Revolutions and Second-Best Solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education

Despite widespread policy support for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in higher education (HE) and a strong academic literature arguing for a radical rethink of curriculum, pedagogy and institutional culture, progress towards the educational reforms envisaged for ESD remains limited. Based on in-depth interviews with lecturers at a casestudy university, this paper explores reasons for the slow pace of change, in particular how constraining variables (such as class size, patchy managerial support, perceived irrelevance of ESD to some disciplines and conflict with prevalent higher education pedagogies) inhibit the widespread use of the holistic, interdisciplinary, transformative learning approaches advocated by ESD theorists. Coping strategies employed by lecturers to bring ESD issues into their teaching practices are investigated and reviewed in the context of the ‘theory of the second best’. We conclude with a plea for greater recognition in the literature of the merits of such ‘second-best’ approaches to ESD in HE. Final submitted version of paper subsequently published as: Cotton, D., Bailey, I., Warren, M. & Bissell, S. (2009) Revolutions and second-best solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education 34 (7): 719733 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802641552#.VBGR25RdWmE 3 Revolutions and Second-Best Solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education Introduction Reflecting international political commitments to sustainable development (SD) since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has gained an increasingly high profile within higher education over the past two decades. The first major step in this direction came in 1990, when university leaders from over 320 Higher Education Institutions in 47 countries signed the Talloires Declaration, committing to environmental sustainability in higher education (University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, 2005). Moreover, the UN Decade for ESD (2005 to 2014) provides a major opportunity for educational institutions worldwide to engage with ESD (see ARIES, 2005). A similar chain of commitments to ESD can be observed in the UK, where in 1993 the Toyne Report emphasised the need to improve environmental responsibility in the higher education (HE) sector. In 2005, coinciding with the UK government report, Securing the Future: delivering the UK sustainable development strategy (HM Government, 2005), the Higher Education Funding Council for England produced an ESD strategy and action plan, Sustainable Development in Higher Education (HEFCE, 2005). This was followed in 2006 by the Department for Education and Skills’ Sustainable Schools Strategy (DfES, 2006). The potential impact of these initiatives on the HE sector is highly significant both in terms of curriculum content and pedagogical approaches. The HEFCE strategy provides a vision of higher education as ‘a major contributor to society’s efforts to achieve sustainability – through the skills and knowledge that its graduates learn and put into practice, and through its own strategies and operations’ (HEFCE, 2005, 1). Amongst other things, the strategy Final submitted version of paper subsequently published as: Cotton, D., Bailey, I., Warren, M. & Bissell, S. (2009) Revolutions and second-best solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education 34 (7): 719733 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802641552#.VBGR25RdWmE 4 seeks to encourage the sector to, ‘... develop curricula, pedagogy and extra-curricular activities that enable students to develop the values, skills and knowledge to contribute to sustainable development’ (HEFCE 2005, 2). According to Sterling (2004a), SD is ‘not just another issue to be added to an overcrowded curriculum, but a gateway to a different view of curriculum, of pedagogy, of organisational change, of policy and particularly of ethos’ (50). Bosselmann (2001, 176) refers more specifically to the challenges ESD presents for university pedagogies: ‘Traditional methods of ‘one-way’ lecturing are of little use with a subject of such complexity. Learning and teaching in the context of sustainability should be based on a more holistic experience: Discovery learning rather than reproductive learning; Investigative learning rather than linear transport of material; Exploring reality rather than reading books; Active learning rather than passive reception of information; Productive action rather than reproduction of facts; Gaining experience rather than acquiring knowledge.’ This view has not been accepted uncritically, however, as the following response indicates: ‘[The HEFCE SD Strategy] is one of the most pernicious and dangerous circulars ever to be issued. It represents the final assault on the last remaining freedom of universities ... It is not the job of Universities to promote a particular political orthodoxy.’ (Knight, 2005) Even without such an explicit rejection of the notion of embedding SD in the HE curriculum, the challenges of ESD to learning and teaching in an era of mass higher education and decreasing unit of resource remain very significant. Final submitted version of paper subsequently published as: Cotton, D., Bailey, I., Warren, M. & Bissell, S. (2009) Revolutions and second-best solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education 34 (7): 719733 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802641552#.VBGR25RdWmE 5 Recent research investigating the response of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to the ESD agenda illustrates a clear mismatch between ideals and reality at the current time. A recent UK study commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) reported: ‘substantial work in progress, a range of good practice, but overall a patchy picture with SD being marginal or non-existent in some key disciplines but increasingly high profile in others’ (Dawe et al., 2005, 4). In general, campus developments (greening of the university environment etc.) have proved rather more achievable than have changes to the curriculum (SQW Limited, 2006). Whilst these patterns could simply reflect a time lag between recent policy directions and HEI practices, evidence from previous research has identified a range of obstacles to ESD. These include: a lack of a shared understanding of, and language for discussing, SD (Reid and Petocz, 2006), the discipline-focused nature of many academics’ work (Wals and Jickling, 2002; Blewit and Cullingford, 2004; Moore, 2005), the perceived irrelevance of ESD to some disciplines, and lack of curriculum time (Dawe et al., 2005; Velazquez et al., 2005). Sterling (2001) also identifies ‘the comparative newness of the sustainability agenda, the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary nature of the area (and) the need for learner-centred approaches’ (71) as challenges to established norms in HE. He adds that the increasing emphasis on standards and standardisation can create further barriers to the development of high quality educational experiences, and argues that for education to engage fully in ESD requires ‘visioning and designing a credible and practicable alternative’ (Sterling, 2001, 19). The three main strands of research on ESD within HE can be summarized as: normative accounts of the aims and pedagogical characteristics of ESD; reviews of progress; and general inventories of issues facing HEIs in relation to embedding ESD. However, few studies have investigated in detail how existing constraints are being negotiated by individual lecturers or of the juxtaposition of these ‘coping strategies’ with the ESD principles proposed in the theoretical literature. In this article, we examine these issues by means of a study of Final submitted version of paper subsequently published as: Cotton, D., Bailey, I., Warren, M. & Bissell, S. (2009) Revolutions and second-best solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education 34 (7): 719733 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802641552#.VBGR25RdWmE 6 lecturers’ beliefs, attitudes and practices towards ESD at the University of Plymouth, an HEI that has been at the vanguard of promoting ESD and which, in its own terms, is ‘committed to contributing to national and international efforts to embed sustainability in Higher Education’ (University of Plymouth, 2007). Following a review of the methodology employed for the study, we identify constraints seen as significant by respondents and examine the various ways in which these are negotiated by lecturing staff. We then discuss in more general terms reasons for the slowness of change in the HE sector, and utilise the ‘theory of the second best’ to review the potential implications of ‘coping strategies’ adopted by lecturers for research on teaching about SD. The current study The research project was undertaken at the University of Plymouth, a university of around 30,000 students in the south-west of England. Plymouth has a strong reputation for teaching and learning, having gained funding of over £18.5 million in 2005 for four Centres for Excellence for Teaching and Learning (CETLs), including one in ESD, the Centre for Sustainable Futures (CSF). This context was considered to offer strong potential for investigating innovation in curriculum and pedagogy with respect to SD. The research was supported by the CSF, whose core aim is to: ‘... transform the University of Plymouth from an institution characterised by significant areas of excellence in ESD to an institution modelling university-wide excellence’ (University of Plymouth, 2004, 1) This research aimed to investigate lecturers’ beliefs about, and understandings of, SD, and their views on incorporating SD in the HE curriculum. An earlier paper (Cotton et al., 2007) presented findings from the first stage of the research (an online questionnaire sent to all academic staff conducted in 2005), addressing these research themes. Final submitted version of paper subsequently published as: Cotton, D., Bailey, I., Warren, M. & Bissell, S. (2009) Revolutions and second-best solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education 34 (7): 719733 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802641552#.VBGR25RdWmE 7 The questionnaire was developed by the research team using a mixture of closed and openended questions, building on previous research in this field. It was then tested with colleagues and redesigned before being piloted during September 2005 with selected lecturers from a range of disciplines. Qualitative questions were used to complement quantitative data where it was felt useful to elicit more detailed information. The questionnaire findings suggested that although lecturers gave strong apparent support for SD and its inclusion in the HE curriculum, there was considerable ambiguity in how respondents interpreted the term sustainable development, which made it difficult to ascertain exactly what they were supporting. Interview methods enabled us to explore these understandings further, in addition to examining in more detail whether and how lecturers included SD in their teaching. The authors note the divergence in use of terms such as ESD, SD and sustainability, but it emerged during piloting of the questionnaire that respondents found SD easier to understand than sustainability (which can have more generic meanings). In this paper, therefore, we use the term SD throughout to refer to a broad range of environmental, social, economic and equity concerns at both an interand intra-generational level. ESD is used hereafter to describe the incorporation of SD into teaching. It should be noted, however, that the majority of interviewees used the terms ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainability’ interchangeably. For further discussion of these terms, please see Williams and Millington (2004). In terms of teaching about SD, a substantial number of respondents felt that some pedagogies were more appropriate than others (for example discussion, role play and case studies). We were keen to explore these issues further in the second stage of the research. In this paper, therefore, we utilise subsequent interview data to explore constraints which act Final submitted version of paper subsequently published as: Cotton, D., Bailey, I., Warren, M. & Bissell, S. (2009) Revolutions and second-best solutions: Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education 34 (7): 719733 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075070802641552#.VBGR25RdWmE 8 to prevent lecturers integrating SD into the curriculum, and the ways in which they negotiate these constraints. A two-stage process was used to select respondents for the interview phase of the research. First, a short-list was made of all those who responded positively to a request (in the questionnaire) to take part in a face-to-face interview. Second, interviewees were selected using purposive sampling based on a series of criteria: (i) discipline; (ii) gender; and (iii) response of a survey question concerning the relationship between economy and environment (see Figure 1). This ensured that the final list of interviewees were broadly representative of the survey respondents. For instance, the majority of survey respondents agreed with statement two in Figure 1 (that economic growth needs to be modified), so comprised the majority of interviewees, although respondents who agreed with the other options were also selected to reduce the degree of selection bias likely to arise in the relatively small sample of volunteers.