{"id":1886,"date":"2012-06-15T10:48:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T09:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2012-06-15T10:48:39","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T09:48:39","slug":"oh-for-a-coherent-conceptual-frame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/06\/15\/oh-for-a-coherent-conceptual-frame\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh for a coherent conceptual frame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from universities in Belgium, Mexico, Slovenia, the UK and the USA are setting out to look at the implementation of sustainable development principles, \u201cas set up by the different declarations, partnerships, and initiatives into higher education institutions worldwide and what they have achieved\u201d. \u00a0This is being done through an on-line survey distributed in an untargeted way through mail-lists, e-forums, and the like. \u00a0The survey is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.survey.leeds.ac.uk\/sd_in_universities\">here<\/a>, should you feel qualified to respond. \u00a0NB, it will take longer than the promised 20 minutes \u2013 if you're inclined to think about your responses.<\/p>\n<p>Asking questions about sustainable development is notoriously tricky, given the complexity of the issues, and the competing (complementary, on a good day) conceptual framings that abound. \u00a0Thus, for researchers, making it clear what you mean by \"sustainable development principles\" seems necessary if any sort of validity is to be achieved. \u00a0In respect of this, the researchers note:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>For the purposes of this survey, sustainable development encompasses the economic, environmental, and social dimensions, as well as intra- and inter-generational equities<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But this seems awfully loose, and lacking in rigour. \u00a0Do you have to have <em>all<\/em> these dimensions and equities in place for something to count? \u00a0Or some combination of them \u2013 any combination, perhaps? \u00a0 \u00a0Essentially, will universities (actually, the unknown individuals in universities who'll be responding \u2013 another problematic validity issue), be free to identify whatever they want as sustainable development? \u00a0I fear they will.<\/p>\n<p>What, then, will all this be worth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers from universities in Belgium, Mexico, Slovenia, the UK and the USA are setting out to look at the implementation of sustainable development principles, \u201cas set up by the different declarations, partnerships, and initiatives into higher education institutions worldwide and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}