{"id":7843,"date":"2021-01-14T11:29:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T11:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7843"},"modified":"2021-01-16T11:16:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T11:16:39","slug":"esd-in-he-qaa-has-another-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/01\/14\/esd-in-he-qaa-has-another-go\/","title":{"rendered":"ESD in HE \u2013 QAA has another go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heaven help me but I've been reading the latest attempt by the QAA and its friends to get academics to take ESD seriously. \u00a0You'll find it here<\/a>, and there's a 10 question\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0to give your feedback. \u00a0Good luck. \u00a0The survey begins badly, as it asks for comments by yesterday but then says the deadline for comments is a week on Friday. \u00a0ESD in a timewarp? \u00a0QAA more like as it never understood sustainability, as I recall vividly from its first attempt a few years ago.<\/p>\n

The document is 41 pages long. \u00a0You can tell that it has been written by insiders for insiders by the fact that 13 of these pages are filled with bullet point \u00a0statements. \u00a0It looks more like a firing range target than a serious attempt to communicate. \u00a0Pages 18 to 20 are nothing but bullet points. \u00a0A further 8 bullet-dotted pages are focused on so-called learning outcomes which have been aligned with the eight key competencies identified by UNESCO. \u00a0It's a simple point, but if all these bullet points were numbers it would be so much easier to talk about them. \"Can I point you to statement 16 on the slide? is so much easier that: Can I point you to the 16th bullet point on this slide ...?\"<\/p>\n

I could go on and on about the silliness of many of the learning outcomes, but it's just too tedious. \u00a0Anyway, my two main objections are much more fundamental:<\/p>\n

1\u2013<\/strong> The opening sentence is: \"This guidance is intended to assist staff in UK higher education institutions seeking to incorporate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within their curricula.\" \u00a0 This might seem a laudable aim, given the state we are in, but it's really not. \u00a0It's been written (the document says) by those \"with expertise in education and sustainable development\" by implication for those who haven't got any. \u00a0And yet, as I write this, there are thousands of serious, skilled, experienced and knowledgable academics in UK universities who are helping their students in a wide range of disciplines learn about sustainability. \u00a0QAA has never acknowledged that these people exist because they've swallowed the prescription that it's ESD that matters. \u00a0So instead of taking expert academics seriously and asking what can be learned from what they do, and how might they be helped to do even more, we're told that these people should learn about ESD instead. \u00a0Dear me; whatever the question, it seems that it's ESD that's always the answer.<\/p>\n

2\u2013<\/strong> The guidance \"is intended to be of practical help to higher education providers working with students to foster their knowledge, understanding and skills in the area of sustainable development\". \u00a0There is a focus in this on being critical. \u00a0For example: enabling\u00a0\"learners to critique the credibility and sources of knowledge\", and suggesting that academics \"critique different perspectives on SD dilemmas, issues, tensions and conflicts within their subject area\". \u00a0But there is nothing on being critical of sustainable development as an idea, or ESD as a process. \u00a0I guess this is because the experts writing this really do think that these are beyond critique. \u00a0But isn't this what universities are for? \u00a0To critique fads and fashions? \u00a0Or to put it in a rather more scholarly vein, to help society decide which ideas to reject or further develop. \u00a0Or are sustainable development and ESD just too important to scrutinise?<\/p>\n

QAA has had another go at all this because the SDGs have been developed since their first attempt in 2014. \u00a0What a pity they have repeated the same old problems in doing this. \u00a0 Actually, I don't really blame the QAA as it's clearly puzzled by the notion of sustainability. \u00a0It's the closed circle of advisors they listen too (uncritically) that's the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heaven help me but I've been reading the latest attempt by the QAA and its friends to get academics to take ESD seriously. \u00a0You'll find it here, and there's a 10 question\u00a0survey\u00a0to give your feedback. \u00a0Good luck. \u00a0The survey begins...<\/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":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7843","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=7843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}