The United Nations declared 2005 to 2014 to be the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. This agenda is being implemented enthusiastically in university facilities management and operations, and while research in sustainability is increasingly common, tertiary curriculum has not experienced a similar push. This thesis undertakes to explore the expressions of sustainability in the academic activities of universities, and to determine what sort of change (if any) is appropriate. It also seeks to mediate what has become a polarised debate between idealists and pragmatists around the implementation of EFS. Two key features of the work are: 1) the investigation of sustainability in the aggregate student experience, rather than individual subjects; and 2) returning to first principles to avoid a normative stance a priori.¶
A range of methods is employed adaptively through the process of this alternately broad and deep exploratory study, including: participant observation, interviews, content analysis, questionnaires, social network analysis, bibliometrics, and data clustering. A systemic approach to Canadian and Australian case work captures the diversity of institutional roles and academic motivations at play in adaptation to the EFS agenda.¶
A stasis exists between the literature around higher education curriculum for sustainability and its implementation. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of pedagogical training in most university academics. A long-standing utilitarian sectoral culture and an increasingly job-focused student market further challenge such public-good concepts as sustainability in the academy. Four simple ideas sit at the heart of 35 years of environmental and sustainability education literature, despite changes in jargon: liberal education and broad foundations; interdisciplinarity in problem-solving; cosmopolitan philosophies; and civic action. Relevant disciplinary content includes biology, environmental science, policy, philosophy, human society, economics, and culture. Most of these elements are rare in the Australian sector, which instead offers science and technology-focused environmental programs with flexible requirements. A transition to the human realm is evident in programs targeting sustainability.¶
Curriculum cannot be viewed in isolation, however, as it concerns only one of a universitys many constituencies, and one facet of academic staff scholarship. For example, even in higher education sectors more sympathetic to a diversity of university niches and curricular models, like Canadas, sustainability offerings operate at a tension from low-cost and low-effort teaching models. So-called umbrella networking structures on cross-cutting topics must walk a careful line to be comprehensive yet non-competitive. They present great opportunities for sustainability teaching but are almost uniformly research-focused. A distinct sense emerges that the erosion of the collective identity and activities of academe has weakened the ability of universities to respond to new information and challenges in anything but corporate, isomorphic ways.¶
Two detailed Australian cases of research, research training and curriculum development activities around sustainability paint a rich picture of the agenda. The intractability of fragmentation between disciplines is evident, even in so-called interdisciplinary units. Problem-based topics often do not have an established social network or committee structure, and priorities can differ by budget unit. Disciplines provide identity, peers and cohesive research directions that can be compelling for individual academics. The most fascinating pattern that arises during the mapping of research co-authorship and co-supervisory relationships around sustainability is the bi-directional orientation: academics collaborate outside their departmental home on papers, but within that home to mentor research students. This combination unifies two contrasting theories of social capital transmission those preferring dense and sparse networks, respectively and may be ideal. Students then receive consistent messages while gaining access to the largest (non-redundant) set of human and technical resources via their supervisors personal networks. This hypothesis should be explored further: if supported, it would have major impacts on the rhetoric around collaboration in interdisciplinary units in particular.¶
Curriculum design processes in utilitarian universities are subject to the same fallibilities in adapting to sustainability as other institutions and the wider society. Change is motivated and moderated by financial imperatives and the scale of thought is often coincident with budgets. Engagement processes are often incomplete or undemocratic, hampered by inadequate leadership and shifting membership. Group learning via research, experimentation or vigorous debate is surprisingly rare. Finally, ad-hoc or project-based academic teams are rarely mandated to tackle the causes of problems, some of which can be intractable, and are limited to treating the symptoms. Incremental pragmatism may be a necessary element to university adaptation for EFS.¶
A number of recommendations are offered to improve interdisciplinarity and university values more generally. Individual academics should: offer additive alternatives to metrics and incentive schemes that maintain existing functions; act on common ground to rebuild a community of scholars; wield to the fullest the freedom in the classroom, and the opportunity to reflect, that university teaching allows; and, continue to debate ideas with passion and rigour, avoiding academic correctness. University management can contribute by: establishing a clear academic identity for the university beyond excellence, and supporting firm foundations for students based on that particular vision; taking a proactive view of course review and development and facilitating experimentation in those settings; intentionally fostering interdisciplinary units differently to disciplinary ones; and, establishing and recognising equivalence across a range of successful academic career archetypes.¶
This methodologically innovative work also suggests opportunities for extending the research, including: refining and testing the sustainability canon developed here; better understanding collaborative behaviour and the impact of various models of supervisory teams on student career paths; and, finding better ways of defining, modelling and evaluating interdisciplinary scholarship. Sustainability is likeliest to emerge from a healthy and independent tertiary sector, than one operating as an overt policy instrument.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216876 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Sherren, Katherine Dove (Kate), katesherren@yahoo.com.au |
| Publisher | The Australian National University. Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.anu.edu.au/legal/copyrit.html), Copyright Katherine Dove (Kate) Sherren |
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