{"id":10480,"date":"2019-06-11T08:36:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T08:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/cel\/?p=10480"},"modified":"2019-06-11T08:36:40","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T08:36:40","slug":"can-sustainability-be-taught","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/2019\/06\/11\/can-sustainability-be-taught\/","title":{"rendered":"Can sustainability be taught?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a major development area at Bournemouth University. Here is a blog post from Dr Karen Thompson:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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At the FoM \u2018Sustainability Symposium\u2019 yesterday, we explored what sustainability means for teaching and learning.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Sustainability is high on the list of priorities for BU, with KPIs for aligning all courses and research with one or more of the UN\u2019s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the launch of a Strategic Investent Area for \u2018Sustainability, Low-Carbon Technology and Material Science\u2019 last week.\u00a0 Yesterday an audience of academics, students, professional services colleagues and external practitioners came together to better understand the crises facing humanity today.<\/p>\n

\"\"Gwyn Jones, Director of Association of Sustainability Practitioners, argued for sustainability to be viewed as the outcome of conscious thinking.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Accordingly, sustainability is experienced and practised rather than learnt in a classroom and is enacted as a mindset.<\/p>\n

Four mindsets have been identified and our challenge is to move society and our learners towards the top right quadrant of conscious awareness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The question we asked was \u2018What does extinction mean for business?\u2019\u00a0 \u00a0It became clear that the question is relevant not only to the Business School, but for all disciplines at BU as indicated by a comment from one participant \u201cI found it really interesting and frankly rather scary (and I\u2019m informed) \u2026 I\u2019m keen to try to do something similar [in my Faculty] and be active in this agenda more broadly\u201d (FC).<\/p>\n

Most models of business are based on assumptions that value profit and growth above all else.\u00a0 Many of these models were developed during the industrial revolution and are now contributing to the destruction of our environment and society.\u00a0 According to Gwyn, those who claim to have answers to sustainability, don\u2019t understand the problem.<\/p>\n

We discussed new business models and case studies that are based on understandings of purpose and decision-making that balances competing priorities.\u00a0 One student who was with us for the day commented \u201cI am very excited to interact with all the bright minds in the room discussing sustainability \u2026 it was a great day for me\u201d (Sacha, MBA student).<\/p>\n

So, what does this mean for programmes and pedagogy? \u00a0We can no longer rely solely on text books because we are only just starting to uncover the questions we need to ask.\u00a0 Understanding how we can live sustainably with \u2018enough for everyone, forever\u2019 has not been addressed before and we do not have answers yet.\u00a0 We need to be comfortable asking difficult questions and seeking answers in novel ways.\u00a0 Social learning is one approach being used to develop new concepts.\u00a0 Dr Karen Thompson and Dr Nigel Williams have been collaborating with practitioners to ask novel questions and develop new resources for education, research and practice of Responsible Project Management.<\/p>\n

\"\"An argument made by Karen is that sustainability should not be seen as an \u2018add on\u2019 to the curriculum, rather it should be used as a lens through which we view all aspects of our discipline.<\/p>\n

Experiential learning will be important for developing a sustainability mindset among learners.\u00a0 \u2018Living Labs\u2019 are recognised in BU2025 and can be expected to play a useful role for both education and research in the future.\u00a0 We need to develop learners\u2019 sense of agency and confidence that they can make a difference in the world.\u00a0 Virtual reality may have a role to play in developing the capabilities for managing more responsibly.\u00a0 Lastly, we need to encourage our graduates to become advocates for better decision-making in the organisations they will work in.<\/p>\n

There are two related blogs from the \u2018Sustainability Symposium\u2019, please click here<\/a> and here <\/a>to access<\/p>\n

For further information, or for advice about running your own sustainability event, please contact Dr Karen Thompson<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0Professor Janet Dickinson<\/strong>, both from Faculty of Management<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a major development area at Bournemouth University. Here is a blog post from Dr Karen Thompson: At the FoM \u2018Sustainability Symposium\u2019 yesterday, we explored what sustainability means for teaching and learning. Sustainability is high on the list of priorities for BU, with KPIs for aligning all courses and research… Read more » about Can sustainability be taught?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1884,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[948,132,931,271,795,104,8,308,225,107,704],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advancehe","category-co-creation","category-communities-of-practice","category-curriculum-design","category-education","category-employability","category-events","category-he-students","category-public-engagement","category-sustainability","category-teaching-and-learning"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1884"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10481,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10480\/revisions\/10481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/flie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}