{"id":4033,"date":"2013-06-19T05:32:33","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T04:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=4033"},"modified":"2013-06-19T05:32:33","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T04:32:33","slug":"webchat-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/06\/19\/webchat-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Webchat away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following the publication of the <a href=\"http:\/\/peopleandplanet.org\/greenleague\">2013 Green League<\/a> last week, the Guardian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/higher-education-network\">Higher Education Network<\/a> hosted a 2 hour live <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/higher-education-network\/2013\/jun\/11\/university-sustainability-strategy-research-impact\">webchat<\/a> last Friday.<\/p>\n<p>This is how the Guardian introduced it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000080\">\"Universities are the true thought leaders of society and if they don't lead the way, there is a risk that less independent voices fill the vacuum with their own agenda on the subject of sustainability, rather than insights based on robust research,\" wrote Jonathon Porritt for the network last year. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080\">A year on, are universities driving the sustainability movement forward \u2013 or has energy on this issue stalled? \u00a0The 2013 People &amp; Planet Green League shows some universities are making more effort than others. <\/span><span style=\"color: #000080\">Manchester Metropolitan University moved from 10th to top place in the table, achieving the highest ever Green League score of 59.5 out of 70. \u00a0The biggest jump came from the University of Reading which moved up 42 places to 17th, while the University of Oxford, which failed this year's assessment, moved down 13 places to 132.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080\">What is higher education's role in creating a more sustainable environment for the wider community, as well as its own students and staff? \u00a0Is it tradition that's preventing some universities from adopting more ethical forms of procurement, infrastructure and teaching models \u2013 or a case of sustainability scepticism among senior heads and academics?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080\">\"We're seeing excruciatingly slow progress from too many universities in some criteria such as ethical investment given the urgency of the climate challenge,\" says Louise Hazan, who created the People &amp; Planet Green League. \u00a0Are universities failing to connect academic research into climate change with their own decisions on who they procure from, and partner with?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080\">How can education respond to these complex challenges? \u00a0In this debate, we want to hear your views on how far the sector has come on university sustainability, and ask in what way it's more than just a green issue. How does it impact on leadership, teaching and learning, research, procurement and the overall mission of the university?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080\">Here's what we're looking to discuss:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080\">How sustainability research is being supported and funded<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080\">Challenges and benefits of ethical procurement<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080\">Education's role in a sustainable future<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080\">Collaborative partnerships<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080\"><span style=\"color: #000080\">Where to focus university efforts<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">I'll pass over the Guardian's pathetically uncritical stance on Green League methodology, and just comment on the Webchat, the early stages of which I followed as it rolled out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">I kept up for the first hour before following the diverse strings of comment finally got the better of \u00a0me. \u00a0Actually, I thought the problem was that contributors di<\/span>dn't keep to the strings, but tended to launch their own comments into the aether just where they wanted to so that the discussion (ie, comment \/ responses) was literally all over the place. \u00a0Fine for them, but as there were some 320 individual comments by the end, this was hard for the rest of the world to keep up with. \u00a0A bit of moderation (in both senses) would not have come amiss. \u00a0I caught up with the whole thing at the end of the afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>All told, I was rather disappointed that there were so few actual academics amongst the 11 Guardian panellists (details of whom you can see at the link, above). \u00a0By this<em> <\/em>I mean those university staff with disciplinary expertise and interest in sustainability who both teach and research (about) it. \u00a0There are a lot of these across the UK now, but, because of how the Guardian set the panel up, they were marginalised. \u00a0Instead, we had a combination of those whose prime responsibility is for university estates (think reducing carbon and changing behaviours), and those who see it as their mission to champion ESD and integrate it into disciplines.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble with the latter is that this is not an issue that most academics are likely to bother about. \u00a0If they are interested (and some clearly\u00a0<em>are<\/em>), they are likely to ask:\u00a0How can I bring a focus on sustainability into what I do now? \u00a0This is <em>not<\/em> quite the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>These dispositions might be put like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em><span style=\"color: #333399\">A \u2013 How can ESD be integrated\u00a0into discipline-based teaching?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #333399\">B \u2013 How can I <span style=\"color: #333399;font-style: italic\">integrate a focus on sustainability into my<\/span> discipline-based teaching?<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To a superficial eye, <em><strong>A<\/strong><\/em> and <strong><em>B<\/em><\/strong> look pretty much the same, and any eventual outcomes may well be of the same form and structure, but they start from quite different positions and psychologies. \u00a0<strong><em>A<\/em><\/strong> is a question put by outsider experts to themselves, whereas \u00a0<strong><em>B<\/em><\/strong> is a practitioner's grounded question. \u00a0So, if actual academics (and hence students) are really to be helped, might it not be better if all those across HE (and FE) who want to achieve <strong><em>A<\/em><\/strong>, put their efforts into helping those out there who are (and might yet be) interested in <strong><em>B<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following the publication of the 2013 Green League last week, the Guardian Higher Education Network hosted a 2 hour live webchat last Friday. This is how the Guardian introduced it: \"Universities are the true thought leaders of society and if...<\/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-4033","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\/4033","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=4033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}