucestershire has adopted an innovative approach to reorienting its senior management team, grounding this more firmly on a consideration of systems and cycles in the biosphere. Currently it is advertising for an Associate Director of Sustainability (Carbon)....
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Not rocking down to Rio
I guess if you're going to be at Rio, you've already arrived and are enjoying the sunshine, beach, traffic – and that frisson of excitement of being there when history is made – and, of course, the sheer fun of...
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Charters, charters, everywhere, ...
Whilst I was away recently, I missed a strongly worded exchange on SHED-SHARE about the latest wheeze from the increasingly febrile Copernicus Alliance. This is yet another document that universities are expected to sign up to, and is more evidence...
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Equal opportunities in Argyll and Bute
As Andy Stables has noted, the political slogan, equal opportunities – rather like the idea of sustainable development – is something of a contradiction, but that doesn't stop its being put into practice in some odd contexts. A recent egregious example...
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The moral case for renewable energy
At the end of May, the Guardian reported that, over two days, Germany's installed solar capacity produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity, and on one of the days met nearly 50% of power demand. Impressive, or watt? Needless to...
