{"id":6046,"date":"2014-10-29T08:38:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T08:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6046"},"modified":"2014-10-29T08:38:14","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T08:38:14","slug":"skills-mapping-on-an-esd-programme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2014\/10\/29\/skills-mapping-on-an-esd-programme\/","title":{"rendered":"Skills Mapping on an ESD programme"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a summer\u00a0meeting with a\u00a0university's ESD team, we heard that its\u00a0students have described the skills they see relating to sustainability.\u00a0 The ESD team noted that these could be applicable to just about any subject area, echoing the idea of sustainability as a place where many subjects intersect and overlap.\u00a0 They stressed that these are enablers not prescribers \u2013 \"a new kind of student learning journey, \u00a0... discovering voice\".<\/p>\n

The skills identified by the students are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Future thinking<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. Interdisciplinarity<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Critical thinking<\/em><\/li>\n
  4. Social \/ collaborative thinkers<\/em><\/li>\n
  5. Making a difference<\/em><\/li>\n
  6. Creative solutions<\/em><\/li>\n
  7. Innovation<\/em><\/li>\n
  8. Empowerment<\/em><\/li>\n
  9. Self belief<\/em><\/li>\n
  10. Partnership<\/em><\/li>\n
  11. Empathy<\/em><\/li>\n
  12. Self efficacy<\/em><\/li>\n
  13. Adaptive capacity \u2013 evidence based thinking \u2013 the ability to handle risk, uncertainty<\/em><\/li>\n
  14. Holistic \/integrative thinking<\/em><\/li>\n
  15. Personal ethical code<\/em><\/li>\n
  16. Vision, motivation and resourcefulness<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When these came up in the meeting, it struck me that none of the items had anything particularly\u00a0to do with sustainability in that they did not relate, specifically, to economic, social or environmental issues and their intersection. \u00a0<\/span>When I mentioned this, the immediate response was that these skills had everything to do with sustainability. \u00a0For example, a sustainable society would need people and structures with critical thinking skills, etc, etc \u2013 you know the argument.<\/p>\n

    Well, it might, but that's not the same thing. \u00a0As David Orr might have (and probably has) pointed out, the world is full of people with these skills (and institutions that promote them) who are often part of the problem. \u00a0Many of these skills are purpose and value-neutral. \u00a0It all depends on how they are used in the world, a point which the ESD\u00a0team acknowledged.<\/p>\n

    That said, it surely follows that some sort of value framing is needed if such\u00a0skills are to be acquired in a way that renders them restorative, rather than destructive of, say, natural capital or social justice. \u00a0I couldn't see where such a\u00a0framing has been\u00a0adopted by the university\u00a0as a whole, as it has, for example, by\u00a0the University of British Columbia which seems to have a better understanding all this \u2013 on paper at least.<\/p>\n

    More to come on all this ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    At a summer\u00a0meeting with a\u00a0university's ESD team, we heard that its\u00a0students have described the skills they see relating to sustainability.\u00a0 The ESD team noted that these could be applicable to just about any subject area, echoing the idea of sustainability...<\/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-6046","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\/6046","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=6046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}