{"id":732,"date":"2011-07-05T17:29:54","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=732"},"modified":"2011-07-05T17:29:54","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:29:54","slug":"when-is-esd-not-esd-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/07\/05\/when-is-esd-not-esd-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"When is ESD not ESD?  That is the question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, that might not <em>always<\/em> be the question, but when curriculum audits are in the offing, it certainly is an important one.<\/p>\n<p>This issue cropped up (again) last week at the HEA sustainable development advisory group, and in a separate conversation with an experienced academic, interested in ESD, who\u2019d been asked by a Deputy Vice Chancellor to audit their institution\u2019s curriculum in order to identify ESD practice.\u00a0 I was asked for my advice.<\/p>\n<p>I did what I always do whenever I am put on this particularly tricky spot, I asked him about framing.\u00a0 I asked whether he wanted to use a tight conceptual frame where it is made pretty clear to respondents what is to count as ESD (and, hence, what is <em>not<\/em>), and where there is an attempt to restrict respondents\u2019 leeway for interpretation \u2013 or whether a looser conceptual frame would do where the guidance to respondents is less conceptually tight, and where interpretation is more possible.<\/p>\n<p>The potential advantages of a loose framing are that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[i] \u00a0you get more responses, and<\/p>\n<p>[ii] how individuals and groups view their own work on ESD is validated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>However, this is not necessarily always a win-win outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The potential\u00a0advantage of a tight frame is that any responses you get <em>might<\/em> have more validity.\u00a0 I say \u201cmight\u201d because a tight frame doesn\u2019t necessarily mean a\u00a0conceptually valid one. \u00a0However, \u00a0I\u2019d say that the more conceptually\u00a0valid\u00a0a frame is, the\u00a0<em>tighter <\/em>it will prove to be, although the converse doesn\u2019t apply. \u00a0But then, who's to say,\u00a0definitively, what's a conceptually\u00a0valid frame of sustainability<em> - <\/em>which takes us back to loose(r) frames.<\/p>\n<p>A good example of the difficulty can be found in the 2007\/8 benchmarking exercise that was carried out for HEFCE where an attempt at a tight framing ran into trouble. \u00a0Here's a <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/07\/05\/one-of-the-most-challenging-conclusions-for-hefce\/\">comment<\/a> on the framing used in that work. \u00a0In a more contemporary context, this is a pertinent, but perhaps unresolvable,\u00a0issue for the development of the new\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelifeindex.org.uk\/\">LiFE<\/a>'s evaluation frameworks, in the development of which I have a walk-on part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, that might not always be the question, but when curriculum audits are in the offing, it certainly is an important one. This issue cropped up (again) last week at the HEA sustainable development advisory group, and in a separate...<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","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=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}