Higher Education for Sustainability: Seeking Intellectual Independence in Aotearoa New Zealand 9811519390, 9789811519390

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Education for Sustainability

Kerry Shephard

Higher Education for Sustainability Seeking Intellectual Independence in Aotearoa New Zealand

Education for Sustainability Series Editors John Chi-Kin Lee, Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Rupert Maclean, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Peter Blaze Corcoran, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL, USA

While the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) (2005–2014) has been completed, the status and advocacy of education for sustainable development (ESD) remains prominent. The United Nations (UN) goals of Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs 2000–2015) were complementary and provided a rationale for the importance of environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Muscat Agreement in 2014 advocated seven global education targets, one of which was to cultivate skills for global citizenship and environmental sustainability. As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2015–2030) and as echoed by the Aichi-Nagoya Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development, education is embedded in goals which pertain to biodiversity, sustainable consumption and production, and climate change. Supporting these goals, there is a call for research and development as well as coordinated actions with an emphasis on the principles of human rights, gender equality, democracy, and social justice. There is also a call for attention to the importance and relevance of traditional knowledge and indigenous wisdom in various geographical, socio-cultural, and educational contexts. With this background, and in light of UNESCO’s Education 2030 Agenda (2017), this Education for Sustainability Book Series has been launched. Its purpose is to echo and enhance the global importance of education for a sustainable future as an educational vision. The Series provides insights on a broad range of issues related to the intersection of, and interaction between, sustainability and education. The Series showcases updated and innovative practice, discusses salient theoretical topics, and uses cases as examples. The Series adopts international, environmental education, and lifelong learning perspectives and explores connections with the agenda of education for sustainability and of education for sustainable development. The intended audience includes university academics in educational studies, environmental education, geographical education, science education, curriculum studies, comparative education, educational leadership, and teacher education; the staff of international agencies with responsibilities for education; and school teachers in primary and secondary schools. Supported by the expertise of a distinguished and diverse International Advisory Board, this Series features authoritative and comprehensive global coverage, as well as diversified local, regional, national, and transnational perspectives. As a complement to the Schooling for Sustainable Development Book Series, it explores issues that go beyond primary and secondary schooling into university, vocational, and community education settings. These educational issues involve multiple stakeholders ranging from international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, educational and business leaders to teachers, students, and parents. The research topics covered include global themes related to environment such as climate change education, disaster prevention and risk reduction, biodiversity education, and ecological education. They also include human ecological issues such as global citizenship, peace education, childhood development, intergenerational equity, gender studies, and human rights education. Further, they include society-oriented issues such as governance, green skills for sustainable development, sustainability leadership, and applied learning. Researchers interested in authoring or editing a book for this series are invited to contact the Series Publishing Editor: [email protected] All proposals will be reviewed by the Series Editors and editorial advisors.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15237

Kerry Shephard

Higher Education for Sustainability Seeking Intellectual Independence in Aotearoa New Zealand

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Kerry Shephard Higher Education Development Centre University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand

ISSN 2367-1769 ISSN 2367-1777 (electronic) Education for Sustainability ISBN 978-981-15-1939-0 ISBN 978-981-15-1940-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

New Zealand finds itself in a challenging position in the early twenty-first century. To maintain our relatively affluent lifestyles, we are economically dependent on tourism and agriculture, and although both are significant contributors to global climate change, relatively speaking we are quite well protected from their impacts. Life for many of us is fine here in Aotearoa New Zealand. We are, however, surrounded by other pacific nations who are acutely aware of the impacts of climate change, including rising sea level, on their relatively less-affluent lifestyles. In New Zealand, we are, of course, also worried about our own clean, green international identity, how to live up to its promises, and in maintaining our status as a tourism destination of choice. Given these circumstances, international readers might expect the progress of ‘higher education for sustainability’ to be exemplary in New Zealand, for all of our students and not just for those who choose sustainabilityfocused programmes, but we have no right at present to make this claim. Indeed, international research emphasises that higher education around the world is struggling to ‘educate for sustainability’ and here in New Zealand, we are, at best, just part of the struggle. In 2011, a colleague and I explored what university teachers in one New Zealand university thought about ‘education for sustainability’ and their possible role in this enterprise (Shephard & Furnari 2012). We identified four distinct points of view, only one of which thought it appropriate to advocate for sustainability in teaching. The other three maintained principled distance from using an academic position in higher education to achieve sustainability-related educational outcomes. Notably, those with these viewpoints had no objection to others using their academic freedom to teach what they wanted to teach, but I remember struggling to understand how higher education could possibly contribute sensibly to sustainability education with such diverse academic viewpoints on higher education’s roles and responsibilities. My subsequent research, based on observations in six countries on three continents, sought internationally relevant conceptualisation of how all university academics might contribute to our planetary sustainability mission, without necessarily and directly ‘educating for sustainability’. I concluded that we may be better off encouraging all academic colleagues to teach what they wanted to teach, v

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and say that they do teach, but better than they do at present, rather than to force them to teach something that they have no wish to teach, and probably would not do well anyhow. My focus then was on promoting critical thinking (Shephard 2015). Since then I have been exploring how to put this approach into practice and this book is one product of that endeavour. This book has a focus on promoting intellectual independence. Here in New Zealand, our Education Act (1989) insists that the principal aim of its tertiary sector is to promote intellectual independence. We may do many other things, such as to teach many disciplines and to educate for sustainability, but our principal aim should be to promote intellectual independence. The act does not define intellectual independence, nor tell us how to promote it. Indeed, from an educational perspective, rather than from a political one, the term does create some problems for us. In common usage, we might imagine that intellectual independence simply means thinking for oneself. In this book, and in educational terms, I shall develop a case that to promote intellectual independence means that we are to teach our students the skills and the dispositions to think deeply, critically and independently, so that they choose to do so. So why focus this book on New Zealand? As well as building on our national focus on intellectual independence, the most obvious reason is that having researched higher education for sustainability here for more than a decade, I know more about this topic here, than elsewhere (although much of my knowledge is of course comparative, so relevant internationally as well; indeed international comparisons and references occur throughout this book). Also, New Zealand makes a great case study in this context. We are a small multicultural island nation, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world down here in the South Pacific, inhabited by people perhaps for a thousand years, still relatively sparsely populated, and notably proud of our clean, green image. From an international perspective, asking how we ‘do sustainability education’ here is a bit like looking into a goldfish bowl, or maybe a reality TV show; real, but far enough away (biologically, sociologically or geographically speaking) to be not too threatening. No matter how good, or bad, it gets in New Zealand, the rest of the world is sufficiently removed for it not to be intimidating. I hope that it proves to be illuminating. Leaving aside (for now) a formal definition of sustainability, readers would be right to anticipate, at an early stage, an explanation of what educational outcomes higher education for sustainability, in New Zealand, could, and perhaps should, be achieving. At this stage in the book, it would be illogical for me to claim that such expectations are themselves unreasonable, but I must emphasise the challenging nature of the educational environment that our universities operate in and the importance of prioritising intellectual independence. For now I suggest that it may be enough for higher education to make the effort to discover what educational outcomes it is currently achieving, and to make plans to do better, aiming of course to do the best that it can. Given that more than 30% of young people do pass through higher education in New Zealand, and that many will find themselves in influential social positions at some point after graduation, our current efforts are, I claim, entirely inadequate. While readers ponder on the nature of what ‘to do the

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best that it can’ might look like, in the context of education, I shall encourage readers to think of sustainability as a process, rather than as a destination or a product. By situating higher education within the centre of this process, rather than on the periphery, sustainability outcomes remain to be imagined, while roles and responsibilities for higher education become more concrete. With respect to sustainability, I am personally optimistic about what higher education could be, but at times quite despondent about what it is. This book is in three parts. Part I explores how higher education and sustainability interact in New Zealand and develops a case that higher education at present is as much part of the problem of unsustainability as part of the solution to it. Part I includes chapters about: higher education for sustainable development and for sustainability; campus sustainability; university teacher as critic and conscience of society; environmental education; roles and responsibilities of higher education and global perspective and competitive individualism. Each chapter is focused on the situation, as I understand it, in New Zealand, but also attempts to situate New Zealand’s experience within its global context. Part I is designed to encourage those who do not currently educate for sustainability, and those who do, to rethink what they are doing. In educational terms, Part I is anti-foundational. Whatever your current viewpoint on sustainability education is, I hope that Part I will encourage you to reconsider it. Part II considers how higher education works alongside a wide range of other life experiences that likely impact on individual’s beliefs and actions. Part II includes chapters on ‘what guides the beliefs and actions of individuals’ and on ‘deep, critical and independent thinking’ and envisions a higher education that prepares graduates able to decide for themselves what their contribution to a sustainable future might be. Part II does include some educational theory. Part III addresses those aspects of higher education best placed to support the development of student’s dispositions to think deeply, critically and independently about the world, and how higher education will know if it is on the right track. Part III has chapters on ‘community engagement’, ‘student empowerment’ and ‘evaluating impact’. I have worked hard to make this book readable by everyone who may be interested in it. To meet my academic obligations, I include important references, but wherever possible, and in line with much of the ethos of this book, these point to documents in the public domain, rather than to closed academic sources. I have also used footnotes, sparingly, to provide background or explanatory comments. I hope that these are helpful. At this point, I need to emphasise that any points of view expressed in the pages that follow are my own, and not necessarily those of my employer, the University of Otago, or of the many wonderful academic colleagues with whom I have researched over the years. To my colleagues, I acknowledge the vital contribution that you have all made to the ways that I currently understand the international mission of education for sustainability. Researching with you all has been a great

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privilege. The University of Otago is the oldest and likely the best in New Zealand, and certainly a privilege to work in. This institution has afforded me the opportunity to undertake the research that has led to this book, the academic freedom to ensure that my work will contribute to the international public debate on higher education for sustainability and the expectation that I will make my findings and viewpoints known widely. I express here deep gratitude to the University of Otago for its support and encouragement to me, and for its commitment to its institutional motto ‘sapere aude’, perhaps best interpreted as ‘to have courage to be wise’. Those who research their own institution’s and profession’s practices will not necessarily find only good things to comment on. They may or may not be wise, but in attempting to be so they certainly need courage. Universities that support this form of research are indeed institutional embodiments of ‘sapere aude’. Dunedin, New Zealand

Kerry Shephard

References Education Act. (1989). Retrieved May 7, 2018 from http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/ 1989/0080/latest/DLM183668.html. Shephard, K. (2015). Higher education for sustainable development. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. Shephard, K., & Furnari, M. (2012). Exploring what university teachers think about education for sustainability. Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.644784.

Contents

Part I: Exploring Our Practices 1

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About Higher Education for Sustainable Development and for Sustainability in New Zealand, and Elsewhere . . . . . Is There a Problem to Address? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is There a Solution to the Problem that May or May not Be? . . Where Does Higher Education Fit? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seeking Clearer Distinctions in a Complex World . . . . . . . . . . Sustainability as a Quest for Individuals and a Task for Readers Sustainability as a Process, Rather Than as a Destination . . . . . A Way Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Campus Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Physical, Biological and Chemical Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social, Economic and Ethical Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Educational Imperatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trees and Concrete Pavers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Situating Campus Sustainability Within the Broader Context of Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Can Poor Performance in One Domain Be Compensated by Good Things Happening in Another? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Higher Education Institutions as Role Models for Sustainability . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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University Teacher as Critic and Conscience of Society . . . . . The Critic and Conscience Construct in New Zealand’s Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Academics as Individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Academics’ Diverse Rationales for Critiquing Society . . . . . . . . . How the Critic and Conscience Construct Sits Within the Higher Education Landscape in New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How Higher Education Does or Does not Research Its Own Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Education in New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Personal Experiences of Environmental Education: Family, School and Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Zealand’s 1998 National Strategy for Environmental Education and Proposed Changes in 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Underlying Ethos of New Zealand’s 1998 National Strategy for Environmental Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But Is It Working? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OK, What Is Really Going on Here? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research into Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roles for Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Own Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Proposals in 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The National Situation in 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some International Comparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Roles and Responsibilities for Higher Education in New Zealand, and Elsewhere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Zealand’s Productivity Commission’s Review of Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Review of Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If Submissions to the Review Were not About Sustainability Education, What Was on the Minds of Those Who Submitted? . . . . Higher Education from Economic, Societal and Individual Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Global Perspectives and Competitive Individualism . . . Researching the Educational Nature of Global Perspective Production: New Zealand Punches Above Its Weight . . . . Representation: As More Than One Perspective . . . . . . . . Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Different Ways of Interacting Globally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part II: Researching Our Practices 7

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What Guides Our Beliefs and Actions? . . . . . . . . . . . . Social and Personal Identities and Who Gets to Influence Nudging, Advertising and Consumerism . . . . . . . . . . . . Framing the World as We See It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Societal Influences on Personal and Social Identity . . . . . The Psychology of Choice, Motivation and Staying Put . Professional Values and Professional Education . . . . . . . Governance and Economic Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . So How Does Education Guide the Beliefs and Actions of Citizens? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Changing Personal and Social Identity from the Inside: On Critical Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back to Leopold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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On Deep, Critical and Independent Thinking and Why It Is So Challenging for Higher Education to Teach These Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Road map to Education for Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teaching Skills May Be Easier Than Teaching Dispositions but Learning Both Is Important: Cognition and Affect . . . . . . . . Acquiring and Valuing Dispositions to Think Critically: Or not . Let’s Explore Two of These Dispositions in Detail . . . . . . . . . . On Having a Disposition to Being Open to the Possibility of Changing My Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On Having a Disposition to Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Note on Universal Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Note on Recursive Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Note on Critical Mass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part III: Changing Our Practices 9

Community Engagement and Higher Education’s Third Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is There Something Special About Community-Engaged Learning and Teaching? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On National and Institutional Rhetoric About Community Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On Institutional Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research-Led Enquiry About Community-Engaged Learning and Teaching in New Zealand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Diverse Conceptualisations About Community Engagement and Higher Education’s Responsibility to Be Community Engaged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On Getting Community Engagement into the Curriculum . . . . . On Valuing Community Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Conclusions and Possible Ways Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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10 Empowering Students in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Empowering Students in Higher Education to Teach and Learn . . . . . . 139 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 11 On Assessment and Evaluation, and Researching the Practices of Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Assessment and Evaluation Issues to Address . . . . . . . . . . . Opposition to an Accountability Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Good Intentions Subverted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Attempts to Agree Measures of Learning Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . Do Higher Education People Have the Skills and Dispositions to Think Deeply, Independently and Critically? . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Should We Measure, Assess, Evaluate or Research? . . . . . . Direct Measures of Deep, Critical and Independent Thinking Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Addressing Societal Lack of Trust in Academia . . . . . . . . . . . . Skills or Dispositions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Measures of Pro-environmental and Sustainability Attitudes, Ecological Worldviews and Similar Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What if Institutional Measures Over the Coming Decades Do not Identify Progress? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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A Final Conversation with a Critical Friend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Series Editors’ Introduction

As part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2015–2030) and as echoed by the Aichi-Nagoya Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development (2014), education must speak to climate change, biodiversity, sustainable consumption and production, and the urgency of the civilizational crisis we face. Supporting these aims, there is a call for research and coordinated actions with an emphasis on the principles of human rights, gender equality, democracy and social justice. There is also a great need for attention to the importance and relevance of traditional knowledge and indigenous wisdom in all geographical, sociocultural and educational contexts. While the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) (2005–2014) has been completed, the status and advocacy of education for sustainable development remains prominent. The United Nations goals of Education for All (2000) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs 2000–2015) were complementary and provided a rationale for the importance of environmental education and education for sustainable development. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Muscat Agreement in 2014 advocated seven global education targets, one of which was to cultivate skills for global citizenship and environmental sustainability. With this background, and in light of UNESCO’s Education 2030 Agenda (2017), this Education for Sustainability Book Series was launched in 2018. Its purpose is to echo and enhance the global importance of education for a sustainable future as an educational vision. We hope the Series will provide insights on a broad range of issues related to the intersection of, and interaction between, sustainability and education. The Series will showcase innovative practice, discusses salient theoretical topics and use cases as examples.

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Series Editors’ Introduction

The Series adopts international, environmental education and lifelong learning perspectives and explores connections with the agenda of education for sustainability and of education for sustainable development. The intended audience includes university academics and students in educational studies, environmental education, geographical education, science education, curriculum studies, comparative education, educational leadership and teacher education; the staff of international agencies with responsibilities for education; and school teachers in primary and secondary schools. Supported by the expertise of a distinguished and diverse International Advisory Board, this Series features authoritative and comprehensive global coverage, as well as diversified local, regional, national and international perspectives. As a complement to the Schooling for Sustainable Development Book Series, it explores issues that go beyond primary and secondary schooling into university, vocational and community education settings. These educational issues involve multiple stakeholders ranging from international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organisations, educational and business leaders to teachers, parents, and, critically, students and youth. The research topics covered include global themes related to environment such as climate change education, disaster prevention and risk reduction, biodiversity education and ecological education. They also include human ecological issues such as global citizenship, peace education, childhood development, arts education, intergenerational equity, gender studies and human rights education. Further, they include society-oriented issues such as governance, green skills for sustainable development and applied learning and leadership for a sustainable future. Aotearoa New Zealand, as presented in this volume, is an illuminating case in higher education for sustainability. Its extraordinary natural history as a South Pacific island archipelago and its unique human history of just a thousand years and of two powerful cultures make it fascinating from an international perspective. Aotearoa New Zealand is a country in which the larger world of education has considerable interest. Its efforts, over several decades, in bicultural education, peace education and environmental education, are instructive. The national aim of tertiary education to ‘promote intellectual independence’ provides a rich context in which to consider sustainability as a vision of higher education. Indeed, Shephard explores educational outcomes using sustainability as a process in which education for a sustainable future can be imagined. He also examines the barriers to transformative learning and teaching. The book is a sobering and thoughtful study of the role and aim of higher education. It is an important contribution to this series.

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The authors and co-editors are responsible for the choice and presentation of information and views contained in this book series and for opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO or The Education University of Hong Kong, and do not commit the respective organisations. October 2019

John Chi-Kin Lee The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong Rupert Maclean RMIT University Melbourne, Australia Peter Blaze Corcoran Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, FL, USA

Part I

Exploring Our Practices

Chapter 1

About Higher Education for Sustainable Development and for Sustainability in New Zealand, and Elsewhere

Is There a Problem to Address? First I should set the scene. We need to be at least on the same planet with respect to the ideas that underpin concepts such as sustainable development, sustainability and education, even if we do not agree on all of the issues involved. Some suggest that humans have never had it so good on the planet Earth. By and large, humans are living far longer than we have in the past, and healthier. Fewer people are dying from war and disease at a young age and more people are dying from ailments associated with old age. So what’s the problem and why are we making a fuss about the S word? Others suggest that we have huge problems on our planet and in our societies that are somehow obscured by these positive human-centred and perhaps westerncentred perspectives. We do have problems with pollution, for example. Even here in New Zealand, we have recently had debates on the quality of our river water. Some remember just a few years ago when it was possible to drink water from many of our rivers without harm (not that I did mind you, I would find a stream to drink from rather than a river). Nowadays New Zealanders are seriously contemplating an aspirational water quality standard that suggests that the rivers should mostly be wadeable. We have come a long way in just a few years. Others focus on global warming and emphasise the almost certain conclusion that this has been produced essentially by human action and in particular by our use of fossil fuels. Here in New Zealand, we worry about our neighbours on Pacific Islands who’s homes are gradually disappearing as the sea level rises. And yet I think that few would doubt that New Zealanders are amongst the world’s greatest per capita contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and this despite our great natural advantages of abundant renewable energy (such as hydro, wind and thermal energy; but more on this later). Others focus on the world’s expanding human population, on dramatic inequalities and on the loss of languages and cultures, and think that we should do better. On balance, if you think that everything is doing just fine, this book will not interest you. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_1

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Is There a Solution to the Problem that May or May not Be? Moving onto societal attempts to do something about some of these concerns, we should spend a little time exploring how they have fitted within our education system. I think it fair to say that some decades ago a significant focus of concern came under the umbrella of environmental education. New Zealand has a long history of environment education that has operated in most, if not all, sectors within the education system. New Zealand still has an environmental education strategy (although recently renamed to include ‘sustainability’ and explored within this book in Chapter 4). The traditional focus of environmental education strategies has been directed towards the environment with an emphasis on pollution and conservation and using the power of education to create the kinds of social changes, in the long term, which might overcome some of these difficulties; all good stuff. But international events overtook us and indeed many other countries that had developed their own environmental education strategies. International happenings like the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987) and Rio de Janeiro Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992) forced the world to link our environmental concerns more visibly to concerns about people, and cultures, and economies. At the heart of this shift was a realisation that no matter how important non-human inhabitants of our planet are to us, people tend to put people first. Sustainability started as an attempt to integrate concerns about environment (incorporating pollution, habitat destruction and conservation) with concerns about the needs of people and the roles of economies in making it all work together. On the way, and still controversial for some, the inclusion of ‘development’ (as in sustainable development) within this burgeoning international discussion adds an additional interest. For some, ongoing human development seems to be a given, while, for others the plea has been for a long time that surely the animals and plants that cohabit our planet with us cannot cope with any more human development. Many have settled on the compromise inherent to the Brundtland report that ongoing development is okay, perhaps inevitable, just so long as it doesn’t impact negatively on future generations (of people that is). Most recently a new line of enquiry is developing, particularly within the academic world, which we might identify as ‘ecological politics’. Some in that particular enquiry talk about sustained-unsustainability, but I don’t think this has as yet come back to influence New Zealand’s own environmental education strategy. Rather than focus on environmental education, nowadays it is important to address sustainability, or sustainable development, in our educational strategies. Before you get too complacent that you are following the lines of logic inherent to this chapter, and think that you know where you stand on the either/or possibilities described so far, we do need to address some more differences in how we think about these things. In particular, we should think about whether our responses should be at individual, local, national or international level. Is it enough if each of us does something ‘sustainable’ each day? Perhaps, rather, sustainability is something that needs to be addressed at the local government level (as in, I really have to use my car because the council hasn’t provided an adequate bus service). Perhaps looking at

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the bigger picture, as long as we, as a nation, are comparable with other nations, it should all be okay. As we are a very small nation, we don’t really have to do much at all! An international perspective, perhaps with a focus on the ill-defined term ‘global citizen‘ might rather identify us all as citizens of the world with the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens of the world. On that basis, nearly everyone in New Zealand is not behaving in a particularly respectful way to citizens from less-developed countries. Perhaps there is something wrong with this logic, and using another form of logic, or ideology, might produce a different perspective? Competition is for many a more natural way of seeing the world than is citizenship. The world is a competitive place and we need to compete to gain as great a share of the world’s resources as possible, for our benefit and for that of our children. Where do we stand on the precipice between global citizenship and competitive individualism and is there any point in us leaning in one particular way if everyone else in the world is leaning in the other way? This analysis emphasises that forms of education that are for constructs such as sustainability are in essence values-based and normative. Combined with our previous analysis that emphasised the complexity of balancing society, environment and economy, not just for now, but for future generations, we might accept the political nature of whatever standard this education is for and the absurdity of defining some universally acceptable outcome that could be identified as sustainability.

Where Does Higher Education Fit? And then there is higher education. I write this as a time of great debate in New Zealand about the role and responsibilities of higher education. The discussion focuses on whether a university education is primarily a personal benefit or a societal benefit, and, therefore, who should pay for it. On the way, there has been a great deal of conversation about competition within the sector, cost-effectiveness, graduates who have had to pay much to gain a degree but then find themselves unemployed, and significant questions about fitness for purpose within the whole post-compulsory, tertiary education, sector. I have, of course, followed similar debates in the international literature. Every nation has its own problems and ways of coping, but I see commonalities in these discourses internationally. Some countries carry an exceptional burden of high youth unemployment while others focus on their graduates’ debts. Higher education internationally is surely facing some significant challenges. Missing from much of this conversation has been the suggestion that over many decades universities, and perhaps polytechnics, have educated the scientists, engineers, managers, politicians and professionals who have held highly responsible positions within society and therefore must take substantial responsibility for the unsustainability we experience at present. Perhaps universities and polytechnics need to look at what it is that they teach our students and to ask themselves if more of the same is what is really required. We shall explore something about the role of university people as critic and conscience

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of society in New Zealand in Chapter 3, but in doing so, we shall also ask about the extent to which higher education people are actually empowered to do what it is that we expect them to do. We do appear to have created a very competitive system and this may not be entirely conducive to any reasonable sustainability mission.

Seeking Clearer Distinctions in a Complex World I could, of course, add more at this stage. About everything described so far there are many and varied points of view and we do need to address our concerns within this complexity. A senior colleague once told me that I tend to see things as black or white and that I should be more open to shades of grey (and that long before the phrase became tarnished in other ways). Actually, I do think that pursuing clarity is an academic responsibility and burden; seeking better ways to describe the world rather than simply describing, commenting on and accepting our inadequacies. To explore my worlds of higher education and sustainability in New Zealand, permitting shades of grey but seeking clearer distinctions within our wonderful world of complex tones, hues and shades, readers need to know a bit more about me, and how I came to think in the way that I currently do. I am, for example, currently editor-in-chief for the education section of the openaccess journal Sustainability. Prior to taking on this role I had for sometime been just one of several editors for this section and had developed some concerns about the ways in which published articles, within the journal, interpreted sustainability. Although some articles clearly described research that focused on educational interventions that in some way integrated learning about society, environment and economy, some did not. I was particularly frustrated by research that explored, as examples, how to build longevity into business models, or how to build societal resilience so as to be able to cope with dramatically changing environmental, social or economic prospects. This was not research about sustainability as I saw it, but clearly, it was research about sustainability as others saw it. Of course, sustainability has more than one meaning. The verb, to sustain, comes from Latin (sustinere) meaning to hold up, to support and to endure. It emerged in English in approximately 1400 having supported French for at least a century before that. In common and broad usage I daresay that the verb ‘sustained’, the adjective ‘sustainable’ and the noun ‘sustainability’ are not particularly contentious words. That which is to be sustained could be good or bad, helpful or hindrance, and needs only longevity to be achieved. The problem comes, as is often the case, when a perfectly reasonable word in English is imbued with some technical meaning that is different from that in common usage. In the case of sustainability, undoubtedly the word is also evolving even in common usage. For many, the word sustainability nowadays conjures up (or frames) an enduring balance between economic, environmental and societal outcomes, where achievements in one area are not the product of slippage in either of the other two. To this way of thinking, for example, some form of environmental protection that was achieved at

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the cost of economic or societal disadvantage might not be afforded sustainability status. As editor-in-chief, I am of course able to exert some influence on the nature of educational interventions that are reported to readers of the education section of the journal Sustainability, and in general, these do not include research articles that explore how to maintain or sustain profoundly unsustainable business practices. But it remains an ongoing frustration that other editors have different points of view! And to make matters worse, for me, of course I can see these other points of view as well. One of the cornerstones of sustainable development is the aspirational set of Sustainable Development Goals, developed and promoted by the United Nations and supported in particular by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Collectively they make sense in the context of sustainable development (even accepting its essential political nature), but individually they may not. Goal #1 is ‘to end poverty in all its forms everywhere’. Perhaps this makes a logical and morally-just first step in a society-first perspective, but if it is to be achieved at the cost of more environmental degradation (and non-achievement of SDGs #14 and #15), it is unlikely to make sense to everyone in a sustainable development context. And yet any and all of these individual sustainable development goals by definition become relevant to sustainability and to sustainability education. Although currencies impart some form of universality in economic constructs, it is unreasonable to expect equivalent measurable changes in the constructs of society and environment. Economists and philosophers have long struggled to identify the economic value of a butterfly and similar debates exist about the needs of individual children as opposed to the application of means, or averages, in our battle against poverty. In the absence of measures that might allow us to balance our three primary contributors to the concept of sustainability, the concept itself becomes fraught with challenges of interpretation. If we cannot define, and measure, sustainability in these practical terms, almost nothing could be said to be insufficiently about sustainability to be published in a journal about sustainability, or to be presented as sustainable, given enough spin. We enter here of course the realm of wicked problems. Wicked problems are those that have no simple solutions and quite possibly no complex solutions. Solving one facet of a wicked problem generally makes another facet worse. The title of this book has on various occasions included ‘seeking sustainability’, ‘essays on sustainability’ and ‘essays on unsustainability’. Given our concerns about the meaning of sustainability, all of these and others might be equally applicable. I was similarly confronted by another aspect of this wicked problem back in 2003. I lived then in the New Forest in the South of England. Although this area had been protected since Norman times (England was invaded by the Normans in 1066) plans were afoot to convert the area into a new national park. I applied to be and became a representative of the U.K.’s Secretary of State for the Environment on the management group charged with the responsibility of creating the national park and then managing it. My particular interest was in the broad area of environmental education. National parks in the UK have a range of roles and responsibilities that in general address combinations of conservation and education. This was my first

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real experience of seeing how combinations of society, environment and economics, or people, planet, profit, tend to operate in practice, and how challenging it is to find positives in all three. Some members of the management group were elected representatives of people who live within the forest. Their first responsibility was, in my experience, to the people and their needs (including the need to keep taxes at modest levels). Some members of the wider organisation that enabled the New Forest National Park to operate were conservationists. Their primary responsibility, as I saw it, was to conserve the plants and animals that found a home in the New Forest (and often were far more vulnerable outside of the forest than they were within it). These colleagues often took the view that visitors to the park were part of the problem so that their movements within the park had to be restricted. On the other hand, with a particular focus on society, my own interests were in education. My perspective was then and still is that legislation in the form of laws that protect areas will only take us so far in our attempts to conserve the non-human elements that we share our planet with. Legislation is subject to the whims of democracy. Education, specifically compulsory education, on the other hand, is capable of changing and maintaining the values of a society. If the people who live in the park and around the park do not value the park and what is being conserved within it, no amount of legislation will protect the park in perpetuity. My perspective is that education is fundamental to any form of conservation. And so we discussed, and argued, and made compromises, as all such groups no doubt have to. New Zealand is currently planning some Marine National Parks, with similar challenges. I see similar issues being played out on a daily basis within our universities, here in New Zealand and internationally. Universities have financial people such as chief operating officers whose job is fundamentally to ensure the financial sustainability of the institution. Academics and others balance those in management positions and are tasked with the challenge of sustaining and enhancing the academic credibility of the institution. These groups often work with a governing council to ensure that the university as a whole meets the aspirations of the society that sponsors it, including institutional sustainability. Some universities have proved to be highly sustainable, in temporal terms (even in New Zealand, which has a relatively recent history of higher education. The University of Otago is New Zealand’s first university and traces its origins back to 1869). Universities are also exploring the nature of sustainability in other respects. Many have comprehensive sustainability policies, strategies and action plans and attempt to juggle the financial, societal and environmental consequences of their being, all within the profoundly problematic construction of what sustainability is and what it means to the wide range of people involved in university processes. And to be fair, my own university, and all of the other universities in the world who are struggling in these regards, has to cope with me and with people like me. I often complain that universities research the practices of everyone else on the planet, but pay insufficient attention to researching their own practices and I stand by this statement. But I should not shy away from the realisation that I am the exception that proves the rule in this regard. We may be thin on the ground and struggle to find research funding, but academics who research the practices of academia do exist.

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I don’t think that universities in general like the idea that someone is researching their practices. Universities above all other professional groups pride themselves on their independence and I suspect intuitively dislike the notion that they are being evaluated, or appraised, or measured or otherwise researched. But as a professor of higher education development, I take it upon myself to do just that. We have professors of law, medicine and of business and each has a particular area that they study, critique and comment on. My role is to study, critique and comment on higher education, and within that broad framework, I pay particular attention to higher education’s educational contribution to sustainability. As we reach this point, however, it seems that not only are the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ troublesome to define and make sense of, but education is itself drawn without compromise into the fray and is similarly fraught. How can higher education possibly develop viable sustainability education strategies given such problems in defining the terms and unravelling motives? I have great sympathy for my colleagues in higher education. It is far easier to research the problems inherent to sustainability education than to solve them. I do see why we need phrases like sustainability and sustainable development, but I also see how much harm they can do when, ignoring their inadequate definition and complexity of their educational linkages, they are nevertheless converted into simplistic targets, performance indicators and educational objectives. I understand the argument that ‘every little bit helps’, but dividing sustainability into environment, society and economy, and each of these into other smaller things, creates an image where indeed any positive in any category is a contribution to the whole. It may not be. Perhaps sustainability as a destination, or a product, is only truly knowable on a planetary basis, and as such is inherently a political challenge rather than a systems, or educational, challenge.

Sustainability as a Quest for Individuals and a Task for Readers I do think deeply about my own quest for sustainability and in the process, I force myself to remember that my personal perspectives on sustainability are based strongly within my own experience, my capacity to understand the world around me, and to a degree the vagaries of my own ethical being. Readers will not be surprised to hear that I can be a sustainability bore. Not quite a tree hugger or an ecoterrorist, but perhaps heading in that direction. I am a strong advocate for the rights of pedestrians and cyclists in our cities. I grow vegetables and trees and I spend an unreasonable portion of my life chopping and stacking wood. I do use aeroplanes, but I videoconference far more. I turn the lights off wherever possible and I wear woolly jumpers. Sally and I raise sheep and chickens and we share a passion to look after the land, and the planet, so that we can pass it on to future generations in a better state than we

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inherited it. I realise that in relation to my own conceptualisation of sustainability, we are failing dismally. Inherent to my own beliefs and actions in these regards, I imagine a particular future that could be identified, in my terms, as a successful outcome from international educational efforts towards sustainability. My future has room on the planet for whales, wolves and for slime moulds, not as static and permanent relics of the past, but as representatives of an interactive collection of living entities that evolves with time. Of course, my future has bicycles and fit healthy people, far fewer cars and cities designed for pedestrians. My future will be based on compromise, so at present I doubt that all people will have the current benefits of a wealthy lifestyle that many in New Zealand share. But as we all grow vegetables, even in cities, and make or recycle our clothes, and enjoy full employment, worldwide, we shall all be relatively happy. Fanciful? Of course it is. Now it is your turn. What does a sustainable future hold for you? Will you be prepared to make the same economic and social or cultural compromises that I will? Perhaps your aspirations will start with people and work from there, so that other elements need to bear the greatest compromise? Or perhaps you think that stable economies underpin everything and need to be prioritised in your future? The point is, surely, that each of us will imagine a different future. Even taking the UN’s sustainable development goals as a challenge to be achieved and an educational objective for our schools and universities, the details, definitions and compromises will still need to be negotiated between individuals, families, communities and nations. On the issue of what success will look like, and what goals higher education should have in mind as a contribution to sustainability, we are hard pressed not to identify that projected destinations vary depending on who we are now, and what country we live in now, and that they are likely to change with time.

Sustainability as a Process, Rather Than as a Destination I did reach one conclusion on my way to this point that helped me to get to the next. Coincidentally, earlier this year I was invited to Bozeman in Montana, USA, where Robert Pirsig spent some time as a young academic. Pirsig went on to write ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. Pirsig used this book to elaborate on his ideas on the ‘metaphysics of quality’. Like sustainability, quality is difficult to define. Pirsig suggests that quality cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any construction of it. My own reading of this, notably in very simplistic terms, is that quality is more about a process than a destination, or a product. I have come to think of sustainability in that way too. To my way of thinking, at present, sustainability isn’t a destination or a product or something to be achieved, and its value cannot be comprehended from its final form. Perhaps I would go so far as to say that at

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present I couldn’t see any difference between quality and sustainability (although to Pirsig enthusiasts I might also be tempted to say something about the nature of sustainability as an intellectual pattern that in turn says something about its value in the natural order of things).

A Way Forward So, why the need for this book? I am troubled that higher education here in New Zealand, and in my experience elsewhere, is struggling to understand its educational role in this highly complex and fraught area in the midst of so many competing objectives. Rather than contributing positively to educational outcomes that have some hope of achieving the aspirations of sustainability-minded people, there is a sense in which higher education may be as much part of the problem as it is part of the solution. This book is a sincere attempt to unravel the circumstances that have created this struggle and to suggest ways forwards that will enable higher educations’ powerful educational abilities to be more fruitfully utilised.

Summary Sustainability, and derivations such as sustainable development, nowadays frames a multifaceted ideal involving balance between environmental, societal and economic elements. As such, it is impossible to determine if changes in individual elements will lead to sustainability without factoring in changes to other elements. In our human-centred cultures, such factoring is primarily a political, rather than a systems or educational challenge and likely always based on compromise. Similarly, applying the concept piecemeal, or as a predetermined compromise, to individual entities like people, institutions, cities and nations makes limited sense in a quest for sustainability, as the only reasonable destination for, or product of, sustainability exists on a planetary level. Higher education for sustainability, or for sustainable development, is inextricably caught up in this conundrum. Higher education carries a responsibility to fully explore and understand its role in creating the world as it is, and its responsibility to support the next generation as they grapple with the need for change. Educating for sustainability, as we currently see it and incorporating our own compromises, may be doing something but is it on the right track and really the best that we can do?

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References United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. (1992). Agenda 21. Retrieved July 23, 2018 from http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Brundtland report: Our common future. Retrieved July 23, 2018 from http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf.

Chapter 2

Campus Sustainability

Whether I drive to work or cycle, I end my journey with a walk through our campus. Someone recently said that the University of Otago campus in Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand is one of the most good-looking university campuses in the world (Huffington Post UK 2013). Although I’ve not visited a significant proportion of university campuses around the world, of those that I have visited, it certainly stands out. I like the way that the campus is built around and incorporates the Water of Leith (even though the river is largely constrained within large concrete walls). I like the large distinctive trees (albeit mostly of European origin rather than native New Zealand trees, but nevertheless quite dramatic). The cherry trees are particularly beautiful in spring and there are many quite striking beech trees. The campus has numerous old villa-styled wooden buildings and these have gardens and driveways often lined with interesting trees. And some of the buildings built in the nineteenth century from solid local stone are indeed grand. Yes, it’s a historic and interesting and visually appealing campus. Over the past year or so the campus has changed quite dramatically. Elegant pavers have replaced tired concrete roads. Additional sculptures have been added and some old ones resituated. Some great street art has been painted on the side of some buildings. Parts of the river have emerged from deep concrete recesses to create attractive riverside walkways. Overall, I should be really pleased with the changes to this campus. But deep down I admit to being disappointed. Day after day for some months, I would walk on to the campus not knowing what site or vista would be changed forever, generally because one or more of the trees that I have grown to admire have disappeared. I watched with horror as large poplar trees were removed, then significant silver birches, then some elegant alders and perhaps worst of all, some of the beeches. I know it sounds churlish to some, but for me nothing could replace these trees and be better. For me, mature trees are a gift from the previous generation and our responsibility to pass on to the next generation. They are symbolic of the resilience of nature and of our co-dependence on nature. Chopping them down may make sense in the present to some landscape architects, but

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_2

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rarely to me, unless of course they are old and dying, or part of an intergenerational cropping programme. And I know that some new trees have been planted, but they are small and will need protection for many years to come. Based on my present experience, I doubt that they will receive this ongoing protection and they too will succumb to the whims of some architect at some point in the future. In some respects, our campus has not been rejuvenated but ransacked. Perhaps someone has assessed the future sustainability of our institution, and campus, and decided that institutional sustainability required campus modernisation and redesign and that the trees simply had to go. I do understand that perspective and I understand that institutional and individual self-preservation is a powerful driver. But what might be the broader consequences (beyond institutional survival) and how does this question relate to broader notions of campus sustainability? Readers based in New Zealand may not be aware of the significance attached to the concept of campus sustainability in other countries, in particular in the USA. A significant momentum has developed there, driven by university people. I get the impression that at least historically, many of these have been administrators rather than academics [or faculty as they are referred to in the States] who have an interest in sustainability and a perspective that our educational institutions ought to be leading the way towards sustainability, rather than merely responding to citizens’ and governments’ dictates. I describe the concept as ‘institution as role model’ (Shephard 2010, 14). In this context, higher education institutions become role models for local communities and for their students. Visitors, community partners, students and their parents come to the campus to discover how things ‘should be done’ and indeed ‘have been done’. Admittedly, this principled model is not always exactly what occurs. A major driver towards the sustainable campus in the USA may be student choice, where students, or their parents, are making sustainability-linked decisions about where to study, and where information is available to them on which to base these choices. It seems likely that not all decisions made on campus towards sustainability are of the noble or altruistic kind. Institutional self-preservation, or sustainability, in a highly competitive sector may be an important factor. Whatever the realities of the driving forces, some institutions are competing with each other to demonstrate that their campus is indeed run on sustainable principles. We should address, and move beyond as quickly as possible, an overtly political side to campus sustainability. In doing so, I hope to avoid or at least divert accusations that my own analysis of campus sustainability is in some ways motivated by anything other than an earnest wish to explore the educational linkages between what our students are learning and the ways that our campuses are managed. I know that even suggesting this creates the image of an absent-minded professor totally unaware of what’s going on around him. That is as maybe but I can only do my best in this regard. Readers must note that other descriptions of campus sustainability do exist. Much, of course, depends on how we conceptualise the nature of sustainability. If we think of it as trying to balance environmental, social and economic objectives we may respond in a particular way, perhaps with a focus on energy, food and transport in our schools and universities. If, however, we think of sustainability as the battle cry for revolution we

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may well identify the campus sustainability movement as a means to transform social, economic and political institutions ‘by manipulating, cajoling and browbeating a generation of college students into accepting the movement’s worldview and cultural norms’ (Kersten 2015, np). In revolutionary times, we should anticipate a range of points of view and responses from those who have a range of perspectives on social injustice and environmental degradation and on ways to change these. To balance the perspectives that I introduce in this chapter, readers could approach a report released in 2015 by the USA’s National Association of Scholars (Wood and Peterson 2015). In such a partisan environment it is difficult, if not impossible to be a simple scholar, charged with the responsibility to critique the world around us. Academics are not immune from societal, and employer, expectations of loyalty to a cause. If I criticise New Zealand’s approach to campus sustainability, I am not necessarily in league with those who think of sustainability, or environmentalism, as left-leaning extremist plots against capitalism and the interests of nation, friends and family. Naïve? I guess so. I talk about the damaging impacts of thought-limiting clichés in this debate elsewhere (Shephard 2017). Accepting the fraught political terrain that campus sustainability occupies, New Zealand universities have a lot to learn from the USA. Nowadays, a driving force for campus sustainability in the USA is the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, or AASHE. This mega organisation has an extensive web presence offering advice and support for university and college people. It is also the go-to organisation to identify the extent to which campus sustainability has developed in recent years. Of particular relevance to this chapter is AASHE’s Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) programme. In their own words, STARS is a ‘transparent, self-reporting framework for colleges and universities to measure their sustainability performance’ (Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2019a, np). In essence, STARS allows representatives of institutions to record their sustainability performance against a set of criteria using a proprietary reporting tool that allows for comparison between member institutions. As AASHE describe, the process helps to build understanding about campus sustainability issues within the sector. It enables meaningful comparisons over time and between institutions that, in this competitive world that we live in, creates incentives for institutions to ‘do better’. Having attended an AASHE conference myself (in Nashville in 2013) I’m sure that the process helps to build a substantial community of interested individuals that crosses between institutions, states, countries, and nowadays, continents. And perhaps AASHE had led the way in diversifying the concept of campus sustainability. It may have started with consideration of a few facets of sustainability but it has evolved into a broad consideration of the environmental, social and cultural, financial and educational (in the broadest possible sense) operation of campus life. Perhaps an equivalent to AASHE in the UK is People and Planet. This enterprising group maintains a league table of universities. As they say of themselves…. ‘People & Planet’s University League is the only comprehensive and independent league table of UK universities ranked by environmental and ethical performance. It is compiled annually by the UK’s largest student campaigning network, People & Planet’ (People

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and Planet 2019a, np). This organisation’s data comes from two substantial sources, both of which depend to a degree on self-reporting. Approximately 50% of the data comes from analysis of institutional web pages and other 50% comes from data presented by each institution to the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency, with varying degrees of independent verification (People and Planet 2019b). Institutions are also given an opportunity to verify the information used by People and Planet. ACTS is a non-profit member based organisation representing higher and further education institutions within Australia and New Zealand. ACTS “aims to inspire, promote and support change towards best practice sustainability within the operations, curriculum and research of the tertiary education sector.” (Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability 2019, np). I think it’s worthwhile exploring some of the areas of sustainability interest that users of the STARS programme report on, and that the UK’s People and Planet investigate. At this stage, it would be easy to turn this chapter into a near endless list of possible campus contributions to sustainability. At the time of writing, the STARS programme listed 63 different categories of good things to do. People and Planet give a somewhat smaller, but possibly broader list. We should be circumspect here and consider just a few categories of interest. And in doing so, it will be really important not just to consider the categories but rather the means of judging within and between each category. At some point, I’m hoping that the presence or absence of trees on my own campus will find a logical, rather than an emotional, place within this consideration. Let’s see if it does. What follows is, therefore, essentially my own take on some of the STARS categories, with some added flavour from the People and Planet lists. Readers can check out the full and more up-to-date details by following the links through the references. I shall endeavour not to give my own assessment of the ‘sustainability’ of Otago’s campus, or indeed of the many other campuses in New Zealand. As I write this, and to the best of my knowledge, no higher education, or indeed tertiary education institution in New Zealand has adopted the STARS process or something like it, electing to provide a transparent analysis of all of the various categories of sustainability; so the data isn’t really there. Many institutions, including the University of Otago, have an extensive web presence detailing a wide range of sustainability-related information (University of Otago 2019a), but I admit to finding this challenging to interpret. After I drafted much of this chapter, The University of Otago released its own Sustainability Strategic Framework (University of Otago 2019b). Some of this does relate to campus sustainability, but in effect the strategy promises an action plan, and we shall have to wait for a full version of that to identify in detail what is proposed. Elsewhere in New Zealand, The University of Lincoln has developed a sustainability policy incorporating measurable objectives and plans to be zero waste and carbon neutral by 2030 (Lincoln University 2017). Otago’s strategy is discussed again in Chapter 4, in the context of teaching and learning.

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Physical, Biological and Chemical Environment I think it fair to say that the concept of campus sustainability started with a generic consideration about recycling, energy efficiency and pollution. At an intuitive level, we would not expect to see piles of rubbish destined for ground fill, huge smokestacks billowing toxic fumes or contaminated-area signs in amongst our history departments and student dormitories. Top of most lists nowadays, however, is some sort of analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. No doubt a complex calculation, but at least in theory it should be possible for institutions to measure the emissions of all of their employees and students and supply-chain people to identify how close to zero-emission they get. If they collectively use only renewable energy sources, and factor in the emissions involved in creating and maintaining the systems used to run renewables, then that is a big step forward. Most plans for zero-emissions rely on some form of compromise by balancing essential emissions with carbon storage processes (such as planting and maintaining trees). Cornell University, in the USA, for example, is discussing alternative approaches for getting there by 2035 (Cornell University 2018). There are many issues to consider in this area. Here are just a few: 1. Some campuses claim to be carbon neutral already. See, for example, Colby College in the USA (Colby College 2019). But at present most claims are made on the basis of offsets, where one entity pays another cash to store carbon, often in the form of planted and maintained trees. Is this really being ‘carbon neutral’? 2. Naturally, building, infrastructure design and transport policies play a big role, but let’s face it, history and geography are also important. Campuses that are not close to major infrastructure links such as railways and airports are historically very dependent on motor vehicles and it will take some years for even the most sustainability-focused institutions to move away from this situation. Campuses that historically have used cheap coal for heating confront similar barriers to change. Investing in alternative and more sustainable forms of energy will take time. On the other hand, campuses situated over abundant geothermal energy have considerable advantages. This is not a ‘level playing field’! 3. Using renewable energy to achieve carbon neutrality is clearly a good thing, but there are questions about what exactly renewable means. In New Zealand, we pride ourselves on generating a high proportion of our electricity using renewable hydroelectricity. Once the dams have been built and the river destroyed then arguably the electricity that is created is renewable, but there is nothing renewable about the system from the perspective of the river. The number of rivers available for sacrifice in this way is clearly limited. 4. There are some interesting social issues associated with the carbon neutral campus. By and large, institutions have considerable control over their employees but perhaps less so over their students. When it comes to turning the lights off, for example, institutions find themselves having to persuade their students to adopt energy-efficient procedures. The situation is particularly problematic in student dormitories, or halls of residence, where often students pay a flat fee irrespective of the amount of electricity they consume. As with much in life, cost does

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provide an important mediator to consumption but not when any consumption is cost neutral! I like the circular linkages here. Institutions choose to become sustainable perhaps in particular with the hope of providing a good role model for students. But they find that role modelling is not necessarily sufficient to encourage students to behave in a sustainable manner, so they resort to education and economic incentives, and carbon offsets, and somehow role modelling finds itself simply an integral part of an overall strategy. And, slightly tongue in cheek, readers who are also parents will be amused. We spent much of our adult lives encouraging our children to turn the lights off… and now here they are, at university, having either appreciated the nuances of energy efficiency, or not. And now it’s someone else’s problem. I wonder if universities have more, or fewer, tools at their disposal? I tried lectures and role modelling with my children but not economic instruments. I guess that fundamentally my wife and I offset our parental inadequacies in this regard against family holidays and other non-essential spending; which is essentially what universities around the world do. That’s enough about greenhouse gases. STARS and similar lists also address air and water quality, water use and rainwater management, waste minimisation and management, biodiversity, landscape management and the big category of food. Naturally, all of these link in one way or another with greenhouse gases already considered, as they all have an energy context, but how may they interact with each other and with some of the other categories that we need to consider? This is an opportunity to emphasise the complexity of the sustainability principles than underlie any of the lists that we may be interested in. We could look briefly at food to provide an example of complexity. The food that is provided or sold on campus for staff and for students, and grown on some campuses, has a myriad of interesting issues embedded within it. How was it grown? Was factory farming involved? Were antibiotics used to promote the growth of the chicken and beef that the students are now eating? How might this then influence the health problems that the world is experiencing as antibiotics become less useful in controlling infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria? And what are the health benefits or health costs associated with the food that is provided on campus? How much sugar is in that beverage sold at a profit by the campus shop but destined to contribute to poor health of the student who bought it? And what of the education that may or may not go alongside the supply of food on campus? Should students know whether the tuna in their sandwich was caught by net, by long line or by pole? Is all of this packaged up within the concept of sustainability and of the sustainable campus? And if so who decides if factory farming is good or bad, and even if it’s bad does that mean it’s not sustainable? Most of the lists that I’m familiar with do indeed integrate some decisions about how many points will be allocated within each category in relation to the institutional responses to the key questions above. So, yes, users of these lists do need to accept that someone has made some decisions about what is good and what’s bad. By and large, for example, organic food production is considered more sustainable than factory farming and institutions that source their food from organic producers earn more points than those that do not. In the STARS programme, some institutions score high marks for some of these categories (Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2019b).

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Social, Economic and Ethical Considerations I think it reasonable to suggest that value judgments, rather than judgments based on quantities, increasingly find their way into these categories. The STARS technical manual, for example, recognises institutions that systemically assess diversity and equity on campus. ‘Fostering an inclusive and welcoming campus culture is important to ensuring the academic and social success of all campus community members. In order to foster such a culture, it is helpful to engage in a structured assessment process to identify strengths and areas for improvement in terms of campus climate, student diversity and equity, and employee diversity and equity’ (Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2019c, 273). So although some may wonder where such considerations link to sustainability, STARS does not. Similarly, categories in some lists include considerations such as support for underrepresented groups, wellness programmes for employees, employee satisfaction and workplace health and safety. An area likely to be slightly less controversial, in the sustainability stakes, is that of investment. Some universities (alas not necessarily those in New Zealand) receive substantial endowments that the institution invests to receive an income that in turn is used to employ professors and for similarly worthy higher education causes. But where exactly does the institution invest its money? Some readers will be aware of international calls for divestment in the fossil fuel industry. In New Zealand, we cherish a student group, Generation Zero (see Generation Zero 2019) that frequently makes this call. Just last year the University of Otago responded by agreeing to exclude fossil fuels from its investment portfolio, stating in the process that actually the university had never invested in fossil fuels in the past. People and Planet put it like this ‘A strong ethical investment policy ensures an institution’s investments and banking practices are conducted transparently and in an economically viable, socially responsible manner, not blind to wider social, environmental and humanitarian concerns’ (People and Planet 2019c, np).

Educational Imperatives For some, education is at the heart of the concept of a university. Despite the fact that sometimes research appears to dominate thinking and employment in modernday higher education, teaching and learning are still important aspects of university operations. Sustainability considerations could permeate just about every aspect of learning and teaching. Sustainability lists like STARS and People and Planet include categories that are specific about what sustainability-related education exists within undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and whether this provision applies to students who sign up for courses that explicitly are about sustainability or for those who do not. Some categories go further and look for evidence of student learning (or assurance of learning as it is known in some parts of the world). Some categories

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emphasise that learning and teaching is also subject to research, in this case research relating to education for sustainability, and place value, or points, on this research; and indeed on the support (particularly financial support) for such research. And then taking the concept of education further, institutions that support the education of employees, and of communities, earn extra points.

Governance At some point, we have to get to grips with the idea that just about everything that happens on our campuses happens because someone or some people are making decisions. And although it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that these decisions are made on a simple sustainable or not-sustainable basis, in any form of final analysis someone will be asking this question. So how are decisions made on our campuses and how might these be judged to be of the sustainable kind or of the not so sustainable kind? The categorisations that I’m familiar with ask if there are coordinating individuals, groups or committees charged with a sustainability-related responsibility. Positive responses gain points. More points accrue if there are high-level strategic plans in place that establish goals and measurable objectives and identify particular responsibilities from the bottom to the top to ensure that just about everything that happens on the campus includes questions about sustainability and some consequences if the non-sustainable choices are made. Where it is apparent that for economic or other reasons sustainable choices cannot be made in the short term, it looks good if the goals and measurable objectives at least point in the right (more sustainable) direction. And then we need to ask who are the people who are making the decisions? There is a generalised assumption afoot that suggests that participatory processes are more likely to yield sustainability outcomes than less democratic processes, so points accrue to campuses that work collaboratively with students, administrative and academic staff, and with local communities to make key decisions on campus.

Trees and Concrete Pavers It is time to take stock of my initial concerns about trees and concrete and to place these concerns in the context of sustainable campus programmes such as STARS. Surely reputable programmes would look unfavourably on such obvious digressions from the sustainability pathway? Probably not! Perhaps the university would lose out in the biodiversity category (though not necessarily in a nuanced version of biodiversity where we might value native species more than introduced species, for example). No doubt the university would have to factor in the huge carbon costs associated with concrete-use if it ever did choose to aim for carbon neutrality. But maybe there would be positives in the category of landscape management or community partnerships,

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as no doubt the wider community will better cherish an attractive and accessible campus. Such is the nature of sustainability categorisation, and point scoring, it seems likely that most institutions, and most lists, would find ways to de-emphasise negatives and promote positives, which is perhaps something that I should do more of myself. After all, writing books on our sustainability deficiencies is hardly a ‘glass half-full’ attitude. As I walk to work through this undoubtedly attractive campus I do have to learn to subdue my critical and somewhat negative stance and focus more on some of the positives. But will my newfound positivity be sustainable, I wonder?

Situating Campus Sustainability Within the Broader Context of Higher Education At this stage, I would like to focus on two facets that, for me, develop from our consideration of campus sustainability and the various programmes that promote it; compensation and role modelling.

Can Poor Performance in One Domain Be Compensated by Good Things Happening in Another? I am troubled that so much in this point-scoring game is negotiable. Some important questions are simply not asked. And institutions that don’t score points in one area can compensate by scoring extra points in another area. Some institutions score very highly overall in the STARS programme but I doubt that I would, personally, and academically, be particularly happy with some of these. So, definition, comparability and compensation are big issues for me and I would like to address them here. In 2015, Colorado State University earned a platinum rating in their category of the STARS programme, scoring 83.5 from a possible 100 (Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2019d). The institution scored 36.92/40 in the curriculum section; an important section contributing 40% of the total points possible. Within this section, 4 points accrue for category ‘AC-6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment’, and Colorado State earned the full 4 points. Their scorecard is available as is a copy of the survey used and the scoring process adopted by AASHE (Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2019e) I ought to be very happy for colleagues at Colorado State University. Their data suggests that their students know lots about sustainability issues, that they are actually quite interested in sustainability and even that they may be more interested in sustainability having spent time at the university than they were when they came. I’m sure that colleagues at this institution will be proud of their efforts. But I admit

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to being not particularly happy for them. Noting that this is not the place to be critical about this research (after all, a major theme of this book is to encourage such research), what I’d really like to know is what these literate students will do with their literacy when they leave their institution. Citizens of the USA, like those of New Zealand, are amongst the planet’s highest per capita consumers of fossil fuels and emitters of greenhouse gases. Whereas ignorance of the consequences of greenhouse gas emission may be a fine excuse for some on the planet, clearly it cannot be for graduates from Colorado State University. Along with their celebrated sustainability literacy comes, surely, an equivalent set of sustainability-related responsibilities. Although the solution to this conundrum may not be clear, posing the question is not necessarily simply academic. I note that Colorado State University did not do so well in other STARS categories, earning, for example, just 1.84/10 for energy. Moving away from this particular institution, one possible worry likely relevant to many institutions is that they may be good at explaining sustainability problems to their students, but not necessarily particularly good at explaining that responsibility comes with knowledge, and enacting that responsibility. Attending to a problem generally requires us to understand what the problem is and to be willing to address the problem. The fact of being a knowledgeable bystander to environmental, social and economic unsustainability might not compensate adequately for a fundamental lack of willingness to do something about it, even though the STARS compensation scheme suggests that it can. I doubt that I would personally, score universities that do well in some categories, but poorly in others with top scores in the STARS programme. Likely I would send their report cards back to them with red pen comments. I shouldn’t be too hard on STARS, or on any of the institutions that have taken sustainability seriously enough to get involved. But I think that we should look beyond some of the obvious sources for inspiration on how we can tackle this broader issue of compensation. I have in mind asking the accounting profession to develop a functional spreadsheet. I remember back in the 1990s a conversation with a professor of accounting. I was in the process of encouraging my higher education institution then to adopt an environmental strategy. I must have been quite good at presenting the issues at the time because a strategy was adopted, albeit on the understanding that it would be cost neutral (as in, installing low-energy light bulbs would pay for themselves over very few years). But I don’t think I ever persuaded the head of the accounting department about the merits of my strategy. He was convinced that the accounting profession would be unlikely to ever address anything other than financial matters. Environmental damages were addressed by economists as externalities but rarely presented themselves on profit and loss sheets. The concept of the triple bottom line (attributed to Elkington [1994] in the corporate world but fundamentally based on the ideas of the French economist René Passet in the late 70s) tries to account for and equate the needs of the environment, the economy and of society. Triple bottom line accounting suggests that profits in an economic-financial sense need to be balanced with environmental gains and losses (likely unmeasurable but optimistically monitored as changes in biodiversity, the comings and goings of iconic species, or

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the accumulation of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere) and with societal change (similarly unmeasurable but including such things as human misery, lifespan and population displacement). Triple bottom line accounting has attempted to develop common units of measurement, standalone indices in each category or a variety of integrated assessment methods. But how do we compare the pleasure that some gain from seeing butterflies fluttering past their window, with starvation and warfare in some of the poorer parts of the world and with the profits that simply must be obtained from our investments. Similarly, on our campuses, how do we compare the academic successes of our students with the biodiversity that comes from intergenerational tree planting and the economic viability of humanities departments? So yes, definition, comparability and compensation are important dilemmas for us to address.

Higher Education Institutions as Role Models for Sustainability Another area that troubles me is that of role modelling. I understand the rolemodelling ethos of campus sustainability programmes but I have some doubts that role modelling in this context actually translates into societal change. We need to get to grips with this important issue. The logic that applies here is that our young, naïve, impressionable, open-minded yet intelligent young people will come to university and be so impressed by the sustainability efforts and achievements apparent to them on their campus that whatever their previous inclination towards sustainability, they will emerge from their higher education experience dedicated to a sustainable existence in future. And the more sustainable the institution actually is, and the more that it actively promotes sustainability, the more likely it is to influence its students on this pathway. But does it actually work this way? What is the evidence? What of the possible alternatives? … the unsustainable institution, or the institution that claims to be sustainable but actually isn’t, or the institution that doesn’t actually give a hoot about sustainability because they’ve got more pressing matters to deal with. How will our intelligent but open-minded young people fare then? And what, heaven forbid, if our students aren’t actually that open-minded or impressionable? What if, perhaps, by and large, they’ve already made up their minds based on their experiences before they came to university? Many students in my experience have come from families, schools and communities that have taken sustainability seriously for many years, but have struggled to meet its demanding expectations. Compromise, compensation and ‘every little helps’ are familiar concepts for them and they will not be surprised that similar limitations exist on campus. Does role-modelling sustainability via campus sustainability initiatives transfer to student learning? Now that’s a good research question! We shall return to this question in Chapter 4, but for now we should ponder on some recent research from the University of Michigan, an institution with a recognised sustainability focus,

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that found ‘… no evidence that, as students move through [the university], they became more concerned about various aspects of sustainability or more committed to acting in environmentally responsible ways, either in the present moment or in their adult lives’ (Schoolman et al. 2016, 497). I do on occasions find research outputs that suggest more positive outcomes, but they are rare. Remarkably, despite all the promises that higher education institutions around the world make with respect to student learning for sustainability, there is as yet surprisingly little evidence that higher education’s impact is anything other than ‘more of the same’.

Summary Universities around the world are adopting environmental and social practices attuned to sustainability principles. On balance, however, many appear to struggle to overcome economic limitations to sustainable practices and find the need to prioritise institutional sustainability over and above more far-reaching environmental, social and economic commitments to sustainability. In addition, there is limited evidence that links the campus sustainability movement to student learning. In the context of ‘campus as role model’, and in the absence of strong research-led evidence to the contrary, higher education should be concerned that the higher-education campussustainability movement is sending a particular message to our students (as in ‘It’s okay to compromise.’ ‘It is reasonable to compensate unsustainable practices in some areas with better practices in others.’ ‘Someone else, somewhere else, will make up the deficits’), more akin to unsustainability, and more of the same, than to sustainability.

References Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. (2019a). About STARS. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from https://stars.aashe.org/pages/about/stars-overview.html. Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. (2019b). Sustainable campus index. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https://stars.aashe.org/pages/about/publications.html. Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. (2019c). Technical manual. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from http://www.aashe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/STARS2.1-Technical-Manual-Administrative-Update-Three.pdf. Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. (2019d). Colorado State University. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https://reports.aashe.org/institutions/colorado-stateuniversity-co/report/2015-03-23/. Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. (2019e). Colorado State University AC-6: Sustainability literacy assessment. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https://stars. aashe.org/institutions/colorado-state-university-co/report/2015-03-23/AC/curriculum/AC-6/. Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability. (2019). Australasian campuses towards sustainability. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from http://www.acts.asn.au.

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Colby College. (2019). Carbon neutrality and solar initiatives. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from http://www.colby.edu/green/greenhouse-gas-emissions/carbon-neutrality/. Cornell University. (2018). Options for achieving a carbon-neutral campus. Retrieved July 5, 2018, from https://sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/initiatives/options-for-achieving-a-carbonneutral-campus-by-2035. Elkington, J. (1994). Towards the sustainable corporation: Win-win-win business strategies for sustainable development. California Management Review, 36(2), 90–100. Generation Zero. (2019). Home page. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from http://www. generationzero.org. Huffington Post UK. (2013). 15 of the world’s most beautiful universities revealed. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/11/worlds-most-beautifuluniversities_n_3578402.html. Kersten, K. (2015). Campus sustainability: Going green is just part of the plot. Retrieved July 5, 2018, from http://www.startribune.com/campus-sustainability-going-green-is-just-part-of-theplot/310188031/. Lincoln University. (2017). Environmental sustainability policy. Retrieved July 9, 2018, from http://dotnetrest.lincoln.ac.nz/AjaxSharePointList/AjaxSPlist.aspx?l=LPPdocuments&q= libfile&f=Environmental%20Sustainability%20Policy.pdf. People and Planet. (2019a). How sustainable is your university? Retrieved February 18, 2019, from https://peopleandplanet.org/university-league. People and Planet. (2019b). Methodology. Retrieved July 5, 2018, from https://peopleandplanet. org/university-league-2016/methodology. People and Planet. (2019c). 4 ethical investment and banking. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https://peopleandplanet.org/university-league-2017/methodology/4-ethical-investment-2017. Shephard, K. (2010). Higher education’s role in ‘education for sustainability’. Australian Universities’ Review, 52(1), 13–22. Shephard, K. (2017). Researching higher education for sustainable development: Plan A, plan B and moving beyond thought-limiting Clichés. In W. Leal Filho, J. Rogers, & U. Iyer-Raniga (Eds.), Sustainable development research in the Asia-Pacific region education, cities, infrastructure and buildings (pp. 17–30). Springer International. Schoolman, E. D., Shriberg, M., Schwimmer, S., & Tysman, M. (2016). Green cities and ivory towers: How do higher education sustainability initiatives shape millennials’ consumption practices? Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 6(3), 490–502. University of Otago. (2019a). Sustainability at Otago. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from http:// www.otago.ac.nz/sustainability/index.html. University of Otago. (2019b). Sustainability strategic framework: 2017–2021 bringing Otago’s sustainability commitment to life. Retrieved February 18, 2019, from https://www.otago.ac.nz/ coo/otago664842.pdf. Wood, P., & Peterson, R. (2015). Sustainability: Higher education’s new fundamentalism. Retrieved July 5, 2018, from https://www.nas.org/articles/sustainability_higher_educations_ new_fundamentalism.

Chapter 3

University Teacher as Critic and Conscience of Society

University teachers in New Zealand generally identify their role as research, teaching or service. Internationally, service is sometimes referred to as the third mission of higher education, and usually includes the role of ‘critic and conscience of society’, and sometimes ‘service to the community’, often in the form of volunteering. Increasingly, the third mission is also being seen as synonymous with ‘technology transfer’, ‘research commercialisation’, ‘innovation’ and with links to higher education’s contribution to private and public elements of national ‘good’, generally of the economic kind. To add complexity to an already multifaceted domain space, critics of higher education itself point out that frequently the concept of service is interpreted by higher education practitioners as providing something other than teaching and research within the institution itself, rather than to the community outside of the institution. You can be sure that higher education institutions provide plenty of opportunities for in-house service. In my experience, there are more committees in the average university than you can shake a stick at and they all need academic engagement. Most academics in most institutions that I’m aware of do not really need to go outside the institution to satisfy institutional requirements that they contribute service. Having said that, the role of ‘critic and conscience of society‘ probably has a special place in New Zealand higher education. The role is embedded in New Zealand’s legislation (New Zealand Government 2018) alongside the requirement that universities promote community learning.1 It is a sad fact that soon after the legislation was passed that committed universities to contributing to community learning, changes in university funding made it very difficult for universities to maintain their long tradition of supporting adult and continuing education (or ACE as it was widely known). Nevertheless, the legislation and the obligation remain and this chapter focuses on how university teachers fulfil

1 Section

162, 4 b iii, tells us that: ‘A university is characterised by a wide diversity of teaching and research, especially at a higher level, that maintains, advances, disseminates, and assists the application of, knowledge, develops intellectual independence, and promotes community learning: … ’

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their ‘critic and conscience of society’ obligations with respect to sustainability and education for sustainability. On top of the complexity that has already been mentioned in the above paragraph, the concept of critic and conscience, and universities and their employees acting for the good of society, goes back a long way. Anything with such a long history naturally encompasses a diversity of points of view and some are relevant here and do need to be addressed if we are going to undertake any serious sort of critique of what is involved and how it’s working. Although this is not the place for an extended history of universities around the world, there is a sense in which we could not fully understand the current situation in New Zealand without at least addressing how universities have developed and evolved here and elsewhere. In writing this chapter, I found Menand et al. (2017) particularly helpful. It is apparent that the first universities that came into being in Europe in the middle ages were very different from those we see today. They were, for example, closely aligned to particular professions and focused on, as examples, theology and medicine. Jumping forward a few centuries the idea of a research university came into being initially in Germany in the early nineteenth century. Some of our key concepts around the roles and responsibilities of universities were developed at around this time. In particular, the idea of the university as having some independence from the state, rather than being an instrument of the state, became widely respected. Along with this independence, academics fought for and obtained some degree of academic freedom so they could pursue studies that they thought most relevant and most important. The concept of a public intellectual, as something different from a public servant, was central to this idea, and the notion of tenure, to protect public intellectuals, was thought critical to the ideals of academic freedom. Notably, in the context of complexity, notions of academic freedom run contrary to expectations that academics would perform any particular function, such as critiquing society, as the basis for their freedom in that by and large they get to choose for themselves what to do with their time. Naturally, the evolution of universities was neither unidirectional nor smooth. Although the concept of the research university spread around the world, it did so with considerable diversity. In the United States, for example, much discourse focused on the relationship between what public intellectuals were doing with their time and the needs of the local communities. Although many private institutions developed, publicly funded institutions did as well. The Land Grant Universities in the USA were created with a specific need in mind; that universities did need to serve the purposes of the societies that sponsored them. Debates about the roles of universities were by no means settled by the time that New Zealand universities started to develop in the mid to late nineteenth century. Indeed, the roles of universities, and how they fit within the broad remit of postcompulsory or tertiary education in New Zealand, and who pays, and who benefits, and to what ends, has continued to dominate thinking about higher education to the present time (and will be considered in detail in Chapter 5). So here we are in the early twenty-first century, with eight fine universities in New Zealand, all of which are legislated to support community learning and to act as ‘critic and conscience of society’, but with multiple ideas about what this means

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and no real consensus about how to manage, monitor or evaluate precisely what is happening. In some respects, this makes critiquing what is happening particular challenging, as there are no standards against which such critical enquiry can operate. Nevertheless, I suggest that two principles arise from these conditions. The first is that those who undertake criticism do so from a sound position based on their scholarly involvement in relevant research and teaching. Society in general might not know the difference between a sound and an unsound scholarly base, but higher education academics, and the disciplinary structures that support them, ought to. Those who critique society, for society’s benefit, need to know what they are talking about. The second acknowledges that our universities are not separate from our societies; they are made up of individuals drawn from society and they educate people, large numbers of people, who return to society. To my way of thinking, critique of this nature will apply just as much to our universities as it does to society in general. Perhaps the relevant idiom here is that those who live in glasshouses should not throw stones. If they do, they had better be prepared for some broken glass. More precisely, I suggest that the New Zealand Education Act 1989 obliges New Zealand universities to research their own practices and to be critic and conscience of these practices in the same way as it obliges New Zealand universities to research the practices of those outside of the university and to be critic and conscience of them. To be fair, and in the broad area of sustainability, many have historically identified the education system as fair game as they go about critiquing how things in this world work. Aldo Leopold2 , for example, writing from within the academy, in describing the unsustainability of much of modern living, and in the specific context of the need for society to develop a land ethic to counter societies’ natural urge to compete, does remark on ‘… the land bureaus, the agricultural colleges, and the extension services.’ commenting ‘As far as I can detect, no ethical obligation toward land is taught in these institutions.’ (Leopold 1949, 213). It is also important to note that not all critics of society, in the context of sustainability, have come from universities. Rachel Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing, prior to completing Silent Spring. And although James Lovelock held numerous university positions, he formulated his Gaia hypothesis while working for NASA in the 60s and is best known as an independent scientist. But overall it is clear that society does expect its public intellectuals to be ‘critic and conscience of society’ and at least some academics do identify this role as part of their brief. And I cannot deny that this book itself is an aspect of this role. (And naturally in this context, readers will wish to assure themselves that this critique is based on a sound base of teaching and research within higher education and that my critique applies to higher education within society, as well as to society, and to me as much as it does to my colleagues.) I should start critiquing by being profoundly and unreservedly positive about some aspects of the operation of the critic and conscience aspect of higher educational operation in New Zealand, in the context of sustainability. In 2017, Dr. Mike Joy 2 Aldo

Leopold was appointed Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin in 1933 although many of his formative years were spent in government forestry service.

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(then Senior Lecturer in Ecology and Environmental Science at Massey University) won an award for this role. Dr. Joy researches and teaches freshwater ecology and used his skills as science communicator, media commentator and author to bring the declining quality of New Zealand waterways to the attention of New Zealand society. As I see it, Dr. Joy used his research expertise and knowledge of this particular field of research enquiry to make a serious comment about something that society really needed to know about, from a position of authority. I have no doubt that Dr. Joy taught these same concerns to his students, and I think it highly likely that his students, by and large, have learned to share these same concerns. Ecology students in my personal experience are highly receptive to such ideas. I can find no sense in which this is not an example of what the Educational Act 1989 intended to happen. I’m less confident about a wide range of other academic inputs into public debates in the broad area of sustainability. I worry that, particularly with respect to the wicked problems associated with sustainability, some of the activities undertaken by university teachers in the name of ‘critic and conscience of society’ may be misplaced and disingenuous. Such academics write newspaper articles, blog and tweet and appear on national radio and television complaining about New Zealand’s inadequate response towards the pressing problems of the twenty-first century, with climate change paramount. Society is told over and over again that it is contributing too much carbon to the atmosphere and financially benefiting from unsustainable agriculture and commerce, at a substantial long-term cost to people elsewhere, and to ecosystems everywhere. By criticising society in this way, such academics claim to be raising society’s consciousness about its pressing and latent problems and performing a service as ‘critic and conscience of society’. And yet these same academics work at educational institutions that are at the heart of the society that they critique, and that do and have prepared the scientists, technicians, technologists, business people and politicians that take prominent places in society and so contribute much towards our current unsustainable national practices. By and large (but as always with some exceptions) these professionals and the academics who help to educate them, are sufficiently well educated to know that their own everyday actions are unsustainable, but they find themselves in situations that make personal unsustainability the only reasonable choice to make. Our universities behave in essentially similar ways to many organisations in wider society. Most have elaborate sustainability policies and strategies in place that promise change but may actually prioritise institutional sustainability and competitive advantage; again generally because these approaches appear to be the only reasonable choices to make. Some have signed the Talloires Declaration or similar international accords agreeing to, for example, ‘educate for environmentally responsible citizenship’. Even so, New Zealand’s higher education institutions continue to graduate young citizens with all the same hopes, and intellectual tools and limitations that previous generations had. New Zealand continues to, on a per capita basis, take far more than its fair share of the world’s resources, and contributes far more greenhouse gases than its fair share warrants. Granted, New Zealand’s universities make major contributions to the science that one day may help us overcome our environmental, social and economic sustainability-related problems. Granted, New Zealand universities are nowadays

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making major commitments towards campus sustainability so that, as enterprises, we can claim to be every bit as ‘green’ as Woolworths and Fonterra. But in relation to our major role in society, that of educating citizens, we may not be doing so well. A broad body of research indicates that our teaching programmes and our graduates nowadays may not be that different from those in previous generations. I am not personally convinced that those who drafted the fine words ‘critic and conscience of society’ in the 1989 Education Act, thought that it would be reasonable for university academics to be claiming to be such enlightened beings, while at the same time contributing through higher education’s major function to the very thing being criticised. I have framed the preceding paragraph in a particular way, expressing concern rather than overt criticism. Nevertheless, readers would be right to think of it as a bit of a rant. Perhaps sometimes it is necessary to let off a bit of steam… and use that to set the scene for some more considered comment. I attempt to be more considered in the paragraphs below. On the way, I should make some links to equivalent discussions in other countries. I doubt that New Zealand is unique in expecting its academics to express points of view, and many countries do promote this via their implicit or explicit acknowledgement of academic freedom. Occasionally, academics from other countries do look to New Zealand to provide a source of inspiration on these complex issues (see, for example, Virgo 2017, addressing changes and challenges in the UK).

The Critic and Conscience Construct in New Zealand’s Higher Education Academics as Individuals It strikes me that those higher education practitioners in New Zealand who act as ‘critic and conscience of society’ overwhelmingly tend to do so as individuals. I have some good colleagues and friends who as individuals tell society about the plight of whales and dolphins. Others talk about the seashore, and plastic, and biodiversity. Still others comment on energy, or recycling, or about belching cows. Some comment on cycling in relation to the need for an integrated travel and mobility strategy. Some address the needs of minorities and many comment on the position of indigenous peoples in our societies. I myself tend to comment on the roles and responsibilities of higher education particularly with respect to sustainability and to education. Without exception my colleagues are enthusiastic, highly motivated to contribute to societal change, and offer their heartfelt critiques to those who will listen or read. I have great admiration for all of my colleagues who step up to this task and I know that many do it from a strong scholarly base. And yet if I put myself in the position of a member of society rather than a member of the academy, I might see some of this in different ways. It is a little like the exercise that we went through in Chapter 2 where we sketched out some possible futures in

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the context of sustainability and of higher education for sustainability. My own future addressed bicycles and promised healthy people and healthy ecosystems around the world. My future found room for polar bears and slime moulds and much else besides. I didn’t delve too deeply into the economic issues inherent to my particular future and I admit that perhaps I hadn’t thought everything through in great detail. I daresay that if readers undertook their own fanciful analysis of their own sustainable future they may have focused on different things. Perhaps they saw a world where poverty had been eradicated. Perhaps everyone had a high standard of living in that future, and drove personal futuristic vehicles maintaining full individual independence. Perhaps that future found room for polar bears and slime moulds in zoos but unfortunately allocated the more traditional homes for these creatures to the ecosystem services that would be necessary to maintain human dignity for all. The point I think is that those who imagine a sustainable future tend to do so as individuals incorporating their own individual values in the task. Those who use their ‘critic and conscience of society’ function in higher education in the context of sustainability also tend to do so as individuals and similarly incorporate their own individual values in the task. Just as my imagined future and your imagined future may be incompatible, so perhaps the cacophony of opinion expressed by academic colleagues may represent incompatible criticisms of what exists now and what may need to change for future sustainability. In our worlds of academic hypotheticals, these incompatibilities may not matter, but were society to take us all seriously, incompatible messages would matter. Which academics should we trust? Whose criticism is most worthy? Which of the many were on the right pathway towards sustainability? And whose version of sustainability was most attractive? Of course it’s not that great a problem in reality. Society does not always take academics seriously. Academic (the word academic that is) of course has more than one meaning. As a noun, it applies to me and to my colleagues, but as an adjective, it implies something that does not need to be taken particularly seriously and indeed in some contexts could be ignored without too much of personal, or societal, loss (as in an abstract, or academic argument). In practice, individual messages from individual academics are often ignored by society. Perhaps that is why we give prizes to those who are listened to!

Academics’ Diverse Rationales for Critiquing Society I think that members of society who experience academic critique on matters that may be relevant to them can easily be confused by the diversity of academic opinion that reaches out to them. Just as confusing to my mind but probably even more difficult for members of the general public to identify, is the rationale behind the quest to change society’s perspective on any particular matter. Amongst my wonderful academic colleagues, I could identify some who appear to me to be driven by profoundly strong belief. The belief may be of a religious nature or indeed so fervently held that it may as well be of a religious nature. I have colleagues who

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are profoundly concerned about the unsustainability of our current systems to the extent that it could be argued that their religion is sustainability. I have other colleagues who appear to me to be driven by a force that I might identify as political, as in highly conservative or highly socialist. For the former, an absolute belief in the rightness of market forces appears to me to be a dominant driving force. For the latter, similarly focused attention on the nature of democracy and of the needs of individuals in society provide a powerful framework from within which attention is sought. Other academic colleagues appear to me to be more strongly driven by their commitment to and confidence in their research. Some colleagues have spent their whole working life answering specific research questions. These colleagues have an intimate knowledge of the nature of whatever they have been researching and they share this knowledge with their students and with the wider world in a fundamentally scholarly way. I do not here pass value judgements on which approach is more morally just, but I suggest that an assumption of academic scholarship does tend to underpin the ‘critic and conscience of society’ construct wherever it exists around the world. I admit to feeling somewhat sceptical, perhaps even cheated, when academic colleagues make profound statements about sustainability, or about climate change, or about social justice, when these statements do not come from, or arise within, the same academic’s scholarly endeavours. Sometimes I struggle to understand precisely where such profound opinion has come from, and to judge if these profound opinions are any more substantial than those of many citizens who hold strong opinions. It takes some earnest academic work to see the woods from the trees in this regard. I think that it must be extraordinarily difficult for members of the wider public, or society in general, to understand the position that academics hold and from where they base their critique.

How the Critic and Conscience Construct Sits Within the Higher Education Landscape in New Zealand If I have adequately communicated my views to readers at this stage, I think that readers will understand if I comment that I struggle to understand, and therefore respect, the academic construct of science communication. I’m old enough to remember, and in a very small way to have been part of, the educational movement known as ‘public understanding of science’. Some do say that PUS was doomed to failure from the start because of its acronym but I suspect there’s slightly more to it than that. The construct of ‘public understanding of science’ arose as a branch of education. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists, and scientists who were educators, became profoundly concerned about the extent to which science was getting more and more complex as the years went by so that it appealed to a smaller and smaller section of society. Many criticisms were levelled against science but essentially the base message was that it was just too complex for the average person in the street. Advocates for the public understanding of science took a slightly different stand suggesting

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that it wasn’t the science that was at fault, or the public, but the way that scientists explained science to the public. Advocates for PUS took it upon themselves to use their best educational endeavours to educate the public. In the early 80s, I myself dabbled in this enterprise. I suggested that scientists should use the doctor’s waiting room (and of course dentist’s waiting room) as an opportunity to put PUS principles into operation. The opportunity appeared to me to be particularly relevant as surely people waiting in waiting rooms to have their illnesses diagnosed and treated, or their teeth drilled, are most likely to be interested in the science that underpins their afflictions. And rather than use this occasion to lecture the public about the science I thought it would be a good idea to introduce the science in a fun way. I was at the time interested in origami and I developed a number of origami tasks printed on A4 sheets of paper that made hats, sailing boats and birds that flapped their wings, while simultaneously introducing patients to some interesting scientific facts and ideas. Although my ideas did not receive funding to research their efficacy, they did receive praise and commentary and discussion. The idea sufficiently interested my vice chancellor at the time for him to discuss the prospect with his wife (a medical doctor) and son (a bright lad). This enterprising family came up with an equivalent suggestion that breakfast in the average British family was similarly lacking in things to do so that my origami might work well on the back of a cereal packet. At the time I think there were just so many brilliant ideas but so little funding to put them to effect and to monitor their impact in an educational sense. At about the same time, or certainly by the mid-90s, the idea of PUS went out of favour (I think on the basis that it was just too difficult to actually get the public to understand science) and that scientists should divert their attention to something easier. As I see it, the current vogue is ‘science communication’. I think it fair to say that in the context of sustainability, a high proportion of critic and conscience endeavour nowadays is labelled as science communication. To explain the starting sentence of this section, I should add that those who aspire to societal change probably do need to aim for understanding (as in the public understanding of science) rather than simple science communication (which often has simpler aspirations). Societal change may well require society to understand the need for change. Educationally speaking, understanding, no matter how challenging, is really rather important. But there are many linkages that make this particularly relevant to this chapter. In New Zealand, a significant body of research funding has recently been committed via National Science Challenges demanding measurable and visible contributions to our environmental and social well-being, and national productivity, with greater emphasis than previously on partnership and cooperation (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment 2016). There are also strong links between these ideas and the recently released National Strategic Plan, ‘A Nation of Curious Minds’ that promotes ‘a better engagement with science and technology across all sectors’ (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment 2015, np). To the advocate for science communication, and to those who advocate for societal change via the ‘critic and conscience of society’ construct, in the context of sustainability, these programmes are manna from heaven. In New Zealand, as indeed

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elsewhere in much of the world, academics (perhaps particularly academics in science) are encouraged to or even obliged to communicate their interests to the general public. The message from the National Science Challenges, and from national strategic programmes like ‘A Nation of Curious Minds’ is that this is a requirement of funding and an all round good thing to do. The message is reinforced by a number of other national strategies. In New Zealand, as elsewhere, there has long been a suggestion that as the public pays the taxes, and that as taxes support higher education, the public ought to be able to read the products of the research that the taxes have paid for. Traditionally, of course, academics have published in leading international peer-reviewed journals. The journals are part of the empires of large academic publishing houses, that in turn charge access to read the articles. Again traditionally, it has been assumed that only academics would be interested in what academics have to say so that access to these journal articles have traditionally been the prerogative of universities and access is generally paid for by universities. One of the developments internationally that is changing this is the open access movement. Individual academics, groups of academics, social activators and some new publishers have created a new model for publication, where those who wish to publish, pay the publishing costs upfront thereby guaranteeing open access to anyone who has an Internet access. The idea is that academic findings will be available to a wider range of society in this way and that the ‘critic and conscience of society’ functioning of academics who wish to make use of this aspect of their role can do so more effectively nowadays than perhaps was possible a few years ago. And being joined up doesn’t stop there. In New Zealand, we have linked the funding that goes to individual higher education institutions to support research, to a qualitative and quantitative appraisal of these institutions’ research output. The idea that underpins this resource allocation is that the limited amount of research money available in New Zealand will have most influence if it is channelled to those institutions that are most able to use it. Success breeds success. The fund allocation model is known as PBRF or performance-based research funding. Higher education institutions, or rather research active tertiary institutions, enter this competition with a view to demonstrating the success of their past research to the best of their ability. Every academic’s research output is scrutinised in fine detail to understand its impact. And impact earns points. And points earn money (for the institution that is) on a 6year cycle. Optimistically, we might identify that those academics who are most skilful at utilising their research funding to produce research outputs and most adept at communicating these outputs, in turn earn the most money and can do the most research. (Less optimistically, of course, some claim that the processes involved are an immense waste of time, energy and money.) There is of course a range of limiting factors, in the context of ‘critic and conscience of society’ functioning. Measurements of impact vary greatly. Impact may be measured by the number of research articles or by the number of times that research articles are cited by others who write research articles. Impact may relate to the economic changes that might result from research publication and communication. Some academics are less interested in economics and more interested in social change. They may measure impact in relation to actual social change, or in

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relation to the circulation of ideas within society; an idea highly in tune with ‘critic and conscience of society’ functioning. The advent of social media internationally has been a great boost to science communication, and to academics acting as critic and conscience of society, and to academics seeking brownie points, or promotion. Indeed, there are many ways in which these diverse processes and programmes can and do join together. Seen in this way, it does appear that opportunities for academics to act as ‘critic and conscience of society’, and get their message to society, have never been better, at least here in New Zealand. But does this make academic opinions on matters of relevance to society any more relevant, or valid, or important? And how successful is this endeavour? How do we measure, monitor, or otherwise research our standing and our success as critics and consciences of society?

How Higher Education Does or Does not Research Its Own Practices The last paragraph of the last section has enough questions to occupy a professor of higher education development for many lifetimes, so I had better be careful in this section to formulate some clear lines of enquiry. To do this justice we should confirm some principles that may help us set some standards. Earlier on in this chapter, I suggested that those who undertake criticism do need to do so from a sound scholarly position. I added that this position does really need to be a consistent one if society is to take a critic seriously. Scholarship in this context implies to most academics some combination of research, teaching and community engagement. Society would wish to know, I suggest, that the critique being levelled at society is also being presented to students. The same freedoms that allow academics to critique society are presented to academics to enable them to teach students. It would be a strange world if academic critics and consciences of society were saying one thing to society and another thing to their students. I also suggested earlier in this chapter that as universities are part of society, critique of society should also in some way be a critique of universities. I have unfortunately drawn us into an academic minefield. If there are two things that academics tend to distrust in relation to their own practice it is principles and standards. Principles imply some sort of control, anathema to academic freedom. Standards imply some form of accountability, or even worse neoliberal quantification.3 We should explore the ramifications of our trespass. If higher education was to adopt these principles and standards we might need to measure (or more kindly research) a range of parameters that relate to critics and their criticism. 3 It

seems to me that many of my university colleagues do not appreciate the difference between research-based enquiry, and managerial, compliance-motivated evaluation. It may be that this difference, and higher education’s inability to appreciate the difference, is at the heart of my fundamental concern; that higher education inadequately researches its own practices, so inadequately understands itself.

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Perhaps critics should only be allowed to criticise society if their scholarship is of an adequate standard? How might we measure this? By the number of papers published? By the number of students taught? By the number of hours of community engagement? All of these appear to me to be totally inadequate for this purpose. And who would make the judgement? And given the nature of science communication in higher education nowadays, and the structural processes in place that require university academics to have an impact on society, there appears to me to be no rationale within which limitations could exist. Preaching to the public4 has become an academic obligation. Perhaps critics need to confirm that the criticism that they place before society is also taught to their students? Because of my position within a university, I get to see a lot of curricula. With respect to sustainability, where sustainability issues are an integral part of what is being taught they frequently do appear within students’ curricula. But I also encounter critics of society who teach in fields of enquiry that do not necessarily have a sustainability focus and where one would be hard-pressed to find sustainability in the curriculum. Even worse, I do encounter critics in the context of sustainability who would very much like to teach aspects of sustainability to their students, but for a wide range of reasons are unable to. A common example relates to student choice. In general, students get to choose what they learn in university and nowadays it is actually quite difficult for a university teacher to set a curriculum. I think it commonplace nowadays to find academics who are very vocal in the public sphere, in a critic in conscience sense, but find no opportunities for equivalent critique within their teaching. And what of impact? For me this is central to any discussion, and any conclusion, relating to the construct of critic and conscience. Is it enough for academics to simply communicate information? Is it enough for the communication to be one way? Doesn’t communication imply a two-way process? I spend a lot of my time at university encouraging university teachers to be interactive rather than simply didactic. Lecturing can be one way, and sometimes this may be appropriate, but teaching and learning generally work better if there is two-way communication going on. I make similar observations in relation to the consequences of being a ‘critic and conscience of society’. Surely the point about it is that it contributes to societal discourse and eventually to societal change? And I make the same observation about change within our universities. If universities are part of society, and our students are members of our society, and soon to become graduates within our society, academic voices need to reach our students as well as our external communities. For me, the most important aspect of being a ‘critic and conscience of society’ is that academics are using their scholarly endeavours to find better ways of living in the world and using their roles as public intellectuals to influence communities whether they exist 4 Philosophers

who have found their way to these pages will note Weberian undertones to these thoughts. The German Philosopher Webber writing in the early twentieth century emphasised the need for scientists to separate their science from how society might choose to use the science. Since then of course, lines between facts and values, episteme and morals, are more likely to be blurred. Sustainability, it could be argued, is the ultimate blurred concept. But surely, sustainable development is even more so?

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within the institution or outside of it. I suggest that the only worthy assessment of impact relates to change, or in educational terms, learning; inside and outside the academy. The consequence of this analysis for me is that higher education needs to spend far more time and effort researching its own practices. If higher education is to do a proper job at being critic and conscience of society it does need to research and understand how these roles of critic and conscience actually have an impact on societal learning, and which practices have the most impact and how they work. Simply developing the structures of higher education and societal governance to maximise opportunities for criticism could not possibly be enough and may indeed be doing damage to higher education and to the societies that sponsor it.

Conclusions Critiquing society, being a conscience for society, and promoting community learning are legislated obligations for those who work and study in higher education in New Zealand. In the broad context of sustainability, many academics avail themselves of this opportunity. Indeed, these processes are strongly supported in New Zealand by those who fund research, by recent trends in publication promoting open access, by the availability of social media opportunities and by higher education’s own governance structures that oblige university academics to demonstrate the impact of their research. But it is notable that the messages that academics send to society are often from individuals, rather than from institutions or disciplines and may be informed by individual’s scholarship or personal perspective or some combination of both. Although student groups are part of the societies that receive criticism, it may not be the case that the same messages are communicated in both parts of society. Universities and their academic staff struggle to situate the construct of ‘critic and conscience of society’ within a set of stable principles and to apply standards to their operation. It may be that rather than contributing to societal sustainability, the critic and conscience construct is contributing more to societal unsustainability. But how would we know? Underpinning these concerns is the reluctance or inability of higher education to research it own practices.

References Leopold, A. (1949). A sand county almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Menand, L., Reitter, P., & Wellmon, C. (Eds.). (2017). The rise of the research university: A sourcebook. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2015) A nation of curious minds—He Whenua Hihiri i te Mahara. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from http://www.curiousminds.nz.

References

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Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2016). National science challenges. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/science-innovation/funding-infoopportunities/investment-funds/national-science-challenges/. New Zealand Government. (2018). Education act 1989, Section 162. Retrieved July 27, 2018, from http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0080/latest/DLM183668.html. Virgo, G. (2017). Opinion: Being society’s critic & conscience. Retrieved July 31, 2019, from https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/opinion-being-societys-critic-conscience.

Chapter 4

Environmental Education in New Zealand

Some Personal Experiences of Environmental Education: Family, School and Lifestyle Environmental education has a long history here and elsewhere. Indeed, I’m not even sure that it would be possible to identify when in our long educational history ‘things environmental’ did not implicitly if not explicitly form part of everyone’s education. My own early formal education started in another country on the other side of the world. One particular teacher, Miss Gardner, installed a nature table in the classroom (yes I was five or six at the time) and we talked about everything that was brought into the classroom by all of the children. I think these natural things became important to us, perhaps particularly because nature was important to Miss Gardner. Most readers of this chapter will have similar memories I’m sure. In that same classroom, every afternoon before going-home time, we had story time. I have fond memories of incredibly engaging stories being told by a teacher who loved telling them. I can’t remember what any of them were about, of course, but I’m sure they made me think about distant places and different people and different ways of experiencing the world. Perhaps in particular they helped me to appreciate the positives in imagination. I started this chapter with formal education for some reason. But, of course, informally my education started long before this. From a very early age, I used to walk on a Saturday morning to visit my grandmother who lived nearby. My grandparents were country people and their conservatory (perhaps more accurately lean-to out the back) always had hares and rabbits and pheasants (that granddad had shot previously) hanging prior to plucking (by granny, of course, although she used to let me help). Granddad kept ferrets in a cage in the garden, to help him catch the rabbits. I was fascinated by these incredibly agile animals and in their strong relationship with humans, although I was always warned not to put my fingers in the cage. And Granny was a keen gardener. I helped her to plant vegetables and to harvest them, although to be honest I suspect I was more of a nuisance at that age than an actual help, even though Granny never told me that. Of course, these © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_4

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early experiences have created the person I am now. My brothers and sister thought that I was odd in that I always enjoyed gardening. Even as a teenager, when it was profoundly uncool to do anything like that, I was interested. Fishing also came to me long before school did. One of my earliest memories of fishing was being taken by my father, with my brother, to the pier at Brighton on England’s South Coast. I cannot describe in simple text the enormity of the impression upon me that experience had: a long walk down the pier on wooden floors with the glimpse of the sea below; seagulls screeching; how could the sea possibly be so green? Surely it was meant to be blue? Such a strong smell of salt and seaweed; the touch and smell of the iron girders, all mixed up with dead fish, rotting bait and candy floss; and the spectacle of the platforms at the end of the pier where people were fishing with the living sea below. Magic. We had bait wrapped up in the same newspaper that was to later wrap up the catch of small pouting. And we had hand lines that we used to lower our alluring and smelly bait down to the fish at the bottom of the sea. And what joy when you felt a tug on the line and pulled it up to reveal the most incredibly beautiful small creature on the end, flapping and splashing and looking at me with that big eye, until dispatched by dad to the newspaper. I’m not sure where mum was at this time. I know she came down to the sea with us but I cannot imagine her ever being able to cope with the risks associated with just being at the end of the Brighton’s Palace Pier. Indeed, looking back, and knowing dad as I do, I’m not even sure how we survived. The railings that separated my brother and I from the deep, heaving ocean would be thought of as entirely inadequate nowadays. And I was such a fidget and so excitable. But I was hooked on fishing, on the sea and on being outside in the splendour of it all. I think I was also hooked on the idea that the outside world was not an inaccessible entity that only really occurred as a wilderness. In some respects, Brighton Pier was the epitome of man-made access to the wider world and it helped me to value the environment and the natural world in my own particular way. When we got home in the evening dad gutted and filleted the fish and carefully covered each fillet in flour and salt and then fried it in lard. I enjoyed the crispy bits more than anything else. My brother also had a big part in my environmental education. Michael is 3 years older than me and at that time it seemed natural to him and to my mother that it was his job to look after me, at the age of 4, when my mother didn’t want to or could not. Michael was fanatical about fishing before me, or perhaps simply was old enough to do something about it before I was. So Michael used to have to take me on his fishing trips to Burgh Heath Pond with his mates even though I knew he didn’t want to. I know this because one time he left me behind, perhaps just as a protest. I remember them all getting on the bus waving to me as I sat wondering how to get home on my own. I can’t remember how angry my mum was but I bet that Michael can. Much later on and back to formal education, my biology teacher, Mr. Hey, took my class to the River Wandle to explore freshwater ecology. I remember a day-long field trip to the River Wandle at Carshalton in Surrey (just south of London) in 1970. This fine stream flowed with amazing clarity from chalk-fed springs in the adjacent Carshalton Ponds, only to be polluted beyond recognition by the paint factory 100 yards downstream. As the river flowed from the ponds, it was crystal clear and you

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could see patches of pristine gravel between beds of vivid green water buttercup. Our pond nets found an incredible array of insects and an occasional angry stickleback flashing bright red at us, spines erect and threatening. That was also the first time that I saw dragonfly larvae, awesome creatures but in some respects the stuff of nightmares with their evil-looking mandibles and grotesque body structure. Below the paint factory the water was smelly and coloured. You couldn’t see the bottom as it was covered with foul fungus.1 At the time I remember a sense of disgust and this sense has imprinted in my memory and re-emerged many times in later years. In some respects, each time the memory has reappeared I have discovered more facts and memories and understanding that I can attach to it and get angry with and I have no doubt that each time I mentally revisit this time in my life, the experience gets progressively more powerful. But I also struggle to do anything with my anger. Others can blame capitalists and capitalism and greed and industrialisation and I wish that I could. I can think of no comparable educational experience better designed to instil environmental concern into a young mind than that upstream/downstream ecological survey. Thank you Mr. Hey. I have not returned recently but I read that the River Wandle has recaptured at least some of its former purity (The Field 2008). Perhaps other young minds were equally impressed by this early form of environmental education and went on in adult life to make a difference in another way. Environmental education may have national or global agendas but its impact at a local level is all important. The concept of environmental education also runs deeper and wider than any personal historical account could hope to address. Coincidentally, and unknown to me in 1970, John Ruskin also visited Carshalton, in 1870. His environmental concern was not set against the factory, as mine was, but against ‘the human wretches of the place’ who ‘cast their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; which, having neither energy to cart away, nor decency enough to dig into the ground, they thus shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health’ (Ruskin 1870, np). Ruskin’s writing and other activities did apparently lead to some improvement, even if these were temporary. Also unknown to me at the time, it turns out the River Wandle was one of Izaak Walton’s favourite rivers (circa 1600) and at the time was recognised for its huge and beautiful brown trout. The life and well-being of urban streams does appear to be an up and down affair. So here I am I now hopelessly in love with the countryside and parks and mountains and rivers and the animals and plants that live in them. I even like the slimy ones. Just a few years ago I remember being thrilled to find in my garden a New Zealand flatworm.2 Where I grew up flatworms were entirely aquatic. The New Zealand version is terrestrial and lives under rocks and bits of wood. It is also quite beautiful in its own particular way, being purple and brown and sometimes other colours and 1 Sewage fungus is primarily a filamentous bacterial colony Sphaerotilus natans generally associated with polluted water. 2 The New Zealand flatworm is also now a highly invasive pest in other countries.

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extending quite a few inches as it seeks out earthworms to eat. I went to university to study zoology and botany. Rarely, a week goes by without me going fishing somewhere. I am passionate about my garden. I choose to live where I can breathe the fresh air and see something other than buildings. As I write this at home in my office bedroom, I’m looking out over the Otago Lower Harbour and have a clear view of Taiaroa Head (where the albatrosses nest) and the salt marsh at Aramoana. Over the years, I’ve chosen universities to work at that have given me the opportunity to work in a town but live in the countryside and I’m fortunate in having a partner who shares my interests and children who have tolerated them. But, as always, I am mindful that what I see and love in the natural world around me is far from natural. As I watch the dredger pursue its occupation in the shipping channel below me I note that human influence is as omnipresent here as it was all those years ago on, and around, Brighton Pier. Whether in New Zealand or in the South of England, the natural world that I love exists because humans allow it to. Naturally, I’m also passionate about environmental education. And in writing this chapter I’m wondering if the purpose of environmental education is to educate people like me to turn out like me. I am troubled by that particular concept and so indeed concerned about the purpose of environmental education in New Zealand and elsewhere. In one of my publications recently, I found myself pondering on my own right or obligation to educate others like me to turn out like me, environmentally speaking. Looking back I see that I wrote the following: I cannot claim, myself, to hold deep personal convictions towards sustainability. I do grow vegetables, recycle extensively, wear recycled clothes (often), turn the lights off, use renewable fuel (mostly) to heat my house and ride an electric bike (occasionally). I catch fish to eat and grow animals on a small farm, all relatively sustainably. But overall I live comfortably and with a lifestyle supported by far more than my fair share of the world’s resources. I am more of a thinker than a doer and I cannot claim to have achieved ‘environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development’. How can I teach or otherwise help others to be what I am not? Charges of hypocrisy may be more worrying to me personally than charges of indoctrination. (Shephard 2015, 85)

Now is the time for readers to take stock of their own environmental education journey and what it has meant for them. Please do take some time to remember some significant experiences. I strongly suspect that we share at least some experiences and reflections on them. Where do we go from here? Let’s look at Environmental Education in New Zealand, through my eyes, starting with a focus on compulsory education as a precursor to higher education.

New Zealand’s 1998 National Strategy for Environmental Education and Proposed Changes in 2016 In 1998, New Zealand’s Ministry for the Environment and Ministry of Education released a National Strategy for Environmental Education (Ministry for the Environment 1998). In 2016, our Department of Conservation led a steering group (The

New Zealand’s 1998 National Strategy for Environmental …

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Advancing EE Steering Group comprising representatives from the Ministry for the Environment, Ministry of Education, Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, local government and researchers in education working with schools, kura,3 iwi4 and communities) to try to refresh the original strategy. This group created a draft National Strategy for Environmental Education for Sustainability (Department of Conservation 2016) and asked New Zealanders to comment on it. As DOC (Our Department of Conservation) explained in the 2016 draft strategy Environmental education (EE) traditionally focused on teaching about the environment and in the environment – believing this would change attitudes and behaviours for the environment. Education for sustainability (EfS) explores values and actions to produce positive outcomes. In particular it encourages enquiry into the interconnectedness of social, cultural, economic and environmental systems and helps bridge the gap between what we know and what we do. As both EE and EfS have a role in understanding and action to address complex environmental issues, we are using the term Environmental Education for Sustainability (EEfS) to capture the effective elements of both fields. (Department of Conservation 2016, np)

To this point, I was broadly sympathetic. Trends in New Zealand had followed those internationally, albeit with a decade time lag. Many would trace the roots of global environmental education to the Belgrade Charter adopted by the United Nations in 1976. This articulated the goal that the whole population of the world should be committed to working individually and collectively to solve environmental problems. Since then, environmental education has been at the core of a wide range of international commissions, declarations and conferences. But in the mid80s, another paradigm evolved that sought to link our concerns about the environment, and nature, more closely with those of people, and society, and culture and economies. The concept of sustainable development, although an oxymoron for some (on the basis that the natural world probably can’t cope with any more human development and therefore on-going development can’t possibly be sustainable), became the new buzzword (or buzz phrase if that is possible). And education was still to be at the heart of it all. The 1987 Brundtland Report suggested that ‘the world’s teachers … have a crucial role to play in helping to bring about the extensive social changes needed for sustainable development (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Agenda 21, agreed at the end of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development’, went further to identify ‘Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues … It is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision making’ (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992, np). Perhaps it was surprising that clean, green, 100% pure New Zealand took until 19985 to develop a comprehensive educational strategy relating to sustainability and 3 A Maori word widely understood in New Zealand meaning a school where much of the education

is conducted in the Maori language (te reo). 4 A Maori word widely understood in New Zealand identifying major subgroups of Maori, or tribes. 5 Noting

that the 1998 strategy (Learning to Care for our Environment) built on the earlier ‘The Environment 2010’ strategy, released in 1995.

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equally surprising that it chose environmental education, rather than sustainability education, as its core theme. Nevertheless, giving credit where it is due, in 2016 (after the rest of the world progressed through its United Nations’ sponsored Decade for Education for Sustainable Development, ending in 2014) at least we were talking about education for sustainability albeit in this rather odd, possibly even unique, form of environmental education for sustainability.

The Underlying Ethos of New Zealand’s 1998 National Strategy for Environmental Education Actually, I was quite impressed by parts of the 1998 strategy. It was unambiguously about the environment, and so bypassed many of the issues inherent to the broader conceptualisation of sustainability. In its forward, it repeated a previous vision statement that: ‘… sustainable management of our environment will only be advanced through all New Zealanders understanding and accepting responsibility for the quality of our environment and our impact on it’. Section 3.5 of the 1998 strategy has some clear objectives (described as outcomes) that were actually owned by the Government of the day (in that the text specified what the government wanted to achieve). Let’s look at just one: ‘The environmental education outcomes being sought by the government are: individuals, families and communities with the knowledge, skills and attitudes and values that result in sound environmental behaviour….’.6 Perhaps I was particularly drawn to this strategic approach because it related strongly both to an international movement and to an educational paradigm that would be directly and indisputably familiar to all trained teachers in New Zealand. The terms knowledge, skills, values and attitudes trigger in all trained teachers particular elements of the educational process. Knowledge is what you know and in some senses is nothing more than what you could repeat back if asked a question. What was the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere in preindustrial times? What is it now? Skills are a bit more complex and demanding in particular because we have a range of skills to address in this educational paradigm. Okay, so you know what the concentration of carbon dioxide is, but please explain to me what carbon dioxide is. Beyond this simple skill of understanding, our schoolchildren, families and communities might be expected to, as examples, analyse or even evaluate this knowledge. Why is this increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide important? Where might the extra carbon dioxide be coming from? Could it possibly be coming from New Zealand? And then we get to the tricky bit. Do our children, families and communities care about these things? What values and attitudes do we hold at present that together with our knowledge and skills might lead us to particular behaviours (such as releasing, on a per capita basis, more than our fair share of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or choosing not to) and what new 6 And there are others that are equally forthright in their aspirations, such as ‘… the effective use of

environmental education to help people and organisations understand and implement environmental and other policies’.

The Underlying Ethos of New Zealand’s 1998 National Strategy …

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values and attitudes might be necessary, along with new knowledge and skills, that might cause us to change our individual and collective behaviour into something more “sound”?

It all seemed so very logical. I think it fair to say that the 1998 strategy was highly influential in creating much of the current environmental education in NZ schools, as seen, for example, in our New Zealand national curriculum (Ministry of Education 2015).

But Is It Working? So, how well is it working and how do we know? And if it is working, why are we changing it? Fortunately, a substantial amount of research has been underway in New Zealand to address these questions. Several elements of this are particularly important here. In 2002, the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) and the University of Waikato were contracted by the Ministry of Education to undertake research into environmental education in New Zealand schools. A substantial update of this research was commissioned more recently by the Advancing EE Steering Group and conducted by Rachel Bolstad, Chris Joyce and Rosemary Hipkins under the auspices of the NZCER (Bolstad et al. 2015a, b). Personally, I learned a lot from this 2015 research update and the authors did well to frame a complex situation in a forward-looking manner, as it would have been easy I feel for the authors to have let a bit of despondency into their summaries. Although there are many positives in this research report, the key message for me is: ‘This research update indicates that while there have been many pockets of progress and development across all of these areas over the past 11 years, this progress is unevenly spread and has often lacked high-level coordination’ (Bolstad et al. 2015a, b, vii). If we were, for example, to look at the uneven progress over the sector, say in relation to the objective described earlier [‘….: individuals, families and communities with the knowledge, skills and attitudes and values that result in sound environmental behaviour….’] it would I feel be difficult to read the report of Bolstad et al. in a positive way. By and large it does not create the impression of an education sector that has embraced, integrated or coordinated the 1998 strategy. Overall, it creates the impression of an education system that is, and individual teachers in particular who are, trying hard but struggling to make progress. Perhaps most indicative of the challenges encountered is that the 2015 research update addresses the limitations of the 2002 report, rather than the aspirational objectives of the 1998 strategy. I cannot find any reasonable analysis of whether or not the intended outcomes prominent in the 1998 strategy are actually being achieved.

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OK, What Is Really Going on Here? I find myself in a situation where it is almost impolite to comment on these matters, a little like stepping over the elephant in the room that it would be simply too illmannered to comment on. I am, of course, duty-bound to explore the embarrassing bits. As explained by Bolstad et al. (2015) ‘Different groups may have different ideas about what “good” EE/EfS looks like, and what sorts of long-term goals and potential outcomes should be aimed for. This is natural, because people have very different views on many matters, including humans’ relationship to the environment, how society and the economy should grow and develop, and education’s role in (re)producing or transforming society (Bolstad et al. 2015). It is beyond the scope of this review to unpack these discourses in detail, except to note that they are discussed extensively across the EE/EfS literature’ (Bolstad et al. 2015, 9). And I get the point. In the 1998 Strategy, our Government asked for ‘… individuals, families and communities with the knowledge, skills and attitudes and values that result in sound environmental behaviour’ but didn’t go on to say what exactly this sound environmental behaviour might look like or what knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours would result in these behaviours, leaving aside for now whose job it is to achieve these outcomes. There clearly could be grounds for some confusion here. But I do not necessarily agree with the point. From where I sit, the 1998 strategy specifically referred to the 1995 strategy, which itself specifically established goals that essentially defined the outcomes from these sound environmental behaviours. I have chosen three (from the 1995 strategy) to help us to explore these muddy waters that I am not personally persuaded are particularly challenging to traverse, for those prepared to get their feet wet (Beehive.govt.nz. 2019): • … ensuring New Zealand’s surface freshwaters and coastal waters are of a quality suitable to meet community needs such as swimming, fishing and shellfish gathering, and that aquatic life is not significantly affected by discharges; • To protect indigenous habitats and biological diversity … • To take precautionary actions to help stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in order to reduce risk from global climate change … What I would like to do is to briefly explore if it might be possible, in an everyday sort of way, to identify what knowledge, skills, attitudes and values might help us all to accomplish the environmentally sound behaviours that would be necessary to realise these goals. For most of us the three goals, which I have picked on above, relate quite easily to … swimming in the rivers and lakes, protecting rare species and having consideration of the needs of all on planet earth, rather than just those who live in New Zealand, as we pollute our shared atmosphere. Let’s just look in detail at one of them in Table 4.1 and see if the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values related to one particular goal are easy to bring together, in an everyday sort of way. Not too difficult at all! Overall, I feel that in 2015 we really did need a research update with respect to New Zealand’s 1995 and 1998 strategies and goals and to have asked if our schools were

OK, What Is Really Going on Here?

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Table 4.1 Exemplar issue, wouldn’t it be nice if our rivers and lakes were clean enough to swim in? Goal …

… ensuring New Zealand’s surface freshwaters and coastal waters are of a quality suitable to meet community needs such as swimming, fishing and shellfish gathering, and that aquatic life is not significantly affected by discharges

Example

The Hypothetical River nowadays is severely compromised, in comparison with its state in days gone by, and is dry in places in summer. Claims that there is plenty of water under the gravel, if not visible or swimmable-in above the gravel, have not convinced everyone that what we have at present is what we want in the future

Knowledge

About sources of bacteria and viruses, about eutrophication, about groundwater and abstraction, about recreation and conservation, about rainfall and water tables

Skills

Ability to analyse data and to apply this analysis to come to conclusions. Ability to assess contradictory data (is low rainfall or abstraction the main culprit here?) and to ask pertinent questions

Attitudes

Wouldn’t it be nice if our rivers and lakes actually had water in them when we wanted to swim in them, in the summer! Even better if they were clean enough to swim in without getting sick and to support fish and other aquatic life!

Values

This is important to me. In order to achieve this goal, New Zealand may have to make difficult decisions affecting the rights and practices of farmers, in relation to variable rainfall

on the way to achieving them. Personally, I do not think that the research involved would have been particularly onerous, although some may claim that research was not necessary as the situation is self-evident. By and large school children in New Zealand are probably not learning the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values likely to result in the sound environmental behaviour that the government hoped for in 1998. Noting, of course, and as indicated above, there are ‘pockets of progress’. Perhaps I’m being too tough on the researchers and on those who commissioned the research. Perhaps the researchers did expect us to read between the lines. Indeed, the report does suggest in a looking-forward sort of way that: ‘A key message here is the need to take a whole-system perspective, bring together relevant stakeholders to consider what each can contribute to the collective challenge of advancing EE, set shared goals to work towards, and form agreed indicators of what “success” looks like in terms of strengthening EE/EfS across the system’ (Bolstad et al. 2015, viii). Reading between the lines, perhaps these authors are telling us that the original objectives or outcomes indicated in the 1995 and 1998 documents are unreasonable, for a range of reasons, but certainly not reasonable from the perspective of the school sector. Indeed, school teachers around the world debate the extent to which it is their role to change society at all. Most would rather imagine their role as making change possible by helping the next generation to develop the wherewithal to change. Perhaps fundamentally we have a mismatch between those who write strategies, and those who are expected to enact them. I understand the message that schools on their own cannot possibly achieve what society is not managing to achieve in other contexts, so we do need a more joined-up approach. But deep down we appear to have also developed diverse and incompatible perspectives on what formal education is for and

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what it can achieve. Just because the United Nations looks to the world’s teachers to change society does not enable it to happen. I see this analysis as a precursor to help readers to follow some lines of logic that will emerge in later chapters. For many teachers, the journey to become a professional teacher, in New Zealand and elsewhere, involves a change in the ways that these particular citizens understand the nature of knowledge itself, an epistemological shift that renders much in our educational strategies almost illogical. Perhaps in amongst these really challenging concerns, we should celebrate when something essentially simple emerges from complexity. Many readers will understand the message that we need, as a country, to form agreed indicators of what success might look like. Returning to the Hypothetical River, success for some, perhaps for many, would look like a water management plan that limits discharges and allocates water for abstraction only if it is available and if its use does not result in a lowering of the water table below a previously agreed level. Presumably, for others in New Zealand, success would be measured in other ways.

Research into Values I wish that I could say that the next bit was easy to write or to read but I don’t think either is the case. This is a chapter on education and so I can’t possibly trivialise the educational point that not everything worth learning comes in the form of facts, or knowledge, and that the really important bits worth learning often do not. Often the important and challenging parts of education fall within what the 1998 strategy identified as attitudes and values. And it must have been so easy for them to write: ‘attitudes and values’. I guess intuitively they must have realised how important attitudes and values were to the objectives of the strategy, without in a technical sense, understanding how challenging it sometimes is for teachers in our schools to be teaching values and attitudes. I need to stress ‘sometimes’ here. Where the values and attitudes being taught are those values and attitudes that are generally adopted by society, by the teachers, by the schools and by the parents, then in a general sense they are fairly straightforward to teach and to learn. Most children learn not to bully, or to steal, or to be racially abusive. To some degree at least, they learn about gender equality and learn to value it. Within many of these areas of interest, our schoolchildren learn knowledge and skills about these matters and they learn the values and attitudes that enable them to choose to adopt behaviours that everyone around them will agree are ‘sound’. The challenges come, in my view, when we expect our schoolteachers to teach values and attitudes that society struggles with, that teachers struggle with and that parents struggle with.7

7 We shall explore issues associated with cultural identity in Chapter 7. Social psychologists separate

science knowledge (what a person knows about science) and cultural identity (who a person is,

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Most educators involved in environmental education realise that the issues are deeply value-laden. Knowledge helps, and so do appropriate skills, but unless learners develop the values and attitudes required to choose environmentally appropriate behaviours, the main outcome from environmental education turns out to be ‘knowledgeable bystanders’. School-based education is obliged, within the New Zealand curriculum, to address prescribed values and these do include ecological sustainability, alongside equity, diversity, integrity and excellence. There is some research on the development of values in New Zealand’s education system (Notman 2012) … and this work does suggest that New Zealand’s teachers are generally strongly supportive of the need to teach values and in general well prepared to do so, but struggle more with some prescribed values than others (with ecological sustainability top of the list alongside diversity) and find the assessment of the attainment of particular values challenging. There is an expanding literature base on teaching values and attitudes, and everything that we learn within this research suggests that achieving societal change towards sustainability by teaching environmental education in our schools will be fraught with difficulties, long term. We can teach the knowledge and we can teach the analytical skills that help students to use this knowledge. But teaching the values and attitudes that will allow our young people to put this knowledge to use in making sound environmental decisions is likely more than we can do at present. But Miss, please Miss, I can see how important it is to have clean water in the river for the fish and insects and my Mum did tell me that that she used to swim in the river when she was young, but she doesn’t let me swim there now and she gives me the bus fare to go to the swimming pool. And my Mum says that Mr Smith really does need to take the water out of the river because the irrigator needs it and Dad’s job depends on Mr Smith’s cows so if I want food on the table I have got to make difficult choices. My Dad says so have you because the school depends on kids and there won’t be any kids here if you fill our heads with all this stuff about clean water and climate change.

Roles for Higher Education Readers might be forgiven for imagining that New Zealand’s environmental education strategy refers only to schools, as so far that’s all I really commented on, and to be fair, the strategies that we have considered so far have a strong focus on compulsory education. Actually, the 1998 strategy did include tertiary education, with a particular focus on teacher training and the courses that are specifically related to sustainability: Colleges of education, universities and polytechnics play an important role in the formal environmental education sector. Colleges of education and universities provide training for teachers involved with environmental education in the core curriculum. Other tertiary institutions provide environmental papers integrated with other courses (such as engineering culturally speaking) and suggest that no amount of knowledge will necessarily change how a person’s cultural identity will direct their behaviour.

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4 Environmental Education in New Zealand and planning) and a number have multi-disciplinary environmental degree and diploma programmes. (Ministry for the Environment 1998, 27)

Although, of course, universities are implicated in school-based education, as they educate the schoolteachers, elsewhere in the world some of higher education is adopting an even more proactive stance. I think primarily because university teachers, or some university teachers, are mindful that universities have educated the business leaders and managers and scientists and technologists and bankers and politicians that have so significantly forged the human environment that we exist within and therefore the impacts that humanity has had on the rest of the world around us. To date nearly 500 Universities have signed the Talloires Declaration and agreed to: ‘Educate for Environmentally Responsible Citizenship’ (establish programs to produce expertise in environmental management, sustainable economic development, population, and related fields to ensure that all university graduates are environmentally literate and have the awareness and understanding to be ecologically responsible citizens) and to ‘Foster Environmental Literacy For All’ (create programs to develop the capability of university faculty to teach environmental literacy to all undergraduate, graduate, and professional students). (University Leaders for a Sustainable Future 2014, np)

The sense is that at least some institutions have accepted a responsibility that extends far beyond the teachers who they train for other parts of the education sector and the departments that have direct links to sustainability research and education. Notably, only one of New Zealand’s eight universities has signed this declaration. Coincidentally, as I was drafting this chapter, my own university (The University of Otago) published its own Sustainability Strategic Framework (University of Otago 2017) in draft form with an opportunity provided to Otago staff and students to offer feedback. Much of this framework relates to campus sustainability, addressed in this book in Chapter 2, but there is a section on education and an overall ethos of promised change. We will be bold, integrating sustainability principles and practices throughout all our activities, from administration and governance, operations, research, teaching & learning, community engagement and outreach activities. (University of Otago 2017, 2)

Naturally, I did my best to be supportive of my University’s aspirations and in particular assured the university of my willingness to support its efforts, but the feedback that I gave about the draft strategic framework was not entirely positive. I commented on the lack of an action plan (with clear and measurable objectives) and wondered how we could possibly provide feedback on the strategic framework in its current form without measurable objectives. I commented on the cognitive dissonance that results from an inconsistency between what our experience has taught us to expect and the promises that are made in institutional strategies. I was particularly struck by the University’s promise to raise awareness of its sustainability transition. I suggested that at present all we can do is to raise awareness of the university’s intention to undertake a sustainability transition. I was a bit happier with what the university said about its future commitment to education.

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The University of Otago will continue to strengthen sustainability within formal teaching and learning programmes and practices, while inviting students to connect with sustainability as part of their broader experience at Otago. We will ensure all students have the opportunity to develop a sense of citizenship and engage with sustainability issues regardless of their formal programme of study. This increases the likelihood that our graduates emerge as equipped with skills, knowledge and experiences that will enable them to make a positive contribution to sustainability throughout their lives. (University of Otago 2018, 5, np)

But I provided feedback that asked for more information, so that I could be sure that I understood what was really being proposed, in relation to, for example, New Zealand’s various environmental education strategies. For example, the university identified as a key strategy that it will ‘Increase Sustainability Literacy among all students’ (11) and, as an activity within this, that it will ‘Assess the sustainability literacy of students’ (11). Naturally, and in line my concerns about whether this will be enough to meet the aspirations of the New Zealand government for ‘sound’ environmental behaviours, I asked about differences between ‘assess’ and ‘evaluate’, and about the precise meaning of ‘literacy’ given that these terms are so diversely applied in higher education literature nowadays. I note that the draft institutional framework was approved (University of Otago 2018) to the best of my knowledge unaffected by my feedback (although I must note that in Theme 5, Strategy 3c, ‘assess’ was changed to ‘evaluate’). Now, in March 2019, we are still waiting for an action plan that addresses our educational aspirations.

My Own Research Ah yes, my own research. Where do I start? I have been working with colleagues from a wide range of university departments (we collectively identified ourselves as the ‘Education for sustainability research group’) and coauthored many research papers such as the one referenced below, to develop research approaches that might help us to understand the nature of students’ dispositions towards sustainability. The instrument that we have used most is called the New Ecological Paradigm scale, or NEP, and it is thought to variously measure individual’s environmental attitude or ecological worldview. On the way, we did research the efficacy of a range of other instruments and approaches, but in general this research boosted our confidence in our use of the NEP. With the NEP, essentially students who volunteer to be part of the research are asked to decide how strongly they agree or disagree with a set of 15 statements [such as ‘Humans are meant to rule over the rest of nature’, ‘The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset’, ‘Humans will eventually learn enough about how nature works to be able to control it’ and ‘If things continue on their present course we will soon experience a major ecological catastrophe’.] Students also provide a code so that their anonymous responses at any one particular time can be matched with their responses a year, or two, later. One might hope that if spending time at the University of Otago causes students to think about the environmental, social and economic issues inherent to sustainability then their NEP score might change.

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In general, we note substantially different NEP scores in cohorts of students who choose to study different subjects while at university. Generally speaking, students who study zoology have higher NEP scores than those who study, say, surveying, and this is repeated year after year. Just as importantly from our perspective, students tend to arrive at the institution with a particular NEP score and by and large, statistically speaking, tend to leave 3 or 4 years later apparently unscathed by any particular University of Otago sustainability-oriented experience (Shephard et al. 2015a) [An open-access version is available (Shephard et al. 2015b) as is an open-access summary (Shephard 2018)]. That is not to say that things might not be different at some point in the future. But right now, we don’t have any particularly good evidence to suggest that higher education at our own institution is significantly and positively impacting on the sustainability attributes of our undergraduate students, rather the opposite in fact.

New Proposals in 2016 Now where were we? Of course, we were looking at New Zealand’s 2016 draft revisions to our 1998 Environmental Education Strategy and we went off on a tangent to explore what impact the 1998 strategy, based on 1995 version, had on New Zealanders. On the way, we considered research conducted in 2002 via the more recent research update in 2015 by Bolstad et al. And we took another diversion to take in the roles of higher education. I think that we are now in a better position than we were earlier in the chapter to consider the 2016 draft strategy and what it sought to achieve. We are, in particular, really very interested in what it says success might look like. After all this environmental education, and the various strategies, we should be in a position to not only say what we hope will be achieved, but also in how we would know if it were to be achieved. And of course we shall have educational or research processes in place to monitor the extent to which success is being achieved. Yes, definitely this is what we would have expected in the draft 2016 strategy. But I was disappointed. I poured through the vision, lists of how the vision will be promoted and what priorities were to be put in place, but nowhere could I find measurable indicators that might help us to understand what ‘success’ might look like. My feedback was extensive but contained the following extracts: For me, from beginning to end, this is a ‘strategy for doing things’, not a strategy for achieving things’. … At this stage in the development of this strategy we really must ensure that we sufficiently learn from what has come before. The research update provided with the draft strategy is, I believe, very useful in this respect. … But, rather than benefit from what has come before, this draft strategy chooses to develop other priorities indicative of more activity, more busyness, each of which suggests limited links to a visionary objective, or indeed to any form of “agreed indicators of what “success” looks like in terms of strengthening EE/EfS across the system”. … I am drawn to the objectives (described as Government outcomes) of the 1998 strategy clearly described in section 3.5 of that document. Let’s look at just one: “The environmental education outcomes being sought by the government are: individuals,

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families and communities with the knowledge, skills and attitudes and values that result in sound environmental behaviour….”. Clearly in all the time since 1998 we haven’t managed to develop processes that will enable us to identify if we are achieving this objective, and it seems to me that the new draft proposal will not take us any nearer. … These actions suggest that government already knows how to do these things; that actions are ready to go, just waiting for the green light. ‘The government will promote effective delivery of environmental education, facilitate professional learning and development in effective environmental education, support opportunities for whole school approaches; etc.’ From my perspective, many of these actions are far from ‘ready to go’ and I think it’s quite mischievous for this strategy to suggest otherwise. … The actions could be improved by developing better priorities and then by making the actions themselves more realistic, and more informed by current research in environmental education. For example; the draft strategy claims that one role for environment education for sustainability is to develop social, cultural, economic and scientific understanding. But to what end? So that we can collectively understand and be knowledgeable bystanders to worldwide environmental degradation? Or, so that we can collectively do something about it? If the ‘environmental education for sustainability strategy’ aims for social change (as clearly described in section 3.5 in the 1998 strategy), and I think it should, we should be brave enough to identify or reaffirm what social changes we have in mind, what these might look like if we achieve them, and ask what research, or monitoring, processes we can develop that might help us understand if we are on the right track. … Could do much better. C-.

The National Situation in 2018 I am pleased that the 2016 draft Environmental Education for Sustainability Strategy was considerably amended before it was published as the Environmental Education for Sustainability Strategy and Action Plan 2017–2021, presumably in response to the invited feedback. The strategy and plan is available to all (Department of Conservation 2019) and has much within it to support environmental and sustainability education including priority areas (… enable coordination of EEfS, grow capability and capacity in EEfS delivery and strengthen pathways in sustainable practice) and a range of short-term objectives to focus on over the next 4 years. Our confirmed national strategy anticipates inputs from tertiary education (including, of course, universities) and although developed by DOC, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry for the Environment, ‘… the strategy applies to the whole of government and will direct their efforts over the next ten years’ (Department of Conservation 2019, np). Although strategies such as these reside in institutional and governmental web pages all around the world, New Zealand’s national strategy is distinctive because it now includes a 4-year Action Plan designed not only to put the strategy to effect but also (Objective 4) to ‘ensure progress of the Action Plan and measure its impact’. Our national strategy does include as one key action/outcome from Objective 4: ‘Develop measures that will highlight the impact of activities and demonstrate the success of the strategy against the vision’. Naturally, I am interested in how these measures will develop. I hope that they will be able to demonstrate the success that is so forcefully anticipated here. I shall do whatever I can to support this process

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but, from a research perspective, I am not at all clear what kinds of measures will simultaneously ‘highlight impact’ and ‘demonstrate success’. Given our history, we should at least consider the possibility that our strategy might not be successful. I return to matters of evaluation and assessment in Chapter 11.

Some International Comparisons Educators, likely internationally, get used to their own system being compared to equivalent systems in Scandinavia, often unfavourably. This is not a book, or chapter, about sustainability education in other countries, so readers will hopefully explore Scandinavian ways of doing things using other resources. They will likely read that Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden designed their schools to promote values such as cooperation and abilities such as creativity. Their governments also apparently have particular perspectives and attitudes about their roles and responsibilities, and have invested strongly in sustainable practices that impact on their populations. We may be comparing chalk and cheese here. But Sweden may nonetheless be an important case study for those interested in international comparisons, in the context of sustainability education, and with a particular focus on higher education. Sweden took its political national commitment to sustainable development to its universities in 2006, requiring all of its institutions to promote sustainable development in their teaching. Most pleasing for me is that in 2016, 10 years later, Sweden started a national evaluation of how things were going. Colleagues there tell me that the evaluation focused on what the institutions were doing, rather than what the students were learning, but even so identified a wide range of enthusiasm to ‘educate for sustainable development’. On the positive side, most of the HEIs can give examples of courses or degree programmes in which sustainable development has been integrated. It is more worrying that about half of the HEIs do not have local overall targets for sustainable development in place and that even fewer perform systematic follow-up of these targets or work with continuing professional development for their teachers. (Swedish Education Authority 2018, Summary in English, np)

My own reading of the summary of this research in English suggests much in common with New Zealand’s universities; highly focussed educational support for students who have chosen sustainability-related courses to study, but much less emphasis overall for students who have not, combined with limited enthusiasm to evaluate the impact of a higher education overall. It may be that the issues and circumstances that I identify in my own New Zealand experience have some global relevance. I will be visiting Sweden again in 2020 and I look forward to learning more about their 2016 evaluation and what has happened since then (The full report in Swedish is also available online, Universitetskanslersämbetet 2017).

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Conclusions I end this chapter with undiminished optimism that education will contribute towards sustainability in New Zealand and that higher education will be doing its bit. Certainly, higher education will be contributing technological developments that may avert many of the problems that at present seem rather ominous. I also think that higher education will play its part through teacher education and through the education of so many New Zealand citizens who will in future become leaders in our society. Even so, I’m not convinced at present that we have sufficiently prioritised these pressing demands nor indeed understood either what we have to do or how we are to do it. At present we are, in my view, firmly embedded within unsustainability.8 My biggest worry is that our present actions may be saying one thing, but achieving another.

References Beehive.govt.nz. (2019). Environment 2010 strategy. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https:// www.beehive.govt.nz/feature/environment-2010-strategy. Bolstad, R., Joyce, C., & Hipkins, R. (2015). Environmental education in New Zealand schools. Research update 2015. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from http://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/ publications/environmental-education-new-zealand-schools. Department of Conservation. (2016). Draft national strategy for environmental education for sustainability. Retrieved September 1, 2016, from http://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/have-yoursay/all-consultations/2016/national-strategy-for-environmental-education-for-sustainability/ draft-strategy-for-2016-2026/. Department of Conservation. (2019). Environmental education for sustainability strategy and action plan. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://www.doc.govt.nz/about-us/our-policiesand-plans/education-strategies/environmental-education-for-sustainability-strategy-and-actionplan/. The Field. (2008). Save the River Wandle, January 21st. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https:// www.thefield.co.uk/fishing/save-the-river-wandle-22840. Ministry of Education. (2015). Guidelines for environmental education in New Zealand schools. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/ Education-for-sustainability/Tools-and-resources/Guidelines-for-Environmental-Education-inNew-Zealand-Schools. Ministry for the Environment. (1998). Learning to care for our environment. Me Ako ki te Tiaki Taiao. Retrieved August 5, 2019, from http://gdsindexnz.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/81.Learning-to-Care-for-Our-Environment-1998.pdf. Notman, R. (2012). Implementing values in the New Zealand curriculum: Four years on. Set: Research Information for Teachers, 3, 41–49. Ruskin, J. (1870). Work never given. Retrieved February 19, 2019, from https://www.wandletrust. org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Ruskin_-_Crown_of_Wild_Olive_-_full_Wandle_text_1870. jpg. Shephard, K. (2015). Measuring affective attributes in Education for Sustainable Development in Barth. Matthias/Rieckmann, Marco (Hrsg.): Empirische Forschung zur Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung: Themen, Methoden und Trends (pp. 71–88). Budrich, Opladen, Berlin, Toronto. 8 Or

as some ecological political scientists suggest sustained unsustainability.

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Shephard, K., Harraway, J., Jowett, T., Lovelock, B., Skeaff, S., Slooten, L., et al. (2015a). Longitudinal analysis of the environmental attitudes of university students. Environmental Education Research, 21(6), 805–820. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2014.913126. Shephard, K., Harraway, J., Jowett, T., Lovelock, B., Skeaff, S., Slooten, L., et al. (2015b). Longitudinal analysis of the environmental attitudes of university students. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/7641. Shephard, K. (2018, June 20). Higher education for sustainable development. In N. Jackson & J. Willis (Eds.), Learning to sustain ourselves and the world (pp. 25–28). Lifewide. Swedish Education Authority. (2018). How Swedish HEI:s work in promoting sustainable development (Summary in English). Retrieved August 1, 2019, from https://english.uka.se/aboutus/publications/reports–guidelines/reports–guidelines/2018-02-15-how-swedish-heis-work-inpromoting-sustainable-development.html. Universitetskanslersämbetet. (2017). Universitets och högskolors arbete med att främja en hållbar utveckling. En tematisk utvärdering. Rapport 2017:12. UKÄ, Stockholm. Retrieved August 1, 2019, from https://www.uka.se/download/18.4b823b1c15e946e3e573710/1506947485916/ rapport-2017-10-02-hallbar-utveckling-del-1.pdf. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. (1992). Agenda 21 (p. 2). Chapter 36. http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html. University Leaders for a Sustainable Future. (2014). Talloires declaration institutional signatory list. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://www.ulsf.org/programs_talloires_signatories.html. University of Otago. (2017). Sustainability strategic framework: 2017–2021, draft for consultation. Retrieved August 6, 2018, from https://www.otago.ac.nz/coo/otago635558.pdf. University of Otago. (2018). Sustainability strategic framework: 2017–2021. Retrieved August 6, 2018, from https://www.otago.ac.nz/coo/otago664842.pdf. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Brundtland report: Our common future. Retrieved February 20, 2019, from http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf.

Chapter 5

Roles and Responsibilities for Higher Education in New Zealand, and Elsewhere

Some Assumptions There are some assumptions floating around in the first few chapters of this part of the book. Highest on my list is the suggestion that higher education is somehow obliged to teach young people the error of our current and past ways of behaving, and it is their task to be better people and better citizens and certainly be more sustainable than previous generations have been. The validity of the assumption depends at least in part on what those outside of higher education say higher education should be doing, and to be fair some fairly substantial external bodies do tend to make that assumption, at least at a strategy level. Governments, for example, endorse a range of strategies relating to environmental and sustainability education that involve higher education. The United Nations has had an input in creating and promoting Agenda 21, and the sustainable development goals also anticipate higher education involvement. Added to that, many higher education institutions around the world do themselves make the same case. Nevertheless, I still think this is an assumption worth testing, in the sense of discovering if these bodies are serious about this role. Another high-level assumption, again supported by those outside of higher education, and by some inside higher education, is that higher education practitioners, essentially university teachers, have the wherewithal to put sustainability education into operation, not just for those who choose to study this topic but for all students who pass through higher education’s lecture theatres. Again I think this assumption is worth testing and, at least to some extent, this book is my way of doing this. So, as we explore the roles of higher education with respect to sustainability and to sustainable development, we should have these two assumptions on our mind. Is it higher education’s role to teach the next generation to behave sustainably, and if it is, are we capable of doing it?

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_5

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New Zealand’s Productivity Commission’s Review of Tertiary Education In 2016, coincidentally when I started to draft chapters of this book, New Zealand’s government asked New Zealand’s Productivity Commission (an independent, but publicly funded ‘think tank’) to conduct an enquiry into new models of tertiary education,1 with a focus on ‘…how trends, especially in technology, tuition costs, skill demand, demography and internationalisation may drive changes in business models and delivery models in the tertiary sector’ (Productivity Commission 2018). The public consultation on the resulting issues paper attracted 98 responses, from a diverse range of interested groups representing institutions within the tertiary education sector, tertiary teachers, their students and many social and employer groups from outside of the education sector. Collectively, the terms of reference for the review, the various review documents and the public responses to the consultation provide fascinating insights into the diversity of perspectives on the roles, nature and possible futures of tertiary education in New Zealand. I was positive about the review and about its prospects for creating clarity in a complex system. New Zealand has been through some dramatic educational transformations in the 80s and 90s, aiming to address its fragmented qualification system, low participation and New Zealand’s need for increased skills and higher employment figures. The resulting complexity of New Zealand’s tertiary education sector in the twenty-first century will likely surprise international readers. We are a country of approximately 4.5 million people and currently enrol nearly 400,000 students in tertiary education. Tertiary education providers include universities, institutes of technology and polytechnics, private training establishment and wananga (providing tertiary education over a range of qualifications based on Maori principles and values) in addition to a limited number of community education providers and secondary schools involved in tertiary education. The specific nature of each category of tertiary education is, to a degree, established by New Zealand’s Education Act (1989), Section 162(4). Many tertiary education providers are empowered to teach and to award to undergraduate and postgraduate levels, although notably the quality assurance processes that apply to universities are different from those for the other parts of the tertiary sector. All told, there are almost 1,000 separate tertiary providers in New Zealand. On my mind when the review was announced was that surely whoever does the review will identify the pace of change in the world (climate, economic, human rights, population expansion), the important roles of tertiary education in these regards, the mismatch between educational need, and what is provided; and suggest change, or at least some form of stocktake to assess what the consequences of the existing system may be in the long term.

1 In

New Zealand, and in some other places, tertiary education is almost synonymous with postcompulsory education. It includes the universities, polytechnics and many other education providers. Within this setting, higher education is poorly defined, but essentially implies education at degree level and above.

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Readers would be hard-pressed to find anything specifically about sustainability education within either the Terms of Reference for the review or within the Productivity Commission‘s Issues Paper (more than 100 pages, incorporating 78 questions for the public to respond to). In general, where the word ‘sustainable’ was used, it was with respect to the sustainability of the system (primarily in economic terms); similarly, ‘environment’ generally referred to tertiary education’s own ‘environment’. It is possible to read between the lines to discover a glimmer of something more. The issues paper spent some time exploring what others thought the role of tertiary education might be, and restated New Zealand’s tertiary education‘s legislated commitment to contribute to the sustainable economic and social development of the nation, and to enhance the contribution of New Zealand’s research capabilities to national economic development, innovation, international competitiveness and the attainment of social and environmental goals (New Zealand’s Education Act (1989), Section 162). But the issues paper did not go on to consider these functions specifically with respect to teaching and learning. I did, of course, submit my own response to the review (Shephard 2016a). In it, I commented on a range of teaching and learning issues, but I ended my response with the following. ‘Much in this Issues Paper resonates with my experience. These are important questions to ask. Well Done. But I end with one expression of disappointment. As our planet faces unprecedented environmental and climatic turmoil and significant social challenges, I could find little in the Issues Paper to suggest anything more than a ‘business as usual’ tertiary education in future; and this in one of the world’s greatest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gasses. At some stage, surely, Government will need to ask tertiary education to consider what its roles and responsibilities towards social change are in this respect. Perhaps it was unreasonable for me to hope that the Productivity Commission would convey this message. But if the Commission does not, in this particular exploration of tertiary education, some other group will need to revisit the task and to do the job properly’.

Submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Review of Tertiary Education By the published deadline, there were 98 submissions (including mine) and some were quite extensive. I read them all and wrote a research article about them (Shephard 2016b). All told, about 20 submissions were from individual tertiary teachers or nonofficial groups of teachers, but most were from organisations with a particular stake in the sector and a particular point of view. Many were critical of the Productivity Commission’s tone, of tertiary education institutions or of government departments. Some were heavy with facts and figures that questioned the assumptions inherent to the issues paper. There were also some emotion-laden responses, such as those from the Tertiary Education Union and the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association,

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emphasising, to me, that the real benefits of tertiary education are not measurable in dollars, but need to be assessed in the long term in relation to benefits accruing to society as a whole. A few respondents did comment on tertiary education‘s legislated role with respect to sustainable economic and social development and to the attainment of social and environmental goals and mostly these responses were like mine, expressing disappointment that these matters were not more fully developed within the review. But, in general, responses were not about such matters.

If Submissions to the Review Were not About Sustainability Education, What Was on the Minds of Those Who Submitted? So what were the responses about, if not the awesome responsibilities of tertiary education in general, and higher education in particular, for educating for sustainability? And can an analysis of what was on the minds of the respondents help us understand why sustainability was not? In education research speak, I applied a general inductive analysis to the 98 submissions. The analysis yielded three substantial themes that reoccur throughout the submissions and that do help us understand how respondents conceptualise the roles and responsibilities of tertiary education. The three themes relate to: competition incorporating willingness and ability to compete at different levels in the sector; trust, incorporating expectations of being trusted to provide high-quality educational support for all learners as well as, to varying degrees, an expectation that the broad outcomes of this high-quality educational support should be trusted, rather than measured, by all stakeholders; and the purpose of the educational endeavour being considered and whether or not different parts of the sector do, or should, emphasise different purposes. Competition was the dominant theme within these submissions by far. Some submissions, primarily those from outside of tertiary education, expressed the view that there should be more competition within the sector, for students, for funding, for recognition and autonomy, as a driver for innovation and responsiveness. The submissions tended to agree with New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister who suggested, in commissioning the review, there might be some inertia within the tertiary system that was preventing it contributing to New Zealand’s productivity as many hoped that it could. Other submissions tended to emphasise that tertiary education at present copes with too much competition and that excessive competition between educational providers has been the dominant architect of the current system, and of its limitations, that have been the cause of the review underway. Readers of these submissions would be unlikely to come away from the experience without a sense of déjà vu, in that these are longstanding arguments about prices and costs, who pays and who benefits, and political ideology that either does, or does not, place markets

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at the centre of social development. Although I struggle to understand the economics of the system, it seems self-evident to me that a small country like New Zealand does not need nearly 1000 tertiary education providers, that this diversity may well be a product of excessive competition between providers and that encouraging even more competition will not necessarily improve innovation and responsiveness. In my article, I wrote that perhaps ‘the sector at present is plagued by too many players trying to do the same thing and getting in each other’s way in the process; a little like under-fives playing football. Parents will know that even with guidance from coaches, it takes some years for them to learn to pass to each other, on the same team; and even longer to appreciate that the whole team needs to be valued, not just those who score goals’ (Shephard 2016b, 11). The second theme was trust, or rather, institutional expectations of trust. Although expectations of trust often do have a broad focus, trust was most explicitly called for in identifying concepts, qualities and outcomes, that in the minds of many are unlikely to be measurable, and so fundamentally requiring of trust rather than of verification. Educational institutions, for example, variously claim: to help their students to learn the values of the world in which they live; to acquire tolerance and compassion; to understand when, and how, to speak and to listen; and how to build a life of ethical and moral value. There is a palpable sense in these submissions that attempts to measure such things, or to hold institutions accountable for them, would in some ways undermine these institutions’ ability to foster them and indeed would misunderstand the social factors that underpin the work of tertiary education. On balance, analysis of these submissions suggests that different parts of the sector vary in the extent to which they express expectations of trust, with respect to the qualities of students who graduate from them and to the extent to which society benefits from them. For some, the focus is on a clear link between institution and employer, with employability, and employment, as hallmarks that demonstrate attainment rather than expect trust. For others, the focus is less clear, with further study set on a par with employment, and the broader needs of society established as worthy outcomes, albeit requiring trust rather than measurement. Variation in expectation of trust was closely related to different expressions of purpose for tertiary education, the third theme most evident in these submissions. Indeed, there was substantial dichotomy in the submissions, with some focused heavily on employability as the purpose of tertiary education and employment as its primary indicator of fitness for purpose, and with others emphasising tertiary education’s commitment to the needs of society and to for broader individual and societal improvement, rather than employment. Perhaps just the first theme, that of competition within the tertiary education sector, helps to explain why the sector, and those who value the sector sufficiently to submit to the review, have not yet significantly addressed sustainability education as a role for tertiary education. Institutions and those who teach within them are simply too busy competing with each other to find time to do anything that does not service their competitive edge. Perhaps, competition of the magnitude seen in New Zealand’s tertiary education sector in recent years is simply not conducive to doing or achieving anything in the optional or too-hard basket. But we have the makings

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of a cocktail here. Add to excessive competition, an expectation of trust that tertiary education is already servicing the needs of society and of individuals in society, and a concomitant aversion to accountability that negates any question to the contrary. Top this with the universal let-out clause that given such high diversity in purpose in the tertiary system, in general, attending to challenging issues must surely always be someone else’s job.

Higher Education from Economic, Societal and Individual Perspectives Around the world, reviews about the functioning of higher education do tend to gravitate towards arguments about who benefits most from higher education, and so who should pay for it. I am hardly in a position to claim impartiality in this argument. As a working-class lad, I was in no position to pay for my own higher education back in the early 70s, and if I had been expected to take out a loan, it would not have dawned on me that such a thing was possible, or even morally responsible. Society paid for my education, and since then it has been my pleasure to pay society back, for its investment in me. Unfortunately, my three children have not been so lucky. All three have encountered fees and loans and I certainly would not blame them if they have developed a different attitude, or worldview, about their place in the world. Nevertheless, and although submissions to New Zealand’s tertiary education review were divided on this point, many in New Zealand clearly do value the notion that a higher education is primarily a societal gain, that society should carry the financial burden and that the education that society pays for should actually benefit society by including outcomes that would not necessarily be measurable as productivity gains or employment statistics. I have not encountered in-depth analyses of such matters that reach helpful conclusions in New Zealand, but some research in the USA is informative, in a comparative sense. Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, Virginia researches the economics of current higher education with a specific focus on private gains and benefits and societal gains and benefits (Caplan 2019). Caplan’s analysis identifies private benefits as increased skills, leading to jobs and income (but notes that credential inflation is eroding these). Public or societal benefits include these and additional skills that should contribute economic benefit to society, and additional educational outcomes such as cultural appreciation that society values. Much of Caplan’s analysis addresses the significance of these, economically and culturally and the analysis casts doubt on both aspects of this societal gain (Caplan 2018). Caplan identifies in graduates from USA higher education, a minor increase in social liberalism, perhaps learned from a broadly left-leaning faculty (or in a New Zealand context, university teachers) but also an emphasis on economic conservatism, almost certainly associated with peer-to-peer impacts during higher education and in turn associated with the cultural norms of those citizens who actually get to experience

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higher education. Clearly, we are unlikely to find substantial changes in societal values, of the order anticipated by the sustainability movement, associated with these characterisations of higher education. We must not assume that because these factors are at play in the USA, they necessarily will be in New Zealand as well, but neither should we assume the contrary. In a similar comparative sense, and again with economics centre stage, I was impressed by some research from the UK. Britton et al. (2016) used records for 260,000 students of tax and student loan data to look at the link between earnings and students’ background, degree subject and university attended, up to 10 years after graduation. They found evidence that social background influences graduates’ earnings long after graduation. Widening access to higher education, and numerous attempts to reduce inequality of experience within higher education institutions over two decades in the UK, has not necessarily led to a situation, whereby the fiscal advantages of attending higher education accrue without prejudice to those involved. In particular, such analysis demonstrates the folly of analysis of the benefits of tertiary or higher education based on mean earnings of individuals. Much of the data could be explained with respect to the nature and characteristics of the particular institution attended. Clearly, some institutions promise greater employment after graduation than others, and greater post-graduation earnings. Indeed, attendance at some institutions appears to result in lower post-graduation earnings than non-attendance at any UK university. But, even after subject studied and the institution attended was taken into account, on average, students from a higher income background earned about 10% more than did students from other backgrounds. This research complements other analyses of institutional differentiation in education suggesting that institutional hierarchy is deeply embedded in wider social structures and reflects a social reproduction role rather than something more egalitarian. Before we in New Zealand celebrate the benefits of tertiary education, on average, we should research its impact on the periphery of our diverse socioeconomic distribution and ask if the societal benefits and financial benefits to individuals that our tertiary education providers are so proud of accrue to all, or preferentially to some. A system that exists primarily for social reproduction is likely incompatible with the pressing demands of sustainability. Again, we must not assume that because these factors are at play in the UK, they necessarily will be in New Zealand as well, but neither should we assume the contrary. And after all of that, I guess that I ought to explain my own views about the purposes and functioning of higher education, with a focus on learning and teaching. This is, after all, my book. As with many who contributed to New Zealand’s recent review, I am strongly of the opinion that a higher education should actually help our students get jobs, but more responsible jobs than they would have achieved had they not come to higher education. In that sense, higher education is far more than simply separating those who are likely to succeed in future, from those who are less so. This is an awesome responsibility for higher education, and I am not sure that we are doing our best in this regard. We should be concerned if any part of our higher education system enables our students to simply pass through, emerging at the graduating end with a degree, but little else to show for it other than a loan to pay back and the

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reputation of their institution as their ticket for their future. Reputations based on trust will only take them so far. Similarly, and in contrary to the opinion of many, I think that higher education has a responsibility to help prepare young people to contribute positively to society. I know that this sounds perilously like one generation telling the next how to behave, and using the threat of withholding the award of credentials based on institutional reputation to force young people to toe the line, but much of Part 2 of this book explores why it is not, or should not be. In contrast to the employment argument posed above, this role is essentially the other side of the coin. Higher education, as teaching, research, and service, should not simply be here to service the economy, but rather to ensure that the economy serves society. At present, the drivers for how higher education operates are stacked firmly on one side of the coin. Higher education’s role in this regard is not to tell our students what to think, and do, but to help them see the world that they inherit with more clarity.

Conclusion This kind of analysis suggests that higher education, as it exists now, is hardly in a position to lead us towards sustainability. Higher education is doing all that it can to maintain the status quo and struggling to achieve even that. What jumps out to me in this analysis is our collective inability as university academics to tell the world what we do, and what we achieve. As I suggested in my own analysis of the submissions to New Zealand’s review of tertiary education: ‘In return for the trust that universities expect, surely they must accept a primary responsibility associated with their research imperative, to research New Zealand’s tertiary education sector, so that in future, questions from the Deputy Prime Minister and the sector at large about the potential benefits of ‘technological innovations’ and ‘new ways of working’ could be matched by independent, peer-reviewed, internationally-credible research findings, rather than by heartfelt, but likely unsystematic, public submissions to an enquiry’. My personal view is that to make progress on matters addressed in this book, higher education in New Zealand needs to expend far more effort than it does researching its own practices. I understand that many in academia think this form of research as something less than researching the practices of others, but until we address this matter, our collective self-ignorance is self-maintaining.

References Britton, J., Dearden, L., Shephard, N., & Vignoles, A. (2016). How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background (IFS Working Paper W16/06). Retrieved August 20, 2018, from https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/ 8234.

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Caplan, B. (2018). The case against education: Why the education system is a waste of time and money. Princeton University Press. Caplan, B. (2019). The selfish and social returns to education. Retrieved February 21, 2019, from http://www.bcaplan.com/returns.pdf. Productivity Commission. (2018). New Models of Tertiary Education. Retrieved December 8, 2019, from https://www.productivity.govt.nz/inquiries/new-models-of-tertiary-education/. Shephard, K. (2016a). Personal Response to the Tertiary Education Review, Retrieved May 5, 2017, from http://www.productivity.govt.nz/sites/default/files/sub-new-models-of-tertiaryeducation-16-kerry-shephard-126Kb.pdf. Shephard, K. (2016b). Discovering tertiary education through others’ eyes and words: Exploring submissions to New Zealand’s review of its tertiary education sector. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2016.1254430.

Chapter 6

Global Perspectives and Competitive Individualism

In the chapters so far, readers may get the sense that higher education in New Zealand, in my view, is on the wrong track; in that rather than being for sustainability, it is in essence for unsustainability. Readers may even get the feeling that coming up are some good ideas about how to change that (Part Two is, of course, along those lines). But first we have to address some issues that may be central to the international mission for sustainability, but about which any particular institutional mission seems wholly inadequate to address. To my way of thinking, even given the impossibly wicked nature of sustainability, addressing how we as individuals, or institutions or even nations behave is at least imaginable. Addressing, with a focus on education, how self-governing nations interact with one another may be an altogether different prospect. And yet that outlook is at the core of some conceptualisations of global perspective. For now we may, if we wish, understand global perspective as a point of view that global citizens have. National citizens have a national perspective. I like to think in terms of paying taxes. New Zealand is currently saddened to have discovered that many people, and indeed families, live in cars, in car parks, in and around our most populous city, Auckland. Apparently, as house prices have risen, rents have also, and families with low incomes have been forced out of their homes to make way for people with greater ability to pay. To our shame, there are ethnic disparities in these statistics, as well as socioeconomic ones. Everyone in New Zealand, of course, knows who to blame and how to solve the problem, accepting of course diversity of these points of view. What all of these positions have in common, however, is an acceptance that at least in the short term, solving this problem will cost money. The money will, primarily, come from taxing those who have money, and by and large these people will be relatively happy to pay more taxes to help other kiwis out of their current desperate circumstances, because that is what being a good national citizen is all about. We have learned these values of citizenship from our families, our communities, and likely from our formal education. By and large we do want to be good national citizens. Of course, on an international scale, I daresay that there are many poorer citizens in other countries who would also benefit if those in New Zealand who can afford © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_6

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to pay more taxes do so, for their benefit. New Zealanders do contribute funds for international aid to support poor citizens in other countries1 but on a recipient per capita basis not as much as we contribute to keep our own citizens out of poverty. And to be fair, I would be one of the first to complain if my salary was taken from me to be used to provide cars for all the world’s poor people to live in. I would feel a sense of injustice if that were to be the case. Somehow my obligations to global citizens, in the form of my values, attitudes and behaviours, are something less than they are to national citizens. Perhaps, by this logic, New Zealanders are good national citizens, but not necessarily good global citizens. Or perhaps we simply have fundamentally different understanding of the values inherent to national citizenship and to global citizenship. We need to ask how these values came to be acquired by New Zealand citizens, what role formal education has in this process, and (the purpose of this chapter) how higher education is currently implicated.

Researching the Educational Nature of Global Perspective The University of Otago, in common with many universities nationally and internationally, identifies a range of attributes that it attempts to foster in its students. Quite often these attributes are ‘aspirational learning outcomes’ rather than ‘intended learning outcomes’ in that they are variously taught or encouraged but tend not to be formally assessed or evaluated (to judge if they have been attained, or not). A common attribute of this sort is the development of a global perspective. Given that sustainability, and sustainable development, only really make sense on a global scale, whether or not students develop a global perspective as they study with us is probably quite important to sustainability education. Colleagues and I at the University of Otago researched the nature of the global perspective that the University of Otago fosters and we published our research findings in a journal article (Shephard et al. 2016). Much of the rest of this chapter is based on this research. We were a multidisciplinary team and this is important for the research. As an educational researcher, I have relatively few problems in identifying reasonable research approaches to answer educational questions, but the notion of global perspective is in essence a cultural phenomenon and in some respects poorly fitted to educational research. For one thing, defining it proves challenging, for although universities create web pages to promote their graduate attributes, often it is difficult to understand what is intended, and perhaps deliberately so. In the case of global perspective, we identified the need to adopt research approaches more commonly used in the disciplines of Cultural Studies and Communication Studies than in Education. During

1 The

OECD keeps records (http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/aid-at-a-glance.htm). In recent years, New Zealand has contributed about 0.25% of its Gross National Income to overseas aid. For comparison, the UK appears to be much more generous (typically 0.7%). Norway is top of the generosity list with typically > 1.1%.

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this research, I learned a great deal from my colleague Michael Bourke whose background and experience helped us to use research approaches from the communication sciences (a circuit of culture enquiry incorporating framing analysis) to understand how global perspective was communicated within our university. In three phases, we set out to identify how ‘global perspective’ was described in text at the University of Otago and how this changed over the years, reveal and analyse the dominant and recurring communication frames employed to foster a global perspective, and explore how colleagues and students at our university interpreted and understood the global perspective frames employed in our institution. One of my own challenges in this research was to understand what social scientists mean when they talk about ‘culture’. Within cultural studies, culture is sometimes understood as the process of ‘meaning-making’ and cultural studies itself is an attempt to make sense of social processes as meaning develops. Interpreting ‘global perspective’ within this framework emphasises the developing nature of the phenomenon, and of our academic understanding of it. In this context, the principal goal of our analysis was to capture a sense of the social processes that produce and represent meaning and to do this we conceptualised our task as a ‘circuit of culture‘ as described by du Gay et al. (1997). Our research focused on the use of a modified ‘circuit of culture model’ emphasising production (how, and by whom, ‘things’, such as global perspective(s), are created), representation (the ways that language, as words, symbols and metaphors, influences meaningful experience) and consumption (what people do with the things that are produced and represented). Put more simply, we explored the history of Otago University’s global perspective (by reading strategic documents going back as far as we were able to and by talking with key people); we looked at how the Otago global perspective is currently represented in publicly available documentation, such as institutional and departmental web pages; and we interviewed groups of teachers, support staff and students to explore how they understood Otago’s global perspective.

Production: New Zealand Punches Above Its Weight Delving into our university’s documentation was a fascinating experience for us and emphasised how difficult it is to discover what was on colleagues’ minds in the past, when all you have to go on are the memories of some and the documentation produced on the way with particular purposes in mind. We traced memories of our global perspective back to the late 90 s, with its first mention in documentation in an institutional 2002 teaching and learning plan. Here, it was described as ‘an appreciation of the global perspective in their chosen discipline(s), and an informed sense of the impact of the international environment on New Zealand and New Zealand’s contribution to the international environment’. But by 2011 it had become ‘appreciation of global perspectives in the chosen discipline(s) and the nature of global citizenship’, for example, in our 2011–2012 Teaching and Learning Plan. We were

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struck by the considerable change in definition over a relatively short period, including the introduction of global citizenship, the loss of the ‘international environment’ and the arrival of more than one perspective in each discipline. We thought that four substantial factors were at play here. Clearly, the primary sense of our original global perspective was centred on learning. At the turn of the millennium, colleagues felt it vital that our students came to understand the geographical, political, economic and social situation of New Zealand. We postulated that on the minds of those who created this graduate attribute was the perspective of New Zealand as an ‘underdog’ facing significant challenges in the world and expected to ‘punch above its weight’. For them to succeed in the world, the University of Otago needed to equip its graduates with more than knowledge of their own discipline; they needed to acquire the ability to consider this knowledge from positions other than their own. As our global perspective evolved, it did so alongside changes in how our institutional documentation used terms such as ‘global’, ‘globalisation’, student and staff ‘mobility’, ‘international’ and ‘internationalisation’. The second factor that we though relevant to these changes was centred on finance. And this correlated strongly with our third factor, that of reputation or esteem. During this time period documentation that used the term ‘global’ often also addressed ‘international competitiveness’ and ‘international ranking’. Our interviewees confirmed close connections between international esteem, institutional finances, staff and student mobility and our need to foster our changing conception of global perspective in our teaching. Our fourth factor is essentially happenstance. Affairs in universities are greatly influenced by the personality and personal values of whoever is influential at the time. Our global perspective, as one of a particular number of institutionally approved graduate attributes, is the gift of a particular committee, albeit to be tinkered with by departments. Who sits on that committee and who chairs it is largely the product of happenstance and their influence is in turn moderated by the vagaries of international trends in international expectations. Historically, we conclude that our original global perspective was designed with a particular purpose in mind, but has changed with time, and indeed is likely still changing.

Representation: As More Than One Perspective Although I have been an educational researcher for more than two decades, my first career was as a scientist. I liked science best at school and I studied science at university. I researched and taught biology for two decades before I switched to education. Looking back, I think that what appealed to me about science was its certainty. Scientists were on a mission to understand the world, and I was part of that. At the time, spending precious time and energy researching the vagaries of human activities was for me a lesser and somewhat pointless calling. My ‘transformation’ resulted from a realisation not of the inadequacies of science itself, but of my understanding of

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how scientists are taught to think like scientists, within the human world. Naturally, nowadays I tend to think that how we understand something is very much part of what that something is, or may be. When that something is itself as vague as Otago’s global perspective, we probably do need to make every attempt to discover what people think of it, and how that thinking is manifested in what they say or write about it. And we need something other than a ruler, or electron microscope, to do it with. Paradoxically, it seems to me now that understanding meaning in some text or conversations can require just as much scientific enquiry as sending rockets to space. Communication scientists use a range of tools, but we used one in particular named ‘framing analysis’. Much of what I read nowadays is framed, or perhaps I am simply more adept than I used to be at spotting frames. One of the betterknown examples of frames, and of frame analysis, relates to the ‘war on terror’ adopted by the USA’s Whitehouse staff in 2001. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 could have been framed as crimes, but George Lakoff persuaded me, and many others, that the ‘war’ frame was chosen because it evokes a particular set of meanings with particular implications to citizens already embedded in their consciousness, just waiting to be activated by a particular phrase or word. My colleague Michael explained this to me while holding his thumbs and fingers of both hands to create a square frame to look through, to explain how the process accentuates, or frames, some things while obscuring others. Along with Michael’s explanation came an understanding of the science of framing and of frame analysis, courtesy of some notable communication scientists who have developed the theory over the past few decades (including, Gamson, Lasch and Entman). In this science, frames exist as frame packages’ (comprising a framing device such as a metaphor, or code) enlisting one or more constituent frames, one or more reasoning devices (generally identifying the functions of the frame) and an underlying cultural phenomenon (generally a value, a cultural guru or easily recognised narrative); and frame analysis involves searching for condensational symbols such as metaphors, exemplars, catchphrases, depictions, visual images, roots, consequences and appeals to principle. And to be clear, whether the person who initiates the communication thinks in these ways or not, deliberately frames or not, the consequence in the mind of the listener or reader is likely the same; once a deep, cultural frame is activated, it is challenging for the reader, or listener to avoid being drawn to a particular way of thinking. Of course, it is reasonable to wage a war on terror. How else are we to defeat the terrorists? Our research on representation of global perspective primarily involved exploring Otago’s web presence. There we encountered a wealth of catchy phrases, slogans, visual images and appeals to principle that we had no problems relating to global perspective. Some examples included: Students in Peace and Conflict Studies seek to understand violence and war in order to create a more peaceful and harmonious world. # I chose an MBA for personal development. I wanted to do it in a nice country, and NZ was the obvious choice. # Our graduates make vital contributions to New Zealand’s economy both domestically and internationally. # There are jobs for geologists all over the world, and as long as you are willing to chase it, there is plenty of money out there too. # World-class graduates – Otago Accountancy and Finance graduates

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Our research group went on to fit such phrases in the context of global perspective into four interpretive ‘frame packages’, each with particular impacts on the researchers. Agora:

A place to gather, learn and discuss the perspective of an orator and eternal student; Arena: A place to compete; the perspective of a fighter; Home: A place to live in harmony; the perspective of a harmonious habitant; Garden: A place to manage and sustain; the perspective of a gardener who aims to manage, tame, control, and sustain. Of most relevance to this chapter, we identified three of the frame packages (Home, Garden and Agora) as essentially cooperative and harmonious, whereas one (Arena) was in essence about competition. At this stage, we wondered how this competitive frame package could exist at the same time and in the same context as the more cooperative frame packages. We concluded that our most recent institutional definition of global perspective, to involve perspectives rather than perspective, appears to have some justification in how this cultural phenomenon is represented.

Consumption We explored the cultural consumption of our global perspective by talking with university teachers, support staff and students about our ideas and findings. In general, these colleagues used the same processes of deduction and induction to relate multiple quotations to our four frame packages as we did and there was remarkable consistency between our own interpretations and theirs. In particular, our colleagues confirmed the presence of multiple perspectives and the juxtaposition of competitive and cooperative frames in the context of global perspective. But there were two surprises for the researchers. Our university colleagues were less concerned than were the researchers to find multiple perspectives and the co-location of competitive and collaborative frames in the context of global perspective. In particular, there was a strong sense amongst those involved that it would be irresponsible for the University of Otago to not prepare university students to be globally competitive. One quotation from one group interview summarises this concept: If we don’t educate graduates to compete for jobs with graduates of other universities then we are failing in an aspect of our jobs. The university has to compete every day for funding, media attention, research recognition, rankings, etc. It would be naive and detrimental to pretend that competition didn’t exist in academia.

The second surprise was more of a surprise to me than it was to my research colleagues. Our four framed packages rationalised by the research group and broadly

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confirmed by our colleagues in our group interviews are highly anthropocentric. Animals and plants in the natural world are hard to find in these metaphors, images and appeals to reason. Within the context of a global perspective to be fostered by the University of Otago, and as represented by our web presence and as consumed by our colleagues, the notion of environmentalism or environmental education was not obvious. I wondered at times if I was on the same globe as everyone else in this particular research project. Perhaps to humour me, one colleague suggested that nonhuman issues are embedded in all four frames. Another suggested that the separation between humans and the natural world was more likely in Western discourse than in the philosophies of non-Western societies. I am interested in such explanations, but not yet convinced by them.

Different Ways of Interacting Globally Our research leaves us in no doubt that our university intends our student to develop one or more global perspective, in particular, to understand their learning in a global context. What is in doubt, at least in the minds of the researchers, is the precise nature of this global perspective, or of these perspectives. Whatever the objective of the original 2002 Otago global perspective in the mind of its creator, and whatever the original culture of global perspective at that time, by 2014 at least four conceptions of global perspective, or four frame packages, existed. We realise that we are not dealing here with a simple phenomenon. The existence of different ways to interact globally is, of course, no surprise and educators have for many years struggled to identify and rationalise the nature of these differences. Nussbaum (2002), for example, identified a range of needs for future citizens, in the context of both social justice and increased internationalisation, in the hope of finding effective solutions to pressing human problems. Today’s universities are shaping future citizens in an age of cultural diversity and increasing internationalisation. All modern democracies are inescapably plural. As citizens within each nation we are frequently called upon to make decisions that require some understanding of racial and ethnic and religious groups in that nation, and of the situation of its women and its sexual minorities. As citizens we are also increasingly called upon to understand how issues such as agriculture, human rights, ecology, even business and industry, are generating discussions that bring people together from many different nations. This must happen more and more, if effective solutions to pressing human problems are to be found. (Nussbaum 2002, 291)

These sentiments emphasise hopes of people coming together and cooperating. Brennan and Naidoo (2008), however, examined the theoretical and empirical literature on higher education’s role in relation to social equity and related notions of citizenship, social justice, social cohesion and meritocracy. They ask in particular: Notions of social responsibility and environmental awareness have implications for all. Are graduates likely to be more concerned than others about them? Have such notions now been

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As indeed we do. Our research suggests that our higher education fosters both collaborative and competitive futures for our students but we have no answers to the question of whether our graduates are more or less likely than non-graduates to be concerned about global inequalities and environmental degradation. We foster both cooperation and competition, but we do not ask if our graduates value one over the other or how they integrate each into their own developing sense of place and purpose. In our interviews, one colleague suggested an altogether unpalatable possibility: ‘Maybe this is temporally based, with the agora, home, and garden frames preparing students for arena aspects of later life where they have to compete’. Our research in New Zealand is unlikely to surprise researchers who work on related educational objectives in other countries. Jorgenson and Shultz (2012), researching in the USA, explored a range of research-based typologies of global and citizenship education (GCE) to describe a perceived emphasis on competition and economic capacity as the major motivation for these forms of education. They identified in various forms of GCE a lack of analysis of global issues, uncritical approaches to education and political structures, and failure to critically reflect on one’s position relative to the rest of the world. Similarly, in the UK, Bourn and Shiel had previously asserted that government encouragement for higher education to engage with global perspectives may appear incoherent and contradictory (Bourn and Shiel 2009). At about the same time Kreber, also in the UK, emphasised that: ‘reflecting on what internationalisation means cannot be separated from critically engaging with the question of what the purposes and goals of higher education should be…’ (Kreber 2009, 9). In our research article, we expressed concern that simultaneously fostering cooperation and competition may be promulgated by uncritical engagement by teachers with the concept of a global perspective, in the context of the roles and responsibilities of higher education. We suggested that university teachers could reflect upon the diversity of global perspective extant within their own teaching, to clarify their intentions as university teachers and if they wish, to reframe some aspects of the global perspective that they may currently foster in their students. We wrote: In the spirit of promoting such critical engagement amongst higher education teachers, and in meeting our obligations as critic and conscience of society, we do suggest that although governments, and students, may expect us to foster competitive individualism at the national and individual level; we do not have to comply uncritically. As academics with freedom we may, if we wish, promote alternative perspectives. And if we do wish to promote competitiveness in a global context, we have the freedom, and perhaps the responsibility, to call it what it is, rather than incorporating it uncritically along with other perspectives in a global context. (Shephard et al. 2016, 15)

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References Bourn, D., & Shiel, C. (2009). Global perspectives: Aligning agendas? Environmental Education Research, 15(6), 661–677. Brennan, J., & Naidoo, R. (2008). Higher education and the achievement (and/or Prevention) of equity and social justice. Higher Education, 56(3), 287–302. du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. (1997). Doing cultural studies: The story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage. Jorgenson, S., & Shultz, L. (2012). Global citizenship education (GCE) in post-secondary institutions: What is protected and what is hidden under the umbrella of GCE? Journal of Global Citizenship & Equity Education, 2(1), 1–22. Kreber, C. (2009). Different perspectives on internationalization in higher education. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 1–14. Nussbaum, M. (2002). Education for citizenship in an era of global connection. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21(4/5), 289–303. Shephard, K., Bourk, M., Mirosa, M., & Dulgar, P. (2016). What global perspective does our university foster in our students? Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13504622.2015.1126806.

Part II

Researching Our Practices

Before we get to Part II, we do need to take stock of Part I, especially to ask if it had the impact that it was designed to have. Chapter 1 asked some fairly fundamental questions about sustainability, about sustainability education and about higher education. In Chap. 1, I suggested that higher education carries a responsibility to fully explore and understand its role in creating the world as it is, and its responsibility to support the next generation as they grapple with the need for change. Educating for sustainability, as we currently see it and incorporating our own compromises, may be doing something, but is it on the right track and really the best that we can do? I analysed the roles of education and of higher education in particular in Chap. 4, and there explored the aims and operation of environmental education and of environmental education for sustainability in New Zealand. Although there is much to commend in the strategies and action plans of New Zealand institutions, this exploration gave rise to concerns about the nature and scale of the changes underway and about New Zealand institutions’ willingness or ability to monitor change. I do not doubt the spirit in which these strategies, strategic frameworks, policies and action plans have been written but I am forced to wonder if as a nation we are really making progress. I graded New Zealand’s 2016 draft environmental education for sustainability strategy and action plan with a C-. I think quite generously, and particularly bearing in mind the subsequent inclusion of objective 4 in the adopted 2018 plan (emphasising the importance of measuring progress), I’m inclined to give the current national strategy and action plan a B. My grade for my own institution’s strategic sustainability framework remains somewhat lower. Chapter 6 moved away from the generalities of sustainability education to focus on a related and specific educational outcome, that of global perspective. The chapter emphasised the typically New Zealand perspective that as we are a small country a long way away from many other countries, we need to punch above our weight. And this metaphor is also commonly applied within higher education in New Zealand to emphasise how important it is that New Zealand students and graduates and citizens generally and characteristically look outside New Zealand for opportunities. An unwritten but widely anticipated quality that underpins thinking and acting globally

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is that of competitive individualism, applied at the individual person, town, institution and indeed nation levels. The notion of global perspective, however, is also increasingly related to the concept of global citizenship with its implicit assumptions of caring and sharing. Other people and places on the globe are not simply there to provide us with income, resources and markets; they have needs of their own. Global citizens, who inherently possess a global perspective, will want to share their advantages with other global citizens who may have less of these (just as we do at home, as national citizens). This chapter developed a concern that being globally competitive is not the only way in which a global perspective could or should operate and may obstruct our ability to interact globally in a cooperative manner. Chapter 2 emphasised some less direct influences that our higher education may have on our students; in this case via campus sustainability. The idea is that students would experience their higher education institution acting as a role model for sustainability and, in appreciating this, would wish to learn from it or mimic it in some way. Although Chap. 2 was quite positive in relation to the range of sustainability undertakings apparent on campuses in New Zealand and around the world, it was less than positive on the nature of role modelling in this context. Somewhat pessimistically, Chap. 2 emphasised that without evidence that campus sustainability somehow re-emerges as student learning, we had better not count on this is a major contribution to New Zealand’s sustainability spreadsheet. In a similar way, Chap. 3 was rather critical of the ‘critic and conscience’ aspects of university academics’ activities in New Zealand. Chapter 3 emphasises that of course we are happy to listen to knowledgeable university teachers telling us how to live sustainable lives but we think this might have more impact on us if we truly believed that they were practising what they preached, not only in their own lives but also in their teaching; and that their advice was based on their scholarship. For as long as we remain deficient in evidence that higher education teaching is influencing the choices that our young people are making, in a sustainability directed way, we may take what university teachers advise us to do in this regard with a pinch of salt. The evidence against higher education as a force for good, in the context of education for sustainability, was further elaborated in Chap. 5 as the broad roles of higher education were dissected. Chapter 5 explored the usual arguments about a higher education for personal benefit as opposed to societal benefit, from the position of sustainability, but struggled to reach any particular conclusion beyond the uneasy truce that appears to have existed for many years. At the heart of this truce, I identified academic freedom as something to be celebrated and wondered if it would be churlish to complain if the product of academic freedom was something other than what readers of this book might aspire to in particular. Chapter 5 also related to Chap. 4 in exploring what those outside of higher education sometimes expect higher education to do, and to be. Agenda 21, in many respects the blueprint for ‘education for sustainable development’, emphasises this: ‘Education ... is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision- making’ (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992). Educational attempts to influence identities, including values and attitudes,

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come in many forms, from direct teaching (education for sustainability), role modelling (campus sustainability), nurturing (a culture of sustainability) but as we have considered so far, collectively these are having uncertain success. I might personally wonder if our students are simply too intelligent to be influenced in these ways, bearing in mind how challenged most of us in higher education are to live our own lives in an openly sustainable way. All told, Chapters 1 through 6 paint a bleak picture of sustainability education in New Zealand in the context of higher education. Environmental and global education, campus sustainability, university teachers as critic and conscience, and ‘higher education for societal benefit’ all appear to have dubious credentials in our quest for sustainability. At this junction, readers must be wondering if there is any point in going on!

A conversation with a Critical Friend Critical Friend: Well this is all rather gloomy Kerry, and not particularly supportive of your colleagues in higher education, or of New Zealand. Most people who I know in higher education are concerned about sustainability and are pleased that institutionally and nationally we have people tackling the problem. Your critical analysis doesn’t appear to be empathetic to their efforts and could be seen as undermining them. Is this what you are attempting? Kerry: I have to agree with the gloomy bit. I think ‘the most people who you know in higher education’ are the same as ‘the most people who I know in higher education’, and by and large these people are all working hard and achieving well in their particular part of the system. Certainly I don’t want to undermine either them or the wonderful things that they are doing. But my particular part of the system explores policy and practice in higher education, and at least some of the people who I know in higher education accept that it is my job to critically examine the way that higher education is working and the contribution that it is making. I don’t think that I can do that job properly if at the same time I have to be supportive and uncritical of everyone involved. Critical friend: But your approach so far appears to me to be alienating everyone. You tell those who are not interested or involved in educating for sustainability that it is their fault that we are in this mess in the first place. You tell those who are interested that they are doing it wrong. And here we are in New Zealand, with the sun shining, the trout-fishing season just opening, the grass growing, the economy (relatively) stable, and some of the best scenery on the planet, and you tell us that our clean, green image is somehow tarnished. Why can’t your policy and practice enquiries be more positive and less personal? Kerry: Guilty as charged. Perhaps I should stop writing and go fishing. Right now I think that the few people in higher education who do take on the responsibility to educate for sustainability are, by and large, out of their depth and generally I think that they are thwarted by a higher education system that is struggling to do the jobs that it is capable of doing, has limited capacity and willingness to do something new,

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and in promising much but delivering little is far more part of the problem than it is part of the solution. Critical friend: So, is there a solution? When do we get to that bit? Kerry: … in Part II. There is no doubt in my mind that higher education needs to change if it is to address sustainability in a serious way, but the changes that I have in mind aren’t necessarily something new. For the most part, I simply want all in higher education to actually do what higher education has always promised to do, but better than it does at present. I don’t think that those who I have already alienated (just about everyone) will actually like my messages, or me, any better after Part II, but I hope that those who read Part II will interpret my intentions more positively. Earlier in the book I described Part I as anti-foundational, in that it is designed to encourage readers to reconsider what they thought they already knew about sustainability education in New Zealand and perhaps elsewhere as well. Part II is my attempt to influence how you will reconstruct in your own mind an understanding of what higher education’s contribution to sustainability education could look like. Chapter 7 will focus on an educational theory that might underpin how deep, critical and independently thinking people can be developed and supported in higher education, with an emphasis on ensuring that what guides their own beliefs and actions comes from within them, rather than supplied to them. Chapter 8 then considers how such an education might be achieved in practice, with reference to particular educational objectives. Part II emphasises the personal dispositions that might be necessary to think deeply, critically and independently rather than just the skills to do so. Critical Friend: … time will tell. Let me know when it is ready.

Reference United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992) Agenda 21. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html. Accessed on 23 July 2018

Chapter 7

What Guides Our Beliefs and Actions?

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in that community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). (214) Leopold A (1949) A Sand County Almanac New York, Oxford University Press.

So, you have reached the most important chapter, or perhaps you started here (to discover if it worth your while taking the longer journey). Either way, I need to explain the title of this chapter and situate it within the context of higher education. It seems to me ‘higher education’ needs to be something different from just ‘education’; otherwise, it would be ‘more education’. A natural division for me is the bar between compulsory education and post-compulsory education. Compulsory education comprises what a society feels important that every citizen gets. Perhaps basic knowledge about what the world is and how it works, skills to enable young people to operate well (and maybe happily) in the world and values that society values. Most societies that I am familiar with would be unhappy if a significant proportion of young people left compulsory education without a basic value system that encompassed respect for law and order, for honesty and for democracy. In the context of sustainability, and within the limitations described in Chapter 4, most compulsory education systems that I know about do attempt to teach children about sustainability, how to be sustainable, and to be sustainable. Chapter 4 explored these processes and how well we may be doing, here in New Zealand. Bearing in mind that all young people attend compulsory education and a smaller proportion attend post-compulsory education, leaving these basic tenets of sustainability to post-compulsory education would be irrational and indeed I have not observed this in any country that I have travelled to recently. On balance, higher education, if it is to be involved in sustainability education (for all students, rather than for a select group who choose courses specifically about sustainability) will want to do something different from teaching its students about sustainability, how to be sustainable, and to be sustainable. The term ‘guide to belief and action‘ came to me from the writing of Scriven and Paul (1987) in the context of an exploration of critical thinking: ‘Critical thinking © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_7

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is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skilfully conceptualizing, applying, analysing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action’. It seems to me that the notion that something from within themselves might guide the beliefs and actions of people, rather than something from outside themselves, says something important about the nature of education. An education that seeks in some direct, external, way to guide the beliefs and actions of learners may be fundamentally different from an education that seeks to enhance how learners take the multiplicity of their experiences, skills and values, and use these skilfully to guide their own beliefs and actions. Perhaps compulsory education, in its attempt to produce citizens that society needs, is justified to teach children to adopt particular and specified values that will guide their beliefs and actions, whereas higher education needs to be more mindful that its students have greater freedoms to choose what they study and what they learn. In this model of higher education, we should be interested in the multiplicity of intrinsic and extrinsic influences that learners might use to guide their own beliefs and actions, and with respect to the roles of higher education, what we can legitimately teach to help them. From Scriven and Paul, and from many others, we learn of the importance of critical thinking, but we also must be mindful of the many other influences that critical thought needs to be about. This chapter explores how people decide for themselves what to believe and what actions to take, and what roles Higher Education might have in supporting this process.

Social and Personal Identities and Who Gets to Influence Them Much of what we have addressed in previous chapters describes attempts by educational entities to influence or change what we may describe as the beliefs and actions of our graduates. Another way of looking at these characteristics describes them as part of an individual’s identity, and by extrapolation, of that of communities and nations. How people behave in particular circumstances is part of and depends on their identity, and often the social context of identity is recognised at the outset and included in the term, ‘social and personal identity’. But our students are not only exposed to educators, and to our messages. They have experienced others trying to influence them, and what they should believe, and what actions they should take, for all of their lifetime so far. We may think that we are the good guys and that our messages the best ones, but even if these things are true, how can our students know this?

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Nudging, Advertising and Consumerism Of course, everyone likes to think that they are actually in control, at least of the dayto-day decisions that they make. But perhaps we should ponder on this next time we queue up in a supermarket or in a petrol station. I don’t go into a petrol station to buy chocolate, but I’m confronted by chocolate dressed in its Sunday best just at a time when I have my wallet open and time to contemplate the pleasures of chocolate (as I wait in the queue). Someone somewhere is nudging me into making a decision that I now need to make. I actively have to decide not to buy chocolate, rather than the opposite. It’s clever, it’s subtle and I suspect highly successful. Technical terms in this domain include ‘behavioural economics’ and ‘choice architecture’. Apparently, many restaurants put super expensive items on the menu knowing from experience that this will boost the sales of the second most expensive item. Others that we often confront are: ‘buy two get one free’, even if you only want one and ‘buy now, pay later’, even if you cannot afford to. Personally, I struggle to find clear blue water between nudging and other forms of product promotion. Clearly to my mind we are entering the domain of consumerism and its co-conspirator, advertising. Although my main interest here relates to what guides our actions, with a specific reference to our personal and social identities, it is fair to say that these potential influences are all around us and all pervasive. Whatever our personal identity, whatever stores of gumption, resilience or self-control we have, we do need to confront these potential influences and make minute-by-minute decisions. Also, and referring back to my off-the-cuff statement about who the good guys are, I contend that we cannot rely on the circumstances in which these influences occur, as a guide to how we are influenced. Some celebrities contribute to their income by endorsing some products rather than others. We trust them to be good actors but why should we trust them in other respects? In a different context, for many years, my own university hosted a student shop that sold food to students. A popular special offer was a pie and a can of fizzy sweet drink at a cut-down price, almost too cheap to say no to. I complained that our institution should be better than this (without apparent effect, although the practice has changed now to encourage purchase of only the more expensive pies). To be precise, my concern was that my institution was unreasonably benefiting from a practice that demonstrably was damaging the health of young people by encouraging them to consume large amounts of sugars or sweeteners. I don’t think that anyone doubts the evidence. We might prioritise the rights of individuals to decide for themselves, but should we be subsidising a particular choice if we know that it is unhealthy? If we cannot trust our universities to care for our young people, who can we trust? There … I introduced a new term, trust, and earlier I talked about the good guys and the bad guys, and so of course now we do have to address an aspect of influence that has a moral side to it. I once saw a poster that said it was ‘immoral not to take money from suckers’, and I suspect that it is all part of the same thing. Bringing a moral dimension into an already complex situation may not be desirable, but in this context it does seem to me to be inevitable.

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Actually, my first formal introduction to the ideas behind nudging came from one of the ‘good guys’, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, or WWF. WWF was exploring ways to counter what I suspect they felt was unfair and highly commercial pressure on citizens to adopt ways of being that run contrary to the mission of the WWF. Conservation and consumerism do not necessarily exist easily together. Consumerism could be said to be driving so many of the pressures that contribute to pollution and habitat destruction that conservation movements and groups are here to overcome. As I understand it, the WWF commissioned a report on nudging as a means to better understand and communicate how the process works and how it could be put to use on the side of conservation rather than consumerism. Personally, I found the report to be extraordinarily valuable and I certainly recommend it as a good read for those who are interested in this side of the argument (Crompton 2010). Part of this argument of course relates to profit. Perhaps it is a generalisation but it does seem that so much that happens in the world relates to profit. Someone somewhere is making money out of something, and something and someone, somewhere is probably paying for it. So closely related to ideas around consumerism, advertising and nudging, we should be considering the nature of communication that enables our free choices to be nudged, manipulated or informed in these ways.

Framing the World as We See It Sticking to the question about what guides our beliefs and actions, but now with more of a focus on what and who influences us, it would be difficult to move on without some consideration of the ideas of frames and framing (noting that we also introduced framing in Chapter 6). George Lakoff describes frames as: … the mental structures that allow human beings to understand reality – and sometimes to create what we take to be reality. Frames facilitate our most basic interactions with the world. They structure our ideas and concepts, they shape how we reason, and they even impact how we perceive and how we act. (Lakoff 2006, p. 25).

Some frames are of general applicability but often frames are specific to particular groups of people or subject areas. Frames, and the thinking processes that the frame aligns to, are activated by particular words, phrases or metaphors. Many of the words and phrases that I’ve used so far in this section likely activate particular frames in the minds of readers, and so both help and direct these thinking processes. Somewhere above, for example, I suggested that advertising was a ‘co-conspirator’ of consumerism. Of course, I did it deliberately, in a provocative way, to conjure up in the minds of readers, something negative about what was involved. Communication scientists look at language in a particular way and framing analysis is one way in which the everyday language that we use can be explored. Important contributors to framing analysis, towards the end of the last century, include Entman, Gamson and Lasch. These scholars identified four core functions or reasoning devices for substantive communicated frames: promotion of a particular definition of a problem,

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a causal interpretation, a moral evaluation and a remedy or treatment recommendation. These functions generally reside within a ‘frame package’ comprising a framing device (such as a metaphor or code) enlisting one or more constituent frames, one or more reasoning devices (generally identifying the functions of the frame) and an underlying cultural phenomenon (generally a value, a cultural guru or easily recognised narrative). Whether my metaphor or code (co-conspirator) worked in your mind or not is important, but if it didn’t, it probably reflects my skill as a communicator more than its usefulness as an example in the context of framing. Communication science also tells us that framing is not necessarily something that we deliberately set out to do. Text can initiate frames in the minds of readers quite inadvertently. Some frames are deeply embedded in cultures. Some years ago I worked with a colleague to explore the frames that exist within educational frameworks in the context of education for sustainability (Shephard and Dulgar 2015). We were surprised at the extent to which academic writers can quite innocently create meanings without necessarily understanding how, why and what meaning is being communicated. On the other hand, some communicators deliberately communicate using frames that will activate certain ways of thinking in their readers (as I attempted above). In the context of power and money, it appears that powerful and rich concerns within our societies do have very dramatic influences over what we think and likely do, when we read what on the surface may look like relatively straightforward text. I admit to being sufficiently gullible to not necessarily identify when I’m being manipulated in this way. As a result I was quite surprised, nearly a decade ago, to come across the term ‘Astroturfing’, widely identified as the generation of societal support for a particular policy by creating the impression that the policy already has grassroots support. Nowadays, social media is often involved, but in the past newspapers have been manipulated in this way (Bienkov 2012). My first experience of this realisation was in the context of communications relating to the environment, climate change and sustainability, with a focus on those who gain most from an oil-based economy being involved in promoting the acceptability of carbon-based ways of living. Nowadays, we are concerned to read that, allegedly, Russian interests employed a relatively small number of social-media-adept individuals to systematically influence how citizens of the USA voted in their last election. Increasingly we hear of attempts by those with funds, or power, and knowhow, to use social media to influence public perceptions about matters of importance.

Societal Influences on Personal and Social Identity This chapter has developed the idea that young people in higher education are not only exposed to institutional and individual teacher influences that may guide their beliefs and actions, but they simultaneously exist within a wider world where they are exposed to a very wide range of other influences that may well encourage them to take a different pathway from that encouraged via education. We also need to acknowledge that our students do not come to us as blank slates. They come with prior

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educational influences and with a personal and social identity that no doubt reflects their parenting and their upbringing in a real social setting somewhere. Sociologists and social psychologists have for many years been asking some fundamental question about how these matters influence an individual’s identity and the choices that an individual makes. Most recently sociologists and other academics have wondered why some young people tend to vote conservatively/Republican while others vote more liberally/Democrat. Kahan (2015), for example, provides a compelling account of the dominant impact of social and personal identity on how people interpret new information. Similar lines of enquiry ask why some people stick to ideas around creationism as opposed to Darwinism and why some people accept the likelihood of humaninduced global warming while others tend to deny this possibility. Longer term, for more than a century, sociologists and psychologists have been grappling with the perennial question of why people are so resistant to change (Jost 2015). Although there are many answers from the discipline of psychology, Lakoff, a cognitive scientist, produced an answer that personally I find very appealing and satisfying. Lakoff suggested that if the facts don’t support a person’s values, ‘the facts bounce off’ (Lakoff 2004, 17). In the next section, we will look at a range of psychological ideas involved here including the protection of current identity, cognitive load and cognitive dissonance, but for me the idea that an individual grows up with a set of difficult-to-change values that are both personal and of the society to which the individual belongs is highly persuasive. Changing people’s values is inherently difficult. But we should also explore what psychologists say.

The Psychology of Choice, Motivation and Staying Put To be frank, it is difficult to know where to start. Over the years, psychologists have developed theories to explain just about all human experience and data to back up these theories. Generously, perhaps I could identify developmental progression in these theories so that one builds upon another, and in this way we will likely one day have a grand theory for everything involving the mind. But for now I should start with a broad focus on psychological theories of motivation and action and specifically with some ideas about behavioural intentions that lead to voluntary behaviours. Fishbein and Ajen’s Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that behaviour starts with a behavioural intention and this in turn comes as a result of an implicit assumption that performing the behaviour will lead to a specific outcome. The behavioural intention itself depends on an individual’s attitude towards that particular behaviour (is it broadly positive?) and the individual’s perception of the subjective norm of that behaviour (subjectively, is the behaviour appropriate to the circumstances). For example, an individual may choose to either recycle some waste or to simply throw it away depending on the individual’s attitude towards recycling and her subjective perception of what would be the normal, appropriate thing to do. Ajzen went on to further develop these ideas into the Theory of Planned Behaviour by incorporating

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an individual’s perception of their control over this behaviour (If there is simply nowhere to recycle the waste, then recycling is out of her control, so it is OK to throw it away). These theories do combine intrinsic aspects of control relating to beliefs, attitudes and values, and extrinsic aspects relating to society’s expectations, and they have been of great value in helping psychologists to understand individual behaviour. They have strong links to Lakoff’s assertions about values, the nature of framing and the presence of an individual’s social and personal identity. I think that they are also built on a long tradition in social psychology that emphasises the dominance of social setting in individual decision-making. Kurt Lewin, identified by many as the modern founder of social psychology and working in the first half of the 20th century, emphasised that individuals are embedded in social groups and that these social groups are embedded in social systems. Lewin’s student, Festinger, went on to demonstrate the power of this social setting and identified the struggle (or cognitive dissonance) that individuals go through when operating outside of their familiar setting. Festinger’s research emphasised the extent to which individuals seek out evidence to confirm their own beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I think it fair to say that even before the days of global warming and climate change, social psychologists were well on the way to understanding why societies that have traditionally benefited from the practices that likely cause these calamities are not to be easily persuaded about the error of their ways. On the contrary, encouraging individuals to make decisions that fit the social norm, or aspire to these social norms, was always going to be much more straightforward. One area of interest that draws from fields of enquiry in education, communication and psychology relates to the notion of critical incidences. Most sustainabilityleaning people can, if pushed, trace their interests back to a particular experience, teacher or social role model. In Chapter 4, I commented on my own experiences. For readers to have even picked up this book to consider reading, likely some event or person has inspired them to consider the environment or social inequality, more than many around them. Education and psychology may model these experiences as change, persuasion or motivation. Communication scientists may explore the deep frames or latent frames that have been activated. Every author, teacher and change agent hopes that his or her particular message will have impact. In the context of sustainability, I suggest that environmental educators are leading the way here, developing a strong case that outdoor experiences (in the form of nature walks, and outdoor education) can provide critical incidences that live with us throughout our lives. As I write this, I need to reflect on my own points of view and my own behaviours. Even though I probably understand more than the average citizen the physics and chemistry and biology that underpin our concerns about climate change, deforestation, habitat destruction and pollution, and I can use my understanding to make sense of my own contribution to these things, I still want the freedom provided by motorcars and jet travel and I want to believe all the contrary arguments, whether presented by representatives of the oil industry or not. Perhaps I really do buy into the idea that it is, indeed, immoral not to take money from suckers. This analysis, to me, makes the traditional ‘education for sustainable development’ approach profoundly untenable.

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The thought that we could simply provide the next generation with the facts as we see them and expect them to make different decisions from the decisions that we have made just seems absurd. The thought that we could change the values of the next generation simply by greening our higher education curriculum and demonstrating our own sustainability credentials via our recycling and energy efficiency efforts on our campuses may be simply insulting. But in some settings, higher education does teach values. We had better address that reality before we move on to emphasise an alternative.

Professional Values and Professional Education I have written quite extensively about teaching professional values in higher education (see Shephard 2015; Shephard and Egan 2018) so I do not want to labour the point here. Readers will be aware that universities nowadays do teach students in ways that prepare them to enter the professions. We teach doctors and lawyers and engineers and teachers and nurses and probably many other professional people. These professions have professional bodies that, to some extent, identify the learning outcomes that students need to demonstrate the achievement of as a prerequisite for entering the profession. Of course, many of these learning outcomes, or objectives, relate to what the student knows and what skills the students have that are necessary to undertake the work of the profession. But professional bodies also generally describe the values of the profession or the behaviours expected of professional people in carrying out this work. Professional people are generally expected to be respectful of their clients, honest in dealing with clients and the general public, and to demonstrate professional integrity in everything that they do. The universities and the university teachers charged with the responsibility of teaching the students have to teach not only the knowledge and skills required of professional people but also the values that underpin the profession. Although this could potentially be problematic, for the reasons described earlier in this book, by and large it is not. University teachers might claim that their academic freedom entitles them to teach values other than those required or accepted by the profession, but many do not. In general, university teachers employed to teach professional subjects are professionals themselves. They have already adopted the professional values that the profession holds dear and generally they see no problem in teaching these values. In a very real sense, these people become role models for the profession. The students themselves might claim that their own freedom to learn what they want to learn entitles them to learn other values or to learn no values at all. But, in general, students want to enter the profession, learn to appreciate that the profession has particular values and tend to give up their own freedoms in order to acquire the advantages of being part of the profession. I suggest that there is one other factor that makes these professional values relatively straightforward in the context of higher education nowadays. In general, our societies do respect the values that professionals maintain. Society in general wants

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our teachers and our doctors to be respectful, honest and integrious. These are society’s values as well as professions’ values and in general individuals experience no cognitive dissonance in trying to learn them. Until recently, much of my work and experience with professional values came from working with colleagues in the teaching and medical professions. In my experience, these professions tend not to say much about sustainability or environmental protection. On a recent visit to Montana, however, I was obliged to explore the professional values espoused by the engineering profession. I was, of course, pleased to see that professional engineers are supposed to take environmental matters into consideration as they develop chemical plants, motorways and dams. I did note that in the USA the National Society of Professional Engineers has code 2d in which engineers are encouraged to adhere to the principles of sustainable development in order to protect the environment for future generations (National Society of Professional Engineers 2018, np). At the time I was not particularly encouraged by the power of ‘encouraged to adhere’. It seemed to me to emphasise that such adherence was somehow optional. Similarly, universities and colleges that teach engineering do need to be accredited to do so. For accreditation, the Engineering Accreditation Commission insists on particular student outcomes including (h) … the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental and societal context (Engineering Accreditation Commission 2018, np). I noted in my various conversations that the educational context of ‘to understand’ is one of the lowest possible orders of cognitive ability, hardly a strong impetus for universities and colleges to teach more than what might be necessary for engineers to know what it is that they are encouraged to adhere to. Back in New Zealand I noted that our own Engineering New Zealand outlines eight core values and the standards to which the engineering profession is held. Core Value #2 is… ‘Have regard to effects on environment…’ (Engineering New Zealand 2018, np) but I have not as yet discovered how this is taught in accredited universities or what ‘have regard to’ means in an educational context. Given that New Zealand’s engineers are vital cogs in the wheels of industry, business and commerce that contribute so much to our standard of living, but in the process may also be abstracting and polluting our rivers, drawing down our waterways, exploring our oceans for fossil fuel reserves and our conservation lands for minerals, and building roads into our wilderness, it is clear that the profession has some complex issues to attend to. At present, I greatly appreciate the efforts made by the professions, and their professional schools, to teach all of the values that are widely expected and appreciated by society in general. But the credibility of attempts to use frameworks of professional values to impose values that are not necessarily typical of the societies within which they operate remains to be verified.

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Governance and Economic Instruments As I was writing this chapter, the New Zealand Productivity Commission was publishing its draft report, commissioned by the New Zealand Government, on how best to establish a low-emissions economy (New Zealand Productivity Commission 2018). The review and its various reports are very relevant to New Zealand’s progress towards sustainability, and potentially relevant to this chapter, focusing as it does on the beliefs and actions of individuals. Perhaps to be more specific, I do understand how governance and economic instruments guide the actions of individuals, as I find myself being guided by laws and prices, but I’m not convinced that we have sufficient evidence to suggest that governance and economic instruments impact on our identities and on the affective attributes of individuals that likely drive our individual behaviour from within. That’s not to say that they don’t, but I’m just not sure that we have sufficient evidence to suggest that they do or how they might. So, for example, in some countries including New Zealand, the tax paid by car owners to keep their car on the road does depend to a certain extent on how economical the car is to operate, and so on its contribution to pollution. This economic instrument does influence my own behaviour, and the choices that I make. I understand a similar economic approach was undertaken in many countries in an attempt to reduce the amount of lead being introduced into our atmosphere from leaded fuels. While leaded fuels were available alongside unleaded fuels they were much more expensive. Pricing isn’t the only way to encourage particular forms of consumption. Many hope that if the right information is provided in the right way it will influence the way that people make decisions. And as a last resort, governments can legislate, making it really difficult and socially undesirable to pollute. At present, a great deal of research is underway to identify how best to encourage consumers to make environmentally conscious decisions, particularly in the energy sector. In some respects, the research rediscovers and reinterprets many of the fundamental assumptions involved in economic theory. Rational consumers are likely to be self-interested and to adopt price-related behaviours. On the other hand, researchers are increasingly discovering the presence of principled consumers, those with a predisposition to choose in particular ways with less emphasis on cost (though not of course always in the environmentally favourable way). I think that this is a complex but extraordinarily interesting field of enquiry, integrating concepts from psychology, economics and computer science. Whether someone is trying to use public policy and governance approaches to contribute to a more sustainable world, or to sell stuff to consumers, they will be interested not only in how people make choices, but also in how these choice preferences can be influenced. Nowadays, economists and policy analysts use sophisticated models to predict what people will choose to do or to buy and machine-learning techniques to continuously improve these models. Overall, I think the jury is still out with respect to the question of whether governance and economic instruments actually influence identities or simply influence how people behave at that particular time. Nevertheless, New Zealand’s Productivity Commission produced a draft report that emphasises getting emissions pricing right,

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sending the right signals for investment and innovation, and backing this up with laws and institutions that endure over time (and not just until the next election). Naturally, I was enthusiastic about this but felt compelled to send a personal response to encourage the Productivity Commission to pay more attention to the likely value of education in helping New Zealanders to take these laws and pricing instruments to their hearts. My own view is that identity changes need active engagement, not just passive responses. I suggested that: ‘… to my way of thinking the draft report assumes that New Zealand citizens will obey the legislation, celebrate the economic instruments and behave accordingly, perhaps without even having to think about it’.

So How Does Education Guide the Beliefs and Actions of Citizens? I think this is a far more complex question than is desirable. Previous chapters have suggested that education (perhaps particularly compulsory education) is as much part of the problem of unsustainability as it may be of the solution. In some respects, compulsory education has as a primary role the responsibility to teach young people to acquire the values that a sponsoring society values. By and large, here in New Zealand, and likely elsewhere, schools find it difficult to teach values that are different from the values that society accepts. Elements of society may aspire to be more sustainable, more environmentally responsible, more socially equitable, but society as a whole continues on the path that celebrates consumerism and tolerates both environmental degradation and social inequalities, at home and abroad. Another way of looking at this is to suggest that the social and personal identity described in paragraphs above, which is so dominant in guiding the beliefs and actions of young people, likely comes from school experiences as well as coming from out-of-school experiences. It seems to me basically unreasonable to expect our schoolteachers to teach our schoolchildren values that are different from those that are demonstrably held by their parents, by society at large and likely by many of the teachers involved. As mentioned above with respect to professional education, learners find role models to learn from. In an educational sense, role models do not necessarily plan to take on this role and, those who do, do not necessarily plan to model sustainability. Similarly, it seems that higher education struggles with the same broad problems. Even those university teachers who wish to educate for sustainability, or green the curriculum, likely struggle to overcome the mixed messages that students receive from every quarter. Higher education institutions that profess to nurture a culture of sustainability may need to continue to adopt and promote environmentally damaging, socially unjust and globally unfair practices. The demands of competitive individualism, of ‘students as customers’, and institutional survival in a business-oriented,

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highly competitive education system make organised sustainability-leaning development in this broad area extraordinarily problematic. Seen through these interpretations, the international missions of education for sustainable development, or of education for sustainability, appear quite unrealistic. And yet I persist in telling the New Zealand Productivity Commission that they should not ignore the role of education in reaching the hearts and minds of New Zealand citizens. What was on my mind? Let’s get back to where this chapter started, with the writing of Scriven and Paul (1987) in the context of an exploration of critical thinking.

Changing Personal and Social Identity from the Inside: On Critical Thinking So much has been written about critical thinking in the context of education that it seems somewhat disingenuous to be introducing it, in detail, so late in the book. My excuse or rationale is that I needed to develop a strong case for why so much existing thought about sustainability education and critical thinking is inadequate for our purposes in addressing the wicked problems of sustainability in the context of education. Quite reasonably, I think, encouraging young people to develop critical thinking skills has become an important, perhaps even central, aspect of forward-looking educational systems around the world, from preschool right through to university and beyond. Naturally, and again quite positively, I think that any concept with such broad application will also be subject to broad and diverse interpretation, so that critical thinking could hardly be said to be one concept any more. In some respects, it has become a term like sustainability itself, an impossibly stretched concept. And to be fair to others who promote critical thinking, the adjective ‘critical’ may not even be the best to use, nowadays (Independent, deep, tough, problem-solving, and others may all be more appropriate in some settings). But, probably positively and likely inevitably, so much seems to now depend on critical thinking. Many scholars on many occasions have apparently suggested that if only young people could be taught to think critically and be presented with the facts of our unsustainable existence on this planet then they will change their behaviour and find solutions to our collective problems. Perhaps readers expect me to say a similar thing. Actually, I have something else on my mind. My own view is that lack of critical thinking skills is a relatively trivial aspect of the wicked problem that we are immersed in. My own experience of critical thinking, of teaching critical thinking and of assessing the products of our teaching in the form of student learning outcomes suggests to me that, at least in higher education and for some students, we do a fairly good job of teaching critical thinking skills. Over the years, I have been deeply impressed by the critical thinking skills of many of the students who I have encountered. Amongst piles of essays and exam scripts on many occasions, for example, I have ‘discovered’ thoughts, interpretations and

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explanations that certainly have not come directly from my teaching, or from my recommended reading. Of course, as higher education teachers, we can and could always do better. But in so many ways, higher education is already committed to doing better in this regard. Beyond the skills involved, there is something else about critical thinking that I think far more tenuous, demanding and powerful. But first we need to explore the history of thinking about critical thinking in education and the conclusions that educators and educational researchers are reaching about it. Historically speaking, I think that one of the most powerful conceptualisations of critical thinking occurred early on. Edward M. Glaser (Glaser 1941, 5) proposed that the ability to think critically involves an ‘attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one’s experiences, knowledge of methods of logical enquiry and reasoning, and some skill in applying those methods’. This is particularly notable for me because it is apparent that almost two decades before educational experts came together to describe the nature of learning (known nowadays as Bloom’s taxonomies), Glaser had already formulated a categorisation that nowadays is almost taken for granted. Note that Glaser highlights critical thinking as an ‘ability’, but an ability that itself involves an attitude, as well as knowledge and skills. Nearly, 80 years later we are still struggling to see how all of this fits together, but most analyses suggest that both cognitive (skills) and affective (attitudes, values and dispositions) aspects of learning are involved in critical thinking. I suspect that Scriven and Paul, in the late 80s, were influenced by Glaser’s thinking and by the developing momentum of Bloom’s taxonomy when they noted that ‘Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skilfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.’ (Scriven and Paul 1987, np) as this list of skills bears remarkable similarity to Bloom’s original hierarchy of cognitive skills. Similarly Scriven and Paul’s list of how observations are generated, and considered, may have influenced the expanding interest in the 80s of combinations of experience, reflection and cognition. In 1991, for example, Mezirow emphasised that combinations of experience, reflection and critical thinking are necessary to help adults ‘discover a need to acquire new perspectives in order to gain a more complete understanding of changing events’ (Mezirow 1991, 3). This notion of critical thinking being applied via reflection to experiences seems to me to be an important stepping stone in our enquiry. At about the same time, another group of interested academics was discussing the details of critical thinking to create a ‘statement of expert consensus’. Facione summarised the thinking of this expert group (Facione 1990) to describe what skills critical thinking comprises. Many others since then have added to and adapted the expert panel’s ideas. Table 7.1 contains my own adaptation of these lines of enquiry. These facets of critical thinking will not trouble most educators, and guides about how to teach them are widely available to teachers, but Facione and the expert panel developed an equally important and much longer list of affective dispositions that underpin these cognitive manifestations of critical thinking, in two sections

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Table 7.1 The skills that may be involved in critical thinking and how many educators address these. Columns 1 and 2 are particularly informed by Facione (1990, Section III), the George Mason University Critical Thinking Rubrik (Sterns Centre, 2011) and the AAC&U Critical Thinking VALUE Rubric (Association of American Colleges and Universities 2019) Skill

Sub-skills

Some educational linkages

Explanation

Explaining complexity, Stating results, Justifying procedures, Presenting arguments

Interpretation

Interpreting complexity, Categorization, Decoding significance, Clarifying meaning

Educators may be familiar with these ideas otherwise described as acquiring both knowledge and understanding of a phenomenon. To demonstrate these outcomes, students are often asked to describe, interpret and explain

Analysis

Analysis and examination of ideas, Identifying arguments, Analysing arguments

Analysis is often identified as a low-level higher order cognitive outcome. Students are required to delve deeply into the phenomenon, so as to be able to detail or even break up the contributing arguments. Many would expect students to be able to go further and apply these insights to other situations or problems

Evaluation

Evaluating and assessing claims and arguments

Inference

Querying evidence, Conjecturing alternative explanation, Drawing conclusions, Reasoning

Some put the cognitive skills involved in evaluation, and inference, at the highest level of challenge. For many, exploring alternative explanations, and reassessing the assumptions that have led to any particular conclusion, are characteristic of critical thinking

Self-regulation

Self-examination, Self-correction, Self-review

Some educators would be surprised to see this category here. I might personally identify self-regulation as a product, or consequence, of critical thinking and as one element of metacognition. There is a strong link here, however, to the role of the teacher in developing critical thinking skills. Particular forms of feedback, provided in particular ways, may be beneficial in developing students’ self-regulatory learning abilities and self-efficacy

involving ‘Approaches to life and living in general’ and ‘Approaches to specific issues, questions or problems’. We should note here that Facioni’s dispositions have elements in common with Scriven and Paul’s ‘universal intellectual values’ that underpin critical thinking: ‘In its exemplary form, it [critical thinking] is based on universal intellectual values that

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transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness’ (Scriven and Paul 1987, np). It is possible to map the expert consensus’s dispositions that underpin the skills involved in critical thinking onto Scriven and Paul’s Universal Intellectual Values. This is attempted below in a way informed by Scriven and Paul (1987) and by Facione (1990, Section IV). • Scriven and Paul’s Universal Intellectual Values; – Dispositions that underpin the skills involved in critical thinking; • Clarity and accuracy; – Clarity in stating the question or concern; • Precision and consistency; – Precision to the degree permitted by the subject and the circumstance; – Orderliness in working with complexity; • Relevance; – Care in focusing attention on the concern at hand; • Sound evidence; – – – – – – –

Diligence in seeking relevant information; Persistence though difficulties are encountered; Prudence in suspending, making or altering judgments; Inquisitiveness with regard to a wide range of issues; Concern to become and remain generally well-informed; Alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking; Willingness to reconsider and revise views where honest reflection suggests that change is warranted;

• Good reasons, depth, breadth and fairness; – – – – – – – –

Reasonableness in selecting and applying criteria; Trust in the processes of reasoned inquiry; Self-confidence in one’s own ability to reason; Honesty in facing one’s own biases, prejudices, stereotypes, egocentric or sociocentric tendencies; Open-mindedness regarding divergent world views; Flexibility in considering alternatives and opinions; Understanding of the opinions of other people; Fair-mindedness in appraising reasoning.

In considering these ideas, from an educational perspective, it is probably easier to start with the dispositions that Facione and the expert committee identified as underpinning critical thinking skills. If we start with a problem, in the context of sustainability, say whether to choose recycled paper to print on or paper made from

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virgin wood pulp, some may simply choose availability or price as deciding factors without very much thought. Educators would of course encourage more thought, of the critical kind, and will put a lot of effort into teaching students to develop the skills that will be necessary for the student to go beyond simply discovering the facts. They would encourage the students to learn how to explain and interpret the issues in producing and distributing these different forms of paper. They could go further and encourage the student to develop the analytical and evaluative skills necessary to explore the wider implications of the issues involved. They would likely also encourage the student to develop skills that would enable them to analyse the sources and reliability of the evidence that they might use to help them make a decision. On the way, they might also support the student to develop self-regulatory skills that would enable the student to better understand how effectively they were applying critical thinking skills towards this particular problem. At this stage, we could say that our particular student has these skills, having been taught them, having put effort into learning them, and we must assume for the purposes of this example, having passed tests and examinations to demonstrate their abilities to this effect. As educators ourselves, or as readers likely at least interested in education, we probably assume that the educational processes involved provided not only sufficient motivation for the student to learn these critical thinking skills but also guidance on the way that would help the student understand whether a particular thought process was sufficiently critical to contribute effectively to their learning, and sufficiently clearly articulated to pass the test, or examination. Note that this analysis says nothing about the decision that the student will come to. Critical thinking does not necessarily lead to any particular choice! But then we need to ask, what happens to the student’s decision-making processes and their own application of their critical thinking skills once the motivation of the educational environment is removed and the guiding influence of the teacher is no longer present? Would this student bother to think this deeply about whether to print on recycled paper? The judgment of Facione and of the expert panel was that the student would bother if they had the dispositions to bother, and to bother to do it well. To think critically, and to effectively use all the critical thinking skills listed in Table 7.1, without the motivation of an examination and the guidance of a teacher, does involve having a substantial range of dispositions or predispositions.1 Facione and the expert panel suggested that students needed dispositions to be inquisitive, to be honest in facing personal biases, to be open-minded and willing to reconsider (perhaps to reconsider many of the elements of their personal and social identity that have in the past enabled them to make decisions without critically thinking about them). Students need to think about the issues involved with clarity and precision and take care in focusing attention on the concern at hand. They also need to be reasonable in selecting and applying criteria that they may use to help them make a

1 Common usage of English does not readily distinguish between these terms. It may be tempting to

think of a predisposition as something that occurs prior to being educated to develop a disposition, but such a distinction does not appear likely to occur in our dictionaries any time soon!

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decision. And much more! If the student does not have these dispositions, perhaps they will not think critically enough about this decision. From an educational perspective, perhaps Scriven and Paul’s universal intellectual values are more difficult to apply here and to be fair these authors do identify their application to critical thinking ‘in its exemplary form’. Nevertheless, there are some strong parallels between these universal values and the dispositions described above. Scriven and Paul identified that critical thinking should ideally be based on personal values that demand accuracy, precision and clarity, sound evidence and fairness, to name just some. Some hypothetical equivalence between these values and dispositions are explored above, but underlying this equivalence is the idea that these values, or dispositions, do need to be learned. And, we should note, critical thinking is itself an active academic field of enquiry. It is nowadays championed by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. Over the years, new ideas and new ways of thinking about critical thinking have emerged: although not necessarily in ways that I currently value! On my mind as I write this is the thought that a critically thinking citizen, one who bases their critical thinking on universal intellectual values and thinking dispositions, is unlikely to be swayed by the immediacy of a particular item on the television, or in a newspaper, or from social media, or indeed the earnest persuasion of a university professor (See Fig. 7.1). Critical thinking, thought of in these ways, is an antidote to advertising, to bullshit, to indoctrination or to power-based influence; perhaps it is the only protection that individuals have from being overpowered by society, in their past, present and future. The need to teach these values, or dispositions, should be something that all those who profess to teach critical thinking skills should explore.

Back to Leopold Perhaps there are many ways to describe the struggle of human existence with respect to the challenges of sustainability, especially accounting for the diverse ways of thinking about sustainability. But I have for some time grappled with the concept of competitive individualism (that I encountered most powerfully while researching global perspective, described in this book in Chapter 6). It seemed to me then as it does now that we live in a competitive world and to deny this is hardly helpful. We teach our children to be competitive because we want them to survive and to prosper and because it is a tough world out there, and we hope that our education systems will support our efforts as parents. And yet if being competitive is all we do, then this book serves no purpose. Competition is in essence the law of the jungle. Given the power of some nations over others, unfettered competition seems unlikely to yield any sort of social justice on an international scale. Given the power of humans nowadays it would be difficult to imagine that many other organisms can compete against us. Sustainability, sustainable development and any reasonable form of environmental stability as many would like to imagine them appear unlikely products of unfettered competition. So something does need to balance competition.

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Fig. 7.1 Sets critical thinking up against everything else in an individual’s life that conspire together to influence their ‘beliefs and actions’. Naturally, education is not entirely on one side. How higher education in particular influences critical thinking dispositions will be explored in depth in the next chapter

As a parallel, all but the most ardent market capitalist rationalises that some form of market regulation is necessary to make markets work in the way that we want them to work. Aldo Leopold‘s words remind me that competition has to be balanced by an ethic. Leopold had a ‘land ethic’ particularly in mind, as his search was for a form of sustainability that would encourage people wherever they were to look after the land and the natural systems that in turn look after the people. The challenge for me as an educator is to understand where this ethic can come from and if, realistically, it can be taught by parents and by teachers and by university people who are themselves so tied up in their competitive world, and so deficient in their own ethic, that they have allowed the world’s affairs to reach their current state. My own analysis suggests that a land ethic is within each of us, struggling to be heard. It is in particular the product of parenting and grandparenting and compulsory education. Those of us who are lucky enough to have had parents, grandparents and teachers who themselves had this ethic in good supply will have the ethic in reasonable reach within. Some may have to dig deeper than others. I am not convinced, however, that higher education should or could ‘teach’ this ethic (although no doubt some individual teachers could not help but to do so). Higher education’s primary purpose in this analysis is to help individuals to listen within and to find ways for this ethic to interact, or compete with,

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the imperatives of competitive individualism. Critical thinking provides the tools to listen, but the values and dispositions that people need to think critically are in short supply and currently limit the scale of critical thinking going on around the world. Higher education has a job to do in helping students acquire not only the skills to think critically but also the dispositions to do so. I worry that currently we do not understand how well we are doing in either respect. My own research suggests that most academics want to teach their students to think critically, and think that they do so. But few in my experience conceptualise critical thinking in the ways that I do, and even fewer acknowledge the place of dispositions in this task. Very few academics that I know think of their role as including the teaching of dispositions. On my gloomy days, I am inclined to suggest that university teachers and leaders in general have not conceptualised their role in these ways, primarily because they do not have the dispositions to think critically enough about their roles. We shall consider this charge in more detail in the next chapter.

References Association of American Colleges and Universities. (2019). Critical thinking value rubric. Retrieved July 26, 2019, from https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/VALUE/CriticalThinking.pdf. Bienkov, A. (2012). Astroturfing: What is it and why does it matter? The Guardian, 8 Feb. Retrieved June 14, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/whatis-astroturfing. Crompton, T. (2010). Common cause: The case for working with our cultural values. Retrieved February 21, 2019 from https://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/common_cause_report.pdf. Engineering Accreditation Commission. (2018). Criteria for accrediting engineering programs, 2017–2018. Retrieved June 15, 2018, from http://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditationcriteria/criteria-for-accrediting-engineering-programs-2017-2018/#outcomes. Engineering New Zealand. (2018). Our code of ethical conduct. Retrieved May 8, 2018, from https:// www.engineeringnz.org/resources/code-ethical-conduct/. Facione, P. A. (1990). Critical thinking: A statement of expert consensus for purposes of educational assessment and instruction. Retrieved July 26, 2019, from https://stearnscenter.gmu.edu/ wp-content/uploads/12-The-Delphi-Report-on-Critical-Thinking.pdf. Glaser, E. M. (1941). An experiment in the development of critical thinking. New York: AMS Press. Jost, J. T. (2015). Resistance to change: A social psychological perspective. Social Research, 82(3), 607–636. Kahan, D. M. (2015). Climate-science communication and the measurement problem. Advances in Political Psychology, 36(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12244. Lakoff, G. (2006). Thinking points: Communicating our American values and vision. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. National Society of Professional Engineers. (2018). Code of ethics. Retrieved June 15, 2018, from https://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics. New Zealand Productivity Commission. (2018). Low-emissions economy. Retrieved June 26, 2018, from https://www.productivity.govt.nz/inquiry-content/3254.

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Scriven, M., & Paul, R. (1987) Cited by the foundation for critical thinking. Defining Critical Thinking. Retrieved February 21, 2019, from https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/definingcritical-thinking/766. Shephard, K. (2015). Higher Education for Sustainable Development. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Shephard, K., & Dulgar, P. (2015). Why it matters how we frame “Education” in education for sustainable development. Applied Environmental Education & Communication, 14(3), 137–148. https://doi.org/10.1080/1533015X.2015.1067577. Shephard, K., & Egan, T. (2018). Higher education for professional and civic values: A critical review and analysis. Sustainability, 10(12), 4442. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124442. Sterns Centre. (2011). Development of critical thinking rubric. Retrieved July 26, 2019, from https:// stearnscenter.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/12-CT-rubric-landscape-8-10.pdf.

Chapter 8

On Deep, Critical and Independent Thinking and Why It Is So Challenging for Higher Education to Teach These Things

I wish that the ideas being explored in this book were simpler. It may be of course that I’m taking a simple topic and misunderstanding it or making it more complicated than it need be. Although some people around the world do appear to think that teaching students to live sustainably is simply a matter of providing them with the facts, telling them to be so, or by promising to be better behaved role models in the future, most who seriously address environmental education, teach for sustainable development or educate for a fairer world understand the complexity of our endeavours. Many of these do identify critical thinking as one key element of a way forward, or even as a panacea. My own approach to higher education for sustainability does centre on critical thinking but is a tad more convoluted than many, and perhaps too complicated to be useful. After all, here we are in this chapter and I daresay most readers are struggling to fully understand the key points of my arguments. Not to compare myself with Darwin of course, but sometimes I envy the relatively simple and logical steps necessary to understand Darwin’s theory of natural selection. School children around the world and all biology students at university learn the basic steps, and how to apply and evaluate them. Darwin’s theory has transformed the way that much of humanity understands itself. To explore this tangent properly I add my own version below, at least to illustrate the potential power of logic and clarity in supporting engagement with complexity. 1. Individuals in populations of plants and animals struggle to survive. Many do not survive to the point that they reproduce because they get eaten or catch diseases. 2. Diversity exists in animal and plant populations and the particular characteristics of each individual within this diversity provide that individual with an advantage or disadvantage within the struggle for survival. Some traits will be selected to survive more than others. 3. Some characteristics of individuals are inherited. 4. Those that survive to the reproduction stage are likely to pass on their inherited characteristics; the same characteristics that contributed to their survival. 5. Over many generations, given ongoing selection pressures, populations will tend to change, or to evolve, to emphasise successful traits. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_8

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Simple and powerful as it may be, the nature of a stepwise explanatory model is that as well as facilitating progress up the steps it also enables people to step sideways, into other ways of understanding the phenomenon. So, even with this combination of simplicity and power, these logical steps have not persuaded some in the world to interpret their own existence in a way that encompasses evolution and the origin of humankind from within nature. Creationism is still taught in many schools around the world and natural selection is ridiculed in some. Many, apparently, go along with the struggle for survival step, but cannot take the subsequent steps encompassing the inheritance of selected traits. Logical models of the world can only take us so far. In the previous chapter, we noted that our beliefs and actions appear to be the product of many competing influences, and our personal and social identity is strongly influenced by our upbringing and social networks. In essence, this book proposes that higher education’s primary role is to help young people to develop intellectual independence. By this I mean at least that they should choose to think for themselves. Choice and thinking are, to me, the important elements. Translated to ‘education speak’ we may say that our students need to develop the skills and dispositions that will enable them to challenge the values and behaviours that they have experienced all of their lives and that they continue to experience everyday, even, or perhaps especially, from within higher education. I hope that nowhere have I written that the product of these skills and dispositions need necessarily lead to individuals changing their beliefs and adapting their actions away from their upbringing and towards a more sustainable way of living, for that is not my message. Mine is, in essence, an empowering approach, and I accept that I can provide no assurance that this approach will lead to a particular destination. The validation that I provide, like the model itself, is more nuanced than that. I suggest below a road map to education to sustainability, not to sustainability itself.

A Road map to Education for Sustainability 1. The concept of ‘sustainability’ requires a balance between humans, environment and economies. The concept of ‘sustainable development’ allows deviations in this balance, for the benefit of human development, but still accepts the need for sustainability on an intergenerational basis. Even though more people live on our planet than ever before, and on average live for longer, our current growth, our current societies and the well-being of our environment, including those non-human inhabitants who we share our planet with, will likely struggle to be sustainable. For those who value these things, there is a problem to address. 2. How people behave and what they aspire to is the product of many inputs, but few would doubt that formal education is at least in part responsible for our collective current behaviours and aspirations. In general, formal education adopts a responsibility to reproduce the society that sponsors it. Although higher education has specific roles and responsibilities that may be different from those of compulsory education, it also traditionally has greatest influence on a select group of people

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who go on to have most power and influence in society. In reproducing society’s traditional values in society’s most influential citizens, higher education likely and traditionally contributes to the problem. Although some higher education institutions have signed international accords to, for example, educate for environmentally responsible citizenship, and some have developed their own strategies to put such intentions into practice, university teachers hold diverse views on their particular ability and responsibility in this context and higher education institutions, in general, consistently fail to research their own practices so as to better understand their collective influence on their students’ and society’s current behaviours and aspirations. Very few institutions have monitored, evaluated, assessed or otherwise researched their impact on student learning in these regards, and those that have generally identify disappointing progress. Higher education institutions, at present and in general, are neither willing nor empowered to educate for sustainability, or for sustainable development, as currently understood. Rather we appear willing and empowered to educate for unsustainability, at the same time as promising something different. Legislation in New Zealand insists that the principal aim of universities is to develop intellectual independence. University teachers, and their institutions, in general, agree that it is their role to teach their students a range of higher order cognitive abilities that collectively enable them to think critically, and likely independently. [For now, we should equate intellectual independence with choosing to think deeply, critically and independently, but accept that as we develop greater understanding about teaching and learning, these ideas will change.] Many university teachers understand that students need to be taught these abilities, and the dispositions to use them. But collectively we are challenged to understand and agree the nature of these higher order cognitive abilities and of the dispositions to use them, how best to teach them and how to monitor their achievement. Assuming that we can do better in these regards in the future, than we do at present, critically thinking students and future citizens with intellectual independence will be able to use these abilities and dispositions to interrogate the promises made by their institutions, their governments and their parents, on their behalf about their future behaviours and aspirations, but to decide for themselves how to behave and what to aspire for. Higher education institutions, at present and in general, are undoubtedly capable of teaching students how to think critically and perhaps of teaching the disposition to do so, but do not research their practices sufficiently to understand how successfully they do so. Assuming that we can do better in this regard in the future, than we do at present, higher education institutions will have a yardstick against which achievements can and will be measured and could be improved. Successful outcomes in these regards will not of themselves yield sustainability, or sustainable development, but may yield a critical mass of future citizens empowered to make different decisions from those made by past generations. This may be the best that higher education is capable of. Undoubtedly, and in the context of education for sustainable development, it will be a great deal more than we have done in the past.

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And there we have it, Shephard’s road map to education for sustainability in seven steps. Although seven steps enable everyone implicated seven opportunities to step off this ladder, I envisage that three particular key and challenging concepts are involved in getting us to #7: teaching the dispositions of intellectual independence (involving deep, critical and independent thinking); measuring intellectual independence; and achieving a critical mass of those with sufficient intellectual independence to make a difference. Each key concept involves an assumption that could be, indeed should be, challenged. The remaining pages in this book address these concepts and challenges to them. But before we go there, we do need to at least consider that taking a step off my ladder part way up is neither illogical nor unheard of. I daresay that the majority of those university teachers who do advocate for sustainability do also encourage their students to develop critical thinking skills and perhaps even dispositions to think critically, but to my mind many do it with a purpose or an outcome in mind; that critically thinking students will come to the right decision and change their incorrect prior behaviours. Similarly, the broad educational paradigms of development education, ideology-critique and some forms of transformative learning are designed and imagined with a purpose in mind, often leading to greater human equality on a global scale and construction of a more just world. I do not doubt the importance or rightness of these approaches, or their right to exist as parts of a higher education that cherishes academic freedom. But I do doubt their chances of success, given the diversity of worldviews, skills and dispositions of university teachers who I come across nowadays. And I challenge the concept of encouraging criticality at the same time as encouraging learners to come to particular conclusions as a consequence of their critical thinking and independence. Such juxtaposition appears to me to lack credibility, and indeed integrity. Similarly, I doubt the integrity of institutional promises of what our graduates will respect, or be committed to. For now, I must focus on Shephard’s road map to education for sustainability in seven steps, and as we move along, point out the challenging bits.

Teaching Skills May Be Easier Than Teaching Dispositions but Learning Both Is Important: Cognition and Affect A significant aspect of the educational content included in this book relates to what I have identified as the affective domain of learning, in contrast to the cognitive domain of learning. Cognition is all about understanding and thinking, while affect, although more troubling to define, has emotional elements intertwined with personal values and attitudes, and dispositions, that together have some influence on how people behave. The dichotomy is, of course, false, and I suspect that even those who developed these two domains of learning realised how interwoven they actually are and how neither can really stand alone in terms of identifying the link between

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thinking and doing. As with many other debates around reductionist or holistic interpretations of functioning, any particular taxonomy of something as complicated as human behaviour is bound to be flawed, or of limited value. Perhaps what is important here is to identify that what many educators and educational researchers describe as cognition is itself inadequate to explain links between education and subsequent behaviour. Adding the affective domain provides us with a range of additional insights that may in some circumstances be useful to us. Another dichotomy that I suspect is also quite false is that between learning and teaching. I think it reasonable to suggest that teaching in higher education, in particular, scholarly teaching, has long been identified as an extended learning process, perhaps particularly because scholarly university teachers inherently research their teaching. Within the context of the scholarship of teaching and learning, many university teachers have the experience of not fully appreciating the nature of the topic, of how much they do not understand about the topic, until they come to teach it. A different formulation of the idea that teaching and learning are not different comes from the early migrants to New Zealand, the Maori, who use the term Ako to mean both teaching and learning. This notion is widely adopted in New Zealand’s education system. I try to put these two false dichotomies together particularly when considering critical thinking in the context of wicked problems such as sustainability. It seems to me extraordinarily challenging for us to learn how to think critically, involving analysis and application and synthesis and evaluation of ideas, if we do not simultaneously learn to listen, to respond and to value the views of others, and to experiment with personal value systems that allow us to make sense of differences in the ways that these same ideas are portrayed. I suggest that learning in the affective domain always goes hand in hand with skills-based learning. I often abbreviate this as ‘what we know, what skills we learn to put this knowledge to use, and what we choose to do with the knowledge and skills that we have learned’. But, as I see it, choices do not arise after we have learned the knowledge and skills, nor are they simply along for the ride. Choices, depending on affect, are part of the learning journey. Teaching and learning is similarly nuanced in this regard. Traditionally, teachers (particularly higher education teachers) have shunned the affective domain, thinking that teachers should not be teaching students their values or what to think. And so they don’t, often in the process not realising their personal identity, displayed for all to see through non-verbal communication, likely says as much about their affective characteristics as what they choose to verbalise. My emphasis here is that until teachers start to grapple with how students learn their critical thinking skills, it is extraordinarily challenging for them to understand, and negotiate, the cognitive/affective dichotomy and the teaching/learning dichotomy. One way to look at this is to explore differences in what we might identify as ‘values’. One expression of values in the context of sustainability might be that citizens of New Zealand should value citizens of Guatemala, or Fiji, in the same way they value citizens of New Zealand, and behave accordingly (in effect, as global citizens). This value potentially has direct educational extrapolation through attitude and disposition to behaviour (although Chapter 6 emphasised how multifaceted this

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extrapolation might be). It also has elements of morality, standards and societal expectations embedded within it. Many university teachers would not wish to teach this form of value, although some clearly do, and some no doubt by doing nothing in particular in this space may tend to teach the opposite value. But the other affective attributes that are relevant to this discussion are often not even included in this discussion. The fundamentals of listening and responding so vitally important in helping us to reach personal value judgements are affective attributes that do have a place in the affective domain and, as described above, perhaps our students cannot learn to analyse and to evaluate until they learn to listen and respond. Looking at these attributes in more depth, and drawing from Scriven and Paul’s universal intellectual values and the dispositions of Facione et al, unless learners are willing and able to think with clarity and care and be reasonable, fair, open-minded and willing to reconsider, they will struggle to learn to listen, to respond and to reach personal value judgements, certainly not at the level that we would anticipate as relevant to a higher education and that could enable learners to progress to higher levels of affective learning if they wished to. My own experience tells me that the processes of teaching these matters are impossible without simultaneously learning about them. It is not enough in my view, for example, to simply habituate learners to these practices (for example, by insisting that learners always challenge the sources and interpretation of new knowledge). This form of habituation simply transfers the value base of being willing to reconsider, for example, to a simple skill. Critical thinking, for me, involves a set of skills operationalized as an intellectually disciplined process as so eloquently described by Scriven and Paul (1987). This operationalisation involves students acquiring a set of dispositions that support this intellectually disciplined process. I don’t think this process is easy. I’m not even convinced that it can be habitual as some suggest. Perhaps I never acquired the habits and so for me critical thinking is always a challenge. My own experience suggests to me that those who indicate it is not challenging may not be doing it right. Should we be teaching these thinking values and dispositions in higher education? Absolutely! That is our primary role. That is what makes ‘higher education’ something other than ‘more education’. Over the years, I have had many confused conversations on this point. People asked me if I think that higher education should teach sustainability values. I generally say no but that I do believe, indeed think it vital, that university teachers teach students some outcomes that fit firmly within the affective domain, that these can be described as values, and that they are essential values to any reasonable consideration of higher education learning, and of sustainability. Most choose not to follow me this far. If you have got to this chapter, then well done; you are doing better than most.

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Acquiring and Valuing Dispositions to Think Critically: Or not So how do individuals acquire the dispositions, or predispositions, to think critically? Do dispositions arrive magically along with the skills to think critically? At this stage, I need to say that, in my opinion, we are reaching the cutting edge of educational research; the boundary between what we are reasonably sure that we know and what we are reasonably sure that we do not. Of course, educational researchers have ideas and opinions on these matters and I shall use the rest of this chapter to offer my thoughts on them. But they are thoughts and they are at present only partially supported by conventional educational discourse. I don’t think that these dispositions are either learned easily, or can be taught easily. Perhaps some of our students do arrive at our higher education door with some, most, or all of these, but I am not sure that we would notice them, or have the means to discover them, or value them if we did. Perhaps some professors retire at the other end of a higher education career without gaining them, or realising that they have succeeded all these years without knowing what they lack. I suspect that at the heart of this dilemma is the idea that although we clearly value critical thinking as a concept, we, and society in general, do not necessarily value critical thinkers and those with the dispositions to think critically. Perhaps these people frequently develop opinions that somehow differ from those that their colleagues share. Perhaps in thinking in ways that are underpinned by the many ‘qualities’ explored in Chapter 7, our critical thinkers become pedants who appear clumsy in social settings. Of course, there are also other explanations for social awkwardness and annoying pedantry. Perhaps people who do not have dispositions to think critically, or who do not habitually think critically (even though they have the skills to do so) habitually fail to understand the opinions and decisions of those who have, and do. Of course, there are also other explanations for how and why different individuals come to different decisions! And, to be fair to those who do not put the effort into thinking critically, even if they have the skills to do so, there is no a priori rationale to think that all active critical thinkers will make identical decisions or develop the same opinions. Not only are the processes of critical thinking so complicated and the backgrounds of each individual so diverse, but also the situations that individuals find themselves in are not necessarily conducive to pedantry and contrary opinion. Academia may provide a special place in this respect, but declining tenure and the neoliberal values espoused by many institutions nowadays does likely limit the opinions that can reasonably be promoted by critically thinking, pedantic academics. But wait! If the disposition to think critically is so challenging to achieve, and so unappreciated, and when applied to critical enquiry involving wicked problems, likely to create diverse outcomes, why bother to do it, and why bother to teach it, even if we can? It took me months of thinking, either critically or in a self-delusional state (depending on your point of view), conjuring up as many of Scriven and Paul’s universal intellectual values and Facione’s dispositions to do so as I could muster,

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to reach the conclusion that… because it is the best that we in higher education can do.1 As I see it, only critical thinking (including deep and independent thinking) can enable students, graduates and citizens to challenge what the world around them is telling them to do. Our social circumstances, our upbringing, our parents, our siblings and friends and our education all work together, in harmony, to encourage us to compete, to gain possessions, to consume, to take more from the world than we need and to encourage our own children to do the same. Perhaps these things are hard-wired into our DNA, the result of evolutionary pressures, and the very attributes that have made humans so successful, in an evolutionary sense. Deep, critical and independent thinking at least enables people to think for themselves, in different ways, and to challenge the status quo. Both compulsory education and higher education, however, are currently working to educate young people to have the skills necessary to become critically thinking citizens and although I would like to be positive about the changes that are occurring, and others encourage me to be more positive, I’m not personally convinced that things are changing here in New Zealand, or indeed elsewhere. Teaching skills may not be enough. So I take it for granted that higher education will teach our students the skills to think critically about the world they live in, but I don’t think this is the best that we can 1 Readers

may be interested in what I was actually doing for all of these months. Although I had been thinking about these matters for several years, things came to a head for me in approximately 2014 when as a result of my research I concluded that rather than university teachers trying to teach students something they didn’t think their role to teach, and probably couldn’t do well anyhow (sustainability) we would be better off encouraging them to teach something they did want to teach, but to do it as well as they possibly could. The ‘it’ was, of course, critical thinking. This naturally gave rise to the concern that critically thinking students might not choose sustainability pathways for themselves. My initial response was for some months based on the assertion that if we adequately researched our practice we would find out at an early stage if we were on the right track, and if we were not we could make adjustments. I was personally convinced then, as I am now, that those who have the skills to think about their place in the world critically, and the disposition to do so, probably would seek a sustainability pathway. But I had to accept that this answer would not necessarily match the expectations of many in higher education, particularly those with a passion to educate for sustainability. Fast forward to 2017; yes, it took me that long to reconsider my logic, to suggest that as higher education was, in general, unwilling to directly teach the values that underpin sustainability, teaching the skills and dispositions to think critically maybe a second best but was nonetheless the best that we could do. It took me another year to reach the next step. I worked over the course of many months with my colleague Tony Egan to explore the world of professional values and how these were taught and how this teaching could coexist with the teaching of critical thinking skills and dispositions. (When I say ‘worked’, really what we did was to have many conversations, fuelled by cups of tea, in which we critically thought about the pedagogy of values education). We published our conversations [Shephard and Egan 2018] emphasising that if critical thinking really does guide the beliefs and actions of individuals (as asserted by Scriven and Paul 1987, and as emphasised within this current book) then presenting students with some predetermined values, professional or otherwise, is somewhat counter-productive and indicative of our mistrust of the next generation to be capable of reaching their own conclusions about their place in the world. So I still think that, in the context of sustainability education, teaching our students the skills and dispositions to think critically is the best we can do. But I tend to add nowadays… If deep, critical and independent thinkers cannot find a way to live sustainably, then the alternative has little to do with the roles and abilities of higher education.

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do. I think the best that we can do is to help people, in addition to developing skills, to develop the dispositions to think critically, even in challenging circumstances when the products of critical thinking may be unwelcome to those around us. I see a fundamental divide between the skills that people have and what they choose to do with the skills. Perhaps readers of this chapter have never had the feedback from teachers that I had as a student, and have given as a teacher: ‘could do better’. ‘Could do better’ may mean many things, but often implies that if our students put more effort into applying the critical thinking skills that we have taught them, the product of their thinking would have been better. As a university teacher, in the twenty-first century, I hope my role is not primarily to teach students the facts, as these are widely available in textbooks and of course on the Internet. I think that my role is to support students as they learn the skills that they will need to be professionals and citizens, and critical thinking skills are high up in the list of the skills that they will need. But the result of my thinking about our current situation suggests to me that I also have the responsibility to help my students to develop a range of dispositions that will support their critical thinking. At present, I think this is the best that I can do. I think that with effort, time and patience, dispositions to think critically can be learned and that they can be taught. I think that they are essentially affective learning outcomes, rather than cognitive outcomes. And while I think that university teachers should not teach some affective outcomes, I do think that university teachers should teach these particular dispositions. Actually, I think this is the essence of university teaching and perhaps the only universally applicable rationale for the existence of teaching within the university system.

Let’s Explore Two of These Dispositions in Detail On Having a Disposition to Being Open to the Possibility of Changing My Mind We should start off with something straightforward. Most of us are familiar with how difficult it is to change our mind about something that we feel comfortable with, particularly something that we have grown up with and accept in the natural course of things. This not the place for a dramatic personal admission, but I do need to provide a personal example…. I had never had a ‘proper’ conversation with a person who was not essentially the same, ethnically speaking, as me, until I went to university. Looking back, I am not at all sure what my opinion was about race, and difference, before that time, but I suspect that it was essentially typical of many from the south of England in the early 1970s, struggling with prejudice, intolerance and change. In my first few weeks at university, I met and had conversations with people from all around the world, including Ta from Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was then. Ta was for me very

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black and very African. He must have thought me to be very naïve, which no doubt I was. I couldn’t possibly have understood the world as Ta did, but our conversations certainly changed the way that I think, and the way that I see the world. I am not sure how it happened, but somehow, in those first few weeks at university, I found myself with a disposition to listen and to be open to the possibility of changing my mind. I think that a personal example was necessary here. There are, of course, many grander examples in history, where societies as a whole have changed their practices and possibly their minds, but often it is difficult to know if a change really occurred from within, or was induced from outside, or indeed if a society actually has a ‘mind’. The topic has, of course, been an important one in literature; I am guessing from all cultures, but my knowledge extends only to one particular culture, where Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels emphasises to me the question of societal mindsets, and how they are maintained and challenged. The many subheadings in the previous chapter indicate the wide range of things that impact on our ‘beliefs and actions’ but suggest that only individuals’ critical thinking will create change from within. Societal change surely does occur, but with respect to the topic of this book, likely only our decedents will discover how effectively that change occurred at the societal level. Bigotry is variously defined, but frequently as obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices. Perhaps unkindly we all too readily transfer a personal difficulty (bigotry) into a descriptive trait for that person (bigot). Nevertheless, from an educational perspective, it is bigotry that we have problems with, not bigots. As educators, we would like to think that we encourage our students to not have an obstinate or intolerant devotion to their own opinions and prejudices. In some senses, learning requires the opposite and there is a very real sense in which critical thinking is the opposite of bigoted thinking. The educational research on changing one’s mind is not extensive, but does focus on a particular form of thinking that has converged on the concept of ‘open-minded thinking’ and a related ‘willingness to reconsider’. In the grand scheme of educational and psychological research, these ideas form part of the larger disciplinary construct of decision-making. Key researchers in this include Stanovich, West and Baron. A particularly useful tool to explore open-minded thinking is the Active Open-Minded Thinking Scale, attributed to Stanovich and West (2007) although much of the original development of the idea was by Baron. Use of this tool, and derivations of it, tell us that there is considerable diversity in how open-minded people are and that the application of this quality is open to educational intervention. Actually, this is where I need to be pedantic. Use of the tool tells us that there is considerable diversity in how people self-report their open-mindedness, and that application of this quality is open to educational intervention, in educational environments. Let me explain. On self-reporting open-mindedness: The Active Open-Minded Thinking Scale includes statements which individuals are invited to reflect on, and agree with, or not. Statements include ‘It is important to persevere in your beliefs even when evidence is brought to bear against them’, ‘Changing your mind is a sign of weakness’ and ‘Intuition is the best guide in making decisions’. How people respond to these statements probably reflects a range of parameters. Are they willing to think deeply

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and critically about their opinion on the matter? Are they capable of doing so? Do they consider that there is a right and a wrong answer? Are they under scrutiny? Are they anonymous in the survey? Does getting the right answer matter to them? And, of course, how open-minded are they? If they are open-minded, changing their mind might not be considered a sign of weakness, persevering with their beliefs might not be the best way forward and they would consider that intuition only takes them so far in making decisions. In my own use of tools such as this one (broadly described as attitude scales), I personally celebrate when students respond in a way that assures me that they felt anonymous in the process. Anonymity provides some assurance that students have not responded in a way designed to please the researchers or to advantage themselves in some way. Such is my attachment to anonymity I have in the past been pleased when students have included rude comments about me and other researchers in their responses. Fellow researchers have been quite upset, but these events provide me with some confidence that students actually are self-reporting the way they feel. I express doubt about the reliability of attitude surveys that do not emphasise anonymity. On balance, I think that self-reported open-mindedness is something that can be researched with care, but that researchers must be mindful of the circumstances in which the research was undertaken. We do not know, for example, how self-reported open-mindedness varies with respect to what precisely people are being asked to be open-minded about. On teaching people to be open-minded: a range of educational interventions are possible, but in essence, research suggests that learners should be encouraged and supported to explore alternative explanations for a phenomenon or event, or search for arguments to support both sides of a debate. Some research does suggest that if university students are repeatedly required to do this, and encouraged in the process, not only do they find the task increasingly more straightforward, but also they acquire the habit of thinking in this way. We might say that such students have developed the skill and disposition to critically think in this particular way. What we do not know, I suggest, is whether or not such a disposition (if that is what it is, and not just a rational response to an educational assessment) carries forward into life beyond education and without the motivation provided by educational assessment and by educational role models. As I write this, and struggle to address the nuances of understanding the complex academic nature of deep, independent and critical thinking, I am pondering on my own motivation to think critically about these things. This paragraph has taken me weeks of thinking to get it into this form. Its structure and relationships did not come easily to me. I guess the effort that I put into it does provide some evidence, at least to me, that I have developed a disposition to think critically about such matters. I remain confident that teaching higher education students to develop the dispositions to think critically is the most important thing that university teachers can do, but I am still not confident that we know how to do it well. I do not have a magic formula. And I am still open to the possibility that I have got it wrong. Even worse, I struggle to identify how best to evaluate, or assess, this educational outcome. For now, I have some respite in my struggle to think critically about this because I can leave these issues to later chapters in Part 3 of this book. Unfortunately, because I likely have

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burdened myself with this disposition, I shall have sleepless nights for a while yet, as my mind ponders on this challenge.

On Having a Disposition to Fairness Far more problematically, we should ponder a while on Scriven and Paul’s universal intellectual value of ‘fairness’, and on Facione’s expert panel’s ‘disposition to be fairminded in appraising reasoning’. On the face of it, and in the context of sustainability, this is potentially a game changer. In considering, for example, whether to buy recycled paper to print on or just the cheapest or most widely available paper, not only do we have to apply our critical thinking skills to the issue, but we also have to underpin the use of these skills with a disposition to be, for example, fair-minded. But we must ask ‘Fair to whom or to what?’ And what, exactly, is fairness? And how universal is fairness? As a young teenager, perhaps 13, I lost all of my pocket money to the gaming machines on Swansea Pier, in one sitting. I had saved up my pocket money for weeks, to spend on a fortnight long field course. I was with friends, and almost for the first time in my life, away from my brother and parents. Even though all of my money disappeared, I do not remember thinking that this was unfair. Even at that age, I was sufficiently inculcated into the nature of competition and the law of the jungle to realise that gambling could go either way. I resented being beaten by these terrible machines, but I suspect that I considered the defeat to be fair, albeit unfortunate. Perhaps I had not realised at that point how far the odds were against me, but now I look back and think how privileged I was to have learnt that lesson at that age, and with only my pocket money at stake, and I hope that my own children have learnt a similar lesson. Now I consider this experience to be a lesson in fairness, an opportunity to reflect on what fairness is and an observation on the context-dependency of fairness. Similarly, my own critical thinking suggests that by and large recycled paper is better for the environment and better for societies here in New Zealand and abroad. Given the inefficiencies involved in producing it and the nature of capitalism, I daresay that it is better for the world’s economies as well. I take my critical thinking, balance it against the numerous pressures exerted against this decision, including some derision from departmental colleagues about how uneconomical and hence unfair to them I am, and I choose to print on recycled paper. I accept that I may be wrong and that I will need to reconsider this matter on occasions. For now, this is the best decision, but am I being fair? And in choosing to own a car and to use it, am I being fair? In choosing to eat meat, am I being fair? The notion of fairness has, of course, occupied philosophers for centuries. John Rawls and David Hume perhaps deserve particular mention, but beyond stating that fairness matters, it is difficult to draw specific conclusions about what fairness is and is not. Fairness is clearly related to justice, but also draws upon morals and

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morality for particular expression, and for some, circumstance is a necessary adjunct to fairness. For example, what is and is not fair in something’s distribution is often easier to agree on when humans are involved in the distribution, rather than, say, nature. Any form of unequal distribution may be deemed unfair by some, but so might equal distribution by others. Nature may be blind to need, urgency and excess, but humans often are not. Chance and randomness similarly intervene in deciding if something is fair or not. At present, and noting that as I think more about these matters my views might change, I suspect that the disposition to fairness does not, or should not, seek a particular outcome with the quality of fairness, but should involve a process with the quality of fairness, or fair-mindedness. In these terms, people with a disposition to fairness think deeply about their decisions and how and why they come to them. As with the previous section, on having a disposition to open-mindedness, sleepless nights and a guilty conscience seem to me to be inevitable. But it is important to note that not all educators would agree with my outcome/process split. Those who advocate for global equality and related constructs clearly do have a fair destination in mind. I go as far as to say that fairness matters, but that I often struggle to say what is and is not fair. A morally good outcome may not be fair to all concerned, but a process that considered all aspects of fairness might provide the best possible outcome. I have written elsewhere about different ethical traditions that underpin these matters (Shephard 2015). On teaching the disposition to be fair-minded: unfortunately, the academic literature appears divided on this issue, in as much as it identifies the task as an issue in the first place. For me, with process uppermost in mind, practice combined with critical reasoning and collaborative enquiry is likely the best approach. Similarly, and along the same lines, it would not be reasonable to assess someone’s disposition to be fair-minded by referring to the product of their fair-mindedness. Assessing the nature of the process that they used in order to reach a fair conclusion may provide a better route to assuring ourselves about the application of this particular disposition in any particular circumstance. At present, here in New Zealand, our universities are struggling to understand our roles with respect to free speech and opening our campuses to those with contrary points of view. It seems to me that not only do we need to help students acquire the skills to think deeply, critically and independently, but we also need to provide them with opportunities to practice their application. To my mind there is no better place than the university campus for our wider society to entertain the contrary points of views pronounced by our nation’s and planet’s differently thinking speakers. New Zealand has legislation to curb the promulgation of, for example, racial hatred, and these laws must of course apply, but in limiting access to different points of view we are limiting the opportunities of our students to test their own points of view as they develop dispositions to think critically, including the disposition to be fair-minded in the process.

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A Note on Universal Values Readers may be struggling with the idea that some values might be universal. Scriven and Paul in 1987 identified clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth and fairness as universal intellectual values in this context. But then readers might also be struggling with the very concept of a value; as indeed Scriven no doubt did in 1966 when he wrote: We must distinguish values in the very widest sense, which includes standards of any kind referring to any field (preferential values), from moral (normative) values and these in turn from personal standards of behaviour and thought (prudential and conventional values); and we must distinguish between the widest spread of the term “value,” which includes every item-preference, and the sense in which it refers to more abstract criteria (honesty, etc.); and we must distinguish objective values (if any) from (a) falsely professed valves, (b) truly professed values, (c) truly professed and actually operative values, and (d) implicit values (values that their owners reject but which nevertheless motivate them); and we must distinguish values in the sense of external goals from values in the sense of internal sets or attitudes, and values as individual properties from values as group properties. (Scriven 1966, np)

And to make progress in this fraught field of enquiry we should, of course, apply as many of Scriven and Paul’s intellectual values as we think relevant to our exploration of universal values; clarity and consistency appear to me to be particularly important here. To explore this conundrum in more depth, I suggest that we focus on one value, fairness, to survey the breadth of its application. To do this, I need to weave together some traditional philosophical ideas and some modern ones. Readers will know by now that I regularly read the UK’s Times Higher Education Supplement as I have provided references to it on several occasions in this book. It is not of course an academic source, but it does provide some really good stories that help to put some rather academic or esoteric discourse into an everyday context. While I was pondering on this chapter, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Natural Resources and Environment in Papua New Guinea (PNG) had to flee for his life from PNG to Australia. Professor John Warren was originally from Wales but he and his wife had decided to spend some time in faraway places to explore the world. Professor Warren wrote on occasions for the Times Higher Education Supplement and readers were fascinated by his experiences in PNG. But Professor Warren described how his approach to running his university conflicted with the expectations and practices of the university council and Chancellor. Things came to a head when he wanted to apply conventional western higher education approaches to appoint senior members of staff (as described by Professor Warren, on merit) and his Council wanted to adopt more traditional PNG approaches (Pells 2018). It turns out that universities in PNG are not the same as universities in New Zealand, Australia and Wales in that they do some things in a different way. As Professor Warren describes, the particular way characteristic of PNG is based on the wantok system, or tribal allegiances, and these allegiances outweigh many other factors in deciding who to appoint to senior positions in universities. That’s not fair we might say, particularly if we do not come from PNG ourselves, and have missed out on the

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social conventions of the wantok system. Fairness, in this context, is evidently not universal, as senior members of that university’s council clearly did have a particular notion of what is and is not fair. Some recent research comes to our rescue. A broad range of social psychology research has been exploring the nature of morality and its relevance to decisionmaking and to the nature of the decisions that people make. John Haidt and Craig Joseph are particularly well known in this context and Haidt (2012) describes one very useful model that identifies the moral foundations that people round the world tend to draw on. The basic five are as follows: Care: involving the protection of others and the opposite of harm. Fairness or proportionality: involving the application of justice according to shared rules and the opposite of cheating. Loyalty: involving support for your group, family or nation and the opposite of betrayal. Authority/respect: involving submission to submitting to tradition and legitimate authority and traditions and the opposite of being subversive. Sanctity or purity: involving abhorrence for disgusting things and the opposite of degradation. Liberty, and its opposite oppression, is sometimes added to this list of five. Social psychologists suggest that there are strong correlations between how people identify with these moral foundations and both their political ideology and their cultural origins. A considerable body of research suggests that conservatives in several countries tend to focus on loyalty, authority and sanctity, while more libertarian thinkers tend to pay regard to all five, or six, moral foundations. My own reading of the situation in Papua New Guinea and of Professor Warren’s plight suggest that the wantok system does emphasise loyalty above all others, perhaps to a greater degree than some other cultures. Sociologist postulates that these moral foundations, and the differences in the way that they are emphasised, represent fundamental differences in how people think and act, with perhaps a primary schism or dichotomy between wanting to act for the group, or tribe, and wanting to act for individuals within the group. At present, I am not sure where wanting to act for the planet fits into this scheme, but perhaps we might say that the concepts, or values, inherent to these moral foundations are indeed universal, but their application within societies is not. Of course, ideas on the universality of values have a long history in philosophy, particularly where the values have an obvious moral side to them. In recent years, and certainly with a nod towards sustainability, educational philosophers have worked on this issue. To a degree, we have moved from the twentieth century to the twenty-first century with an enduring schism between those who find no rational for universal morality (Butler and Mouffe provide convincing arguments along these lines) and those who do (Nussbaum is an important social commentator in this respect). Readers who wish to explore these ideas in depth will find the writing of Sund and Ohman helpful (Sund and Öhman 2014). My own exploration of this literature led me to Laclau and, for me, an important way forward in my own quest for a purpose for higher education. ‘… the impossibility

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of universal ground does not eliminate its need: it just transforms the ground into an empty place which can partially be filled in a variety of ways (the strategies of this filling is what politics is about)’. (Laclau 1996, 158). In recent years, for me, what is or is not fair when it comes to diverse moral foundations, ethical traditions, needs and power relationships inherent to the wicked problems of sustainability needs to be negotiated. In effect, the issues of sustainability are entirely dependent on negotiation, and as Laclau so elegantly put it, for my benefit, this is what politics is about. And it is clear to me that this is also what higher education should be about; not to cast in concrete in the minds of the next generation the science that underpins our concerns, or the values of our own societies, or what is, and what is not, fair, or to accept the inevitability of more of the same, but to prepare the next generation for negotiating what will occupy the universal ground that exists in front of us all. It seems to me now, more than ever before, that the fundamental role for higher education is to help the next generation to develop the skills and dispositions to think deeply, critically and independently in preparation for the negotiations to come. Perhaps now is the time, and place, for me to return to the two dispositions that I choose to illustrate the general principles of deep, critical and independent thinking in the paragraphs above, a disposition to being open to the possibility of changing my mind and a disposition to fairness. Although many, or all, of the dispositions listed in Chapter 7 and of the ‘universal intellectual values’ described above may be essential qualities for negotiators to possess, on my mind is the possibility that these two are more so than others. Imagine if you will a future where graduates of higher education have the skills and dispositions to reconsider their position on matters of importance to them and to others, and to be fair-minded in their shared quest for a negotiated and sustainable future.

A Note on Recursive Thinking It would be amiss of me to fail to mention at least one product of deep, critical and independent thinking that higher education might encourage young people to address. I hesitate to do so, as so many of my ideas and hopes for higher education are different from providing students with some formula for success, or rationale for accepting the inevitable. At least in part, I feel that deep, critical and independent thinkers should discover for themselves limitations that may exist in their abilities and to address them, themselves. Surely if higher education empowers anything, it should empower that? But set against that I have to put my own struggles to understand recursion, and recursive thinking, and at least say something to get the ball rolling. Recursion is a programming process adopted by computer scientists. It is also a linguistic device. In both situations, something can be said to be recursive if it draws on itself to make progress. So, for example, a definition that appeals to what is being defined is recursive. The more we find out about recursion, the more we are forced to accept that so much of our language, and our thinking about how we exist, is recursive. Gregor Bateson is credited with much of the thinking that underpins

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these ideas and Chet Bowers with the thinking that related much of Bateson’s work to matters of sustainability. As the late Gregory Bateson warns, our survival depends upon a radical transformation of the dominant patterns of thinking in the West. These patterns are widely shared, passed along in everyday conversations, and encoded in the built culture. The institutions that give special legitimacy to these patterns of thinking are the public schools and universities. They also have the greatest potential for providing the conceptual space necessary for understanding the historical roots of the misconceptions underlying the myth that if humans rely upon rational thought they can control the changes occurring in natural systems. They also are sites where students can learn about the nature of ecological intelligence, and how the exercise of ecological intelligence leads to correcting the destructive impacts of earlier assumptions and practices on natural systems and human communities. (Bowers 2010, 1).

I suggest that, for critically thinking people, these ideas enable the reformulation of the concept of a wicked problem. Wicked problems are not necessarily unsolvable, but appear so because of the recursive nature of the thinking that has defined them. Our understanding of sustainability, for example, is tied up in our upbringing, our languages and our metaphors, perhaps, in particular, by emphasising the needs, powers and responsibilities of individuals. Personally, I see great potential in making progress using the ideas of Bateson and Bowers, but at present, I doubt the ability and willingness of university people to think in these ways, or even to attempt to think in these ways. The nature of formal education as we know it at present appears to me to be irrevocably focussed on individuals. I have far more confidence in universities’ abilities, and willingness, to engage more seriously with deep, critical and independent thinking; hence, this book and much of my research over the past decade. But I accept that this may be just a step towards the real changes necessary, as imagined by Bateson.

A Note on Critical Mass It does appear to me that deep, critical and independent thinking is more often than not a lonely pursuit. Its product is not necessarily conducive to successful outcomes, be they student assessments, peer-reviewed publications or academic grant applications, as those who review, assess or make funding judgements are not necessarily themselves capable of deep, critical and independent thinking, or recognising it when they see it. In most cases, as I see it, so many other assessment criteria, and criteria for peer-reviewed publication and for funding decisions, are much easier to apply. By this logic, deep, critical and independent thinkers are not necessarily academic high flyers. But what would happen if progressively higher education comes to emphasise deep, critical and independent thinking and, one thinking person at a time, gradually and progressively increases the proportion of these graduates in a cohort? How many deep, critical and independent thinkers does it take to change a light bulb? Or to save the planet? How many is a critical mass? What if we changed the nature of

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assessment, to focus less on disciplines, and more on generic critical thinking skills and dispositions, and what if we did this collaboratively, between institutions and nations, so that our critical mass of critically thinking graduates made an international cohort, or movement, of deep, critical and independent thinkers? What then? Time will surely tell, but on the way hopefully higher education will reach a stage where those who have the skills and dispositions to think deeply, critically and independently about sustainability, and coincidently come to the same conclusions, will meet, converse and agree to change the world.

References Bowers, C. (2010). The insights of Gregory Bateson on the connections between language and the ecological crisis. Language and Ecology, 3(2), 1. Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon Books. Laclau, E. (1996). Emancipation(S). London: Verso. Pells, R. (2018). Expatriate v-c and wife flee Papua fearing for their lives. Times Higher Education Supplement, 2372, 6–7. Scriven, M. (1966). Student values as educational objectives. SSEC Publication No. 124. Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse. Washington, D.C. Scriven, M., & Paul, R. (1987). Cited by the foundation for critical thinking. Defining Critical Thinking, Retrieved February 21, 2019, from https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/definingcritical-thinking/766. Shephard, K. (2015). Higher education for sustainable development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Shephard, K., & Egan, T. (2018). Higher education for professional and civic values: A critical review and analysis. Sustainability, 10(12), 4442. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10124442. Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2007). Natural my-side bias is independent of cognitive ability. Thinking & Reasoning, 13, 225–247. Sund, L., & Öhman, J. (2014) On the need to repoliticise environmental and sustainability education: Rethinking the postpolitical consensus. Environmental Education Research, 20(5), 639–659.

Part III

Changing Our Practices

I do think that our students come to us with a moral compass, but not necessarily one that will take our societies towards what we currently imagine could be sustainability, and not one that we have any right to dictate to, even if we had the desire to do so. Nor can we assume that our students are capable of critical thinking or have the dispositions to do so. And in the morally fraught and intellectually challenging context of sustainability, every one of us is quite capable of coming to our own particular conclusions and ignoring them in our own particular ways of meeting the challenges of existing. But higher education collectively does have some skills and responsibilities, if we choose to apply them. Clearly, we know how to teach critical thinking skills but whether we routinely do so, and the extent to which we do so, is uncertain. It seems likely to me that many in higher education attempt to teach our students to develop the dispositions to think critically, deeply and independently, but how successfully they do this is uncertain, and surely we have a great deal more to discover about how to teach these dispositions. Any assumption that students who do have critical thinking skills and dispositions to use them would necessarily in some way be more inclined towards sustainability would be a leap in faith, and for me a leap too far. I traverse that particular chasm by simply stating that if this is the best that higher education can do, we should be doing it. Perhaps I would go further than I ought by stating that surely doing the best for our students that we possibly can involves empowering them to understand the reasons why they and we think in the way that they and we do, and enabling them to understand the impacts education and educators have had on them. And I am mindful that higher education does have to limit what it seeks to do, to retain the right to be higher, rather than simply more, education. Beyond that, I offer no conclusions that our students should reach. Central to these ideas is the need for higher education to research its practices and its possibilities far more than it does at present, to monitor the impact that it is currently having with far more intelligence than we do at present, and to apply what we learn to what we do. Part III starts the process of exploring these things by looking in detail at three aspects of learning and teaching that I think will need to be at the core of what we do in the future.

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• Community engagement, or higher education’s third mission, is addressed in Chap. 9, as it has demonstrated its ability to promote many of the traits of deep, critical and independent thinking explored in Part II. • Ways to understand how our students might be empowered to think and to act independently are addressed in Chap. 10. • Chapter 11 emphasises the all important mission of finding ways to ensure that we are on the right track as we teach deep, critical and independently thinking graduates.

A Conversation with a Critical Friend Critical Friend: OK… yes I feel a little more positive about your attitude towards universities now. At least I see where you are coming from and the direction that you are heading in. Part II was certainly less gloomy than Part I. And something that resonates with me is the idea that higher education as a whole is probably quite capable of doing much, if not all, of what you think is involved here. Higher education has identified approaches that could support student learning, not only of the skills involved in thinking deeply, critically and independently but also, although perhaps less certainly, the dispositions to think in these ways. The reasons that these things are not necessarily happening seems to me to be essentially simply just the nature of higher education. Higher education teachers have so much that they should do, that they cannot possibly do it all. Their responsibilities are awesome and society is so forgiving of their failings if they manage to at least address the most important bits of their never-ending to-do list. Kerry: I think you’re right. This probably is the crux of the problem. If you give yourself an impossibly large or long list of things to do you are also implicitly giving yourself permission to not do it all. In this context it may be the most challenging bits that get left in the too-hard basket. But I think, of course, that it is these challenging bits that we need to prioritise. So much of what we do is just not as important but because it is easier to do or easier to quantify or easier to demonstrate that we doing it, then we get on and do that rather than doing the really important bits. Critical Friend: I need time to think about doing the ‘best that we can do’ part of your argument. All too often this is used as an excuse for not achieving something, but somehow you are turning on its head and asking higher education to own up to identifying what ‘doing its best’ actually means. Right now I think that’s a bit of a challenge for the people who I know in higher education. For a start they would have to agree that what they are currently doing is not the best they can do. Kerry: and it may be worse than that. Not only do people have to accept that they’re not currently doing the best that they can but maybe they’ve also got to accept that even if they did do the best they could do, it still wouldn’t be good enough. I’m not sure where to go with that one. Perhaps it’s just another reason to leave things in the too-hard basket. Why bother if it will not work anyhow? On another issue, are you any happier now about my writing approach than you were after Part I? As well as suggesting that I could be more positive, you thought that I might be less personal.

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Critical Friend: I have been thinking about that. I was quite surprised in Part I that you put so much of yourself into what is, at its heart, an academic book, that will largely be read by academics. But I have to admit that somehow this style has drawn me into your arguments, in Part I to reconsider my perspective on higher education’s role with respect to sustainability, but also in Part II, with respect to ‘deep, critical and independent thinking’. Although I felt obliged to read Part II, I was prepared to dislike it. As it happens it forced me to reconsider most of what I’d previously thought I understood about critical thinking. I can imagine that you’re about to tell me that I’ve been thinking deeply, critically and independently about critical thinking, and that the struggles involved in this thinking have been good for me. I’m not so sure about that. I may be your critical friend but I think I’m also one of those readers that you mention in Chap. 8 who got there without really understanding, as you say, the key points of your argument. But in the process I did go away and read something about recursion, and it made my head hurt, so you must be getting through to me in some senses. Kerry: thank you for that. I shall for the time-being think of that as some positive feedback! It sounds obvious, but my design for writing Part II was to encourage readers to be thinking deeply, critically and perhaps independently as they were reading it. I guess that most academic writers have this intention anyhow, and only feedback will tell me how successfully I manage this. The critical thinking literature is full of ideas about how university teachers can encourage learners, or in this case book readers, to think critically while they are learning, or reading. One of the approaches that some recommend is based on autobiographical disclosure. The idea is that the teacher or writer includes elements of their own experiences that have helped or encouraged them to think in particular ways. It may not be the particular circumstance that resonates with learners, although it may be, but developing some notion of common ground, or common experience, may actually be a critical factor here. Having said that, I know from my own experience and from the feedback that others have provided me on my last book that this particular approach is not universally successful. I gather that some find the approach helpful but that the others find it really annoying. In general I cannot use this approach in much of my academic writing, but somehow in writing a book rather than an academic journal article, I feel more liberated! There is more to come in Part III.

Chapter 9

Community Engagement and Higher Education’s Third Mission

Back in Chapter 8 I noted that legislation in New Zealand insists that the principal aim of universities is to develop our students’ intellectual independence. University teachers, and their institutions, in general, agree that it is their role to teach their students a range of higher order cognitive abilities that collectively enable them to think critically, and likely independently. I suggested that (at least until we get a better idea of what is necessary) we should equate intellectual independence with choosing to think deeply, critically and independently. Chapter 8 went on to focus on teaching and learning the skills and dispositions to think critically, with a focus on fair-mindedness and to be willing to change one’s mind. But Chapter 8 left the circumstances in which this teaching and learning might occur to Part 3 of this book, and this chapter emphasises one such circumstance, community engagement. I dare say that it is possible for some teachers to teach some students the skills and dispositions to be deep, independent and critical thinkers in almost any circumstances. I have experienced some wonderful university teachers who thrive in formal lectures and for whom these matters are simply part of the job. I suspect that their best students achieve all that is expected of them. But I am equally certain that this is often not the case. All too often in my experience, university lectures turn into situations where knowledge is transmitted from one person to many. We need to cherish other learning and teaching circumstances and other learning and teaching activities if we are to achieve more in higher education. Above all, our students need to experience opportunities to have their ideas challenged and, in most cases, an obligation to consider and reconsider their ideas following these experiences.

On Reflection There is nothing new, in an educational theory sense, to this proposition. Dewey, at the start of the last century, emphasised that thoughtful deliberation required situations where learners had to ‘endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of search© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_9

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ing. .. to sustain and protract [a] state of doubt’ (Dewey 1910, 16) to become a thoughtful and educated citizen. Such anti-foundational ideas have come to be seen as underpinning the nature of thoughtfulness, or as often described, critical reflection. In my own writing, I have emphasised that the nature of learning often sought in community-engaged education is values-based, rather than simply cognitive. I suggested, for example, that ‘Those who propose and support service learning hope that their students will not only learn about, for example, the struggles of disadvantaged citizens, but also develop values, attitudes and dispositions that may in the future help them, as citizens or leaders, to do something about them. There is an inherent interplay between educational approaches that focus on experience, higher order cognitive learning, the development of critical reflection skills, and affect’. (Shephard 2015, 77). Nor should we underestimate the extent to which educational researchers have explored and debated these domains. Reflection and critical reflection are, in particular, highly debated educational outcomes. The work of Jack Mezirow was mentioned in a previous chapter and here I should at least comment on the wealth of educational ideas about how to encourage our students to consider and reconsider their viewpoints following educational experiences. As with critical thinking itself, we may need to teach students how to think about their educational anti-foundational experiences. Although many models are available for university teachers to explore, I like the DEAL approach developed by Ash and Clayton, in which students are asked to describe their experiences, examine them and to articulate what they have learned (Ash and Clayton 2009). In Ash and Clayton’s model, the critical reflection processes emerge as desired learning outcomes that can be planned for by university teachers. Critical reflection, identified in this way, becomes an intended outcome in its own right and a pathway to more complex learning outcomes. An important element of this form of experiential learning is that learners are exposed to experiences, such as during community engagement incorporating service learning, volunteering and some forms of overseas experience, as these experiences generally provide anti-foundational aspects of learning on which reflection can occur. In an educational sense, we should be confident that, if we choose to expose our students to anti-foundational experiences, say through community engagement, we do have some great ideas about how these experiences can be contributory to the development of our student’s intellectual independence. I am personally particularly interested in the role of community engagement in higher education’s quest for sustainability education, and for sustainability. The ideas in this chapter are substantially based on research conducted with colleagues and published in academic articles that will be described in more detail in the paragraphs that follow.

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Is There Something Special About Community-Engaged Learning and Teaching? First, we should explore the world of community engagement in more detail, and I need to add a few home truths. When I first encountered the idea of community engagement in the context of higher education, in the 1990s, I was deeply sceptical. I was teaching biology at a university in the UK at the time and although I thought I knew quite a lot about higher education teaching and learning, looking back I realise I didn’t. The ideas promulgated at the time in England were focused on the notion of service with very little link to student learning. The general idea was to broaden the experience of university students in the hope that it would eventually make them more rounded citizens. The idea of ‘giving back’ was also very much at the heart of what was proposed. I remember thinking that my students would be better off spending more time in the laboratory or in the field getting a different sort of experience. Since then ideas about community service have transformed substantially into a focus on learning with, in most cases, a specific emphasis on the learning gains that our students potentially achieve rather than simply on service to the community. That’s not to say that the wider community is just being used as a resource to support student learning (although often that is a criticism and something to be acknowledged and avoided). The ideas are far more nuanced than that and described in more detail below. Community-engaged learning (also identified as service learning) is one of several higher education practices that research suggests have particularly high impact on student learning. A substantial body of research work to support this statement has been summarised by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (2019) and many individual universities around the world go out of their way to emphasise the importance of service learning opportunities for students, university teachers and for communities. The University of Minnesota is perhaps one of the best-recognised universities for developing and promoting the benefits of community engagement for student learning (see, for example, University of Minnesota Centre for CommunityEngaged Learning 2011). And, to be sure, my own research experiences back this up. Some years ago, I was asked by a colleague, Associate Professor Martin Tolich, who had recently integrated some significant community engagement into his teaching, to help him to research its impact, particularly on student learning. Working with research assistants over 2 years, we explored students’ perceptions of their activities and learning alongside their actual experiences. These sociology undergraduate students were working in teams to support local community groups, at the same time as they were studying and learning. Overall, in this course, they were learning to be sociology researchers and their learning situation was described as an internship. As research interns, they were to learn not only the knowledge and skills involved in research, but also the identity of sociology researchers.

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For the students, this internship was not just another class. Their stories reflect on their abilities as researchers and their adoption of attitudes towards appropriate research approaches, processes and outputs typical of professional qualitative researchers. Our research suggested that these students experienced some tough times (and indeed that tough times had been designed into the course!). A significant theme within our data was that students had to overcome some substantial fears in meeting the expectations of their community partners, and that they did so one by one, with support and encouragement and mentoring (the students identified Martin more like a mentor than a teacher). Another theme that pervaded our research data was that students developed a strong sense that the work they were involved in was about far more than their own learning. They reflected on the value of their efforts for community groups and that the work that they did was substantially to benefit others, rather than for their grades. Perhaps most important for me, and for my perceptions about the value of community engagement for student learning in the context of sustainability, was the extent to which the course required students to critically reflect on their own limitations, their prior and current experiences, their abilities and confidence, and their achievements. In so many ways, the community engagement on which this course is predicated supports and enables the students involved to develop the deep, critical and independent thinking skills that intellectual independence needs. I found being involved in this research to be a great privilege and I am deeply grateful to my academic colleague and to his students for the opportunity. We published our findings (Tolich et al. 2015). I have no doubt that community-engaged learning and teaching is achieving these things in many places around the world. This thought gives me great hope for the future, and for higher educations’ contribution to the future.

On National and Institutional Rhetoric About Community Engagement There should be no doubt that, at least in a historical sense, universities, their teachers, researchers and students have been expected to engage with their communities. It may be that this feature of academic life was gradually lost as the research university progressively came to dominate the idea of the university in the nineteenth century, but it was re-established for a time with, for example, the creation of the Land Grant Universities in the USA in the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, it needed to be rediscovered again in the 1990s. At that time, Boyer, a professor in the USA, was concerned that university professors occupied their intellect far more with their research than with other aspects of their scholarship. He set out to rediscover broader conceptualisations of scholarship and in the process promoted community engagement as an element of university work with particular reference to the scholarship of engagement (Boyer 1996). He also, and particularly, identified this work as something more than service, as increasingly university professors had

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thought to dispense of their engagement roles by simply being good citizens within the university and outside of it. Gelmon, Jordan and Seifer provided a useful commentary on these matters in 2013. Gelmon et al. emphasise that ‘Universities … are increasingly expected to play a leadership role in addressing problems of the larger community by engaging with practitioners outside of the academy’, and provide a useful summary of the current status of community-engaged scholarship, with strong links to a wide range of less conventional university roles (Gelmon et al. 2013, 59). Much in this broad debate emphasises diversity in how academic colleagues conceptualise the nature of and need for community engagement. To highlight the challenges encountered by engaged individuals and institutions, and to help to explain them, Boland described this diversity in a typology of academic orientations to civic engagement to include personal, student/learning, civic and other higher education orientations (Boland 2011). For Boyer and for Gelmon and colleagues, what distinguishes communityengaged scholarship from some forms of service, community service or indeed from some forms of less-scholarly community engagement includes; having a clearly stated goal, using well-defined and appropriate procedures, having access to adequate resources and using these effectively, creating significant results and communicating these effectively, and engaging in reflective critique. Boyer and others insist that these same attributes apply equally to all forms of scholarship, including research and teaching. As Boyer (1996, 22) suggests, service, defined in this way, ‘… is serious demanding work requiring the rigour and accountability traditionally associated with research activities’. The situation in New Zealand may be particularly relevant to our interests in sustainability education internationally. A significant body of research funding has recently been committed via our National Science Challenges demanding more measurable and visible contributions to our national productivity, and to environmental and social well-being, with greater emphasis on partnership and cooperation than before. There are also strong links between these ideas and our recently adopted National Strategic Plan, ‘A Nation of Curious Minds’, that promotes a more scientifically and technologically engaged public and a more publicly engaged science sector.1 The situation in New Zealand may also be particularly relevant to international readers’ interests because of the relationships that exist between peoples with different and diverse ethnic origins. New Zealand’s legislative framework requires, for example, participation of M¯aori (the people who lived in New Zealand before European settlers arrived) and inclusion of M¯aori perspectives in many decision-making processes. These international trends and national expectations are also reflected in the strategies adopted by New Zealand’s universities. My own university, the University of Otago, for example, in its Strategic Directions to 2020, acknowledges its role as critic 1 Readers

may access many of these programmes and commitments through the web pages of New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment https://www.govt.nz/organisations/ ministry-of-business-innovation-and-employment/

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and conscience of society, its research contribution to solve the world’s problems, its expectations that its students will ‘give back’ and its own efforts in community service and outreach (University of Otago 2013).

On Institutional Reality It is less clear that university colleagues in New Zealand universities are sufficiently prepared or supported to undertake these expectations of community engagement. Experience overseas does suggest that the academic preparation and support necessary is not of a trivial nature. Most universities in New Zealand do not have community-engagement support offices as are common in universities in the USA, for example; and my own research data suggests that community-engaged colleagues frequently identify as relatively isolated self-starters. Blanchard et al. (2012), in describing successful campus integration of community engagement, emphasise the challenges involved in faculty development for community engagement, even within an institution with a long tradition of community-engaged scholarship (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is widely recognised as an international leader in community-engaged scholarship). My own institution’s processes of support for new teachers and researchers do not necessarily address community-engaged scholarship. I suggest that we have some challenges ahead of us if higher education in New Zealand is to realise the potential of community engagement to promote the kinds of deep, critical and independent thinking necessary to achieve intellectual independence.

Research-Led Enquiry About Community-Engaged Learning and Teaching in New Zealand My own approach to understand educational challenges has always been to research them.

Diverse Conceptualisations About Community Engagement and Higher Education’s Responsibility to Be Community Engaged For higher education to have the kinds of impacts that the previous paragraphs of this chapter suggest are possible there would need to be some consistency, if not consensus, in the ways that our education teachers think about community engagement and

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about their role in relation to it. How do university teachers in New Zealand conceptualise community engagement? Colleagues and I conducted a study to examine how a diverse group of teachers, researchers and administrators at one New Zealand university conceptualised their involvement in community-engaged learning and teaching. We used a research approach called phenomenography to describe not only different conceptualisations but also how different ways of thinking about community engagement fitted together (Brown et al. 2016). We found that university people conceived their community engagement in three ways: within an expert/novice discourse, as advocacy, and in the most complex conception, as reciprocal learning. In some respects, an expert/novice discourse dominated our research findings. University people in our study frequently identified themselves as experts in a particular field of enquiry and members of the community as recipients of their expertise. Notions of service dominated this discourse with very little attention paid to any learning potentially achieved by these experts. In our experience, the concept of ‘service’ as something that we ‘in the university do for them in the community’ remains firmly embedded within higher education. No doubt with the best of intentions, my own university prioritises some particular aspects of community engagement at its highest strategic level. At Otago, we appear to emphasise student altruism, giving back, and the ‘collective strength of the Otago student body as a volunteer force able to do good in a wide range of areas, and the desire of many students to make a meaningful community contribution’ (University of Otago 2013, 6), rather than, for example, reciprocity and partnership. With respect to student learning, in particular, the international literature suggests that university people could, perhaps should, be supported to approach community engagement as reciprocal learning rather than adopting approaches that render community partners in passive roles.

On Getting Community Engagement into the Curriculum In another study, we explored the processes adopted by university teachers who engage with communities with a focus on asking how and why they became community engaged, an interest in what promotes and limits their engagement and how these limitations may be addressed. As part of a year-long research project, we interviewed 25 community-engaged colleagues and used a general inductive approach to identify recurring themes within interview transcripts. We found three coexisting and re-occurring themes within our interviews. Community-engaged scholars in our institution tended: to emphasise the importance of building enduring relationships between our institution and the wider community; to have personal ambitions to change aspects of our institution, our communities or the interactions between them; and identified community-engaged learning and teaching as a fruitful process to achieve these changes (highlighting the powerful nature of the learning that comes from community engagement in comparison with other more traditional means of teaching). Underlying these themes was a sense that

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community engagement requires those involved to take risks. In particular, some community-engaged scholars in our study felt unsupported and undervalued, and that their careers were not necessarily enhanced by their community-engaged activities (Shephard et al. 2017).

On Valuing Community Engagement Our study explored how community-engaged activities are valued, and evaluated, in more detail. Our study emphasised diverse conceptualisations of the nature of evaluation in this context, and concomitant concerns about where community engagement fits within this higher education institution. Community-engaged university people use mixed and sometimes sophisticated ways to evaluate the impact and nature of their community-engaged activities. But their efforts are hampered by a lack of international, national and institutional consensus on the value of community engagement. (How can we evaluate the attainment of something, when the value of what is being attained is itself contested?) This leads, in turn, to the imposition of ineffective and potentially demoralising approaches to describe, understand and evaluate their activities, often based on hours of activity, rather than, for example, on the enduring nature of the relationships formed. Clear guidelines on what it is within community engagement, or what occurs as a consequence of community engagement, that the academy values appear to be a prerequisite for successful evaluation but may not even be on our academic horizon (Shephard et al. 2018). This research also emphasises that even our most community-engaged colleagues do not necessarily understand the nature of community engagement sufficiently for such an analysis of value. For them, evaluation is itself part of the process of understanding the nature of what is being evaluated, and indeed is often part of their research journey. Of course, evaluation is a construct that exists in a wide range of disciplines as well as being a field of enquiry in its own right. A substantial discourse, for example, debates the nature of measurement within processes of evaluation, the relative advantages and disadvantages of collecting and interpreting qualitative and quantitative evaluative data and the potential of evaluation to be a managerial tool of control. For this reason, in particular in the social sciences, evaluative processes that go beyond simple measurement are sometimes identified as ‘critical evaluation’. Critical evaluation approaches in the context of community engagement often focus on the perspectives of community members, rather than on those of university people. In the context of engagement between indigenous communities and higher education practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand, kaupapa M¯aori approaches (a philosophical doctrine, incorporating the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values of M¯aori society) reflect a particular context for evaluation of M¯aori programmes. Culture represents a central aspect of evaluation that continues to evolve and inform more general approaches to evaluation nationally (Kerr 2012). What emerges from these discourses are significant challenges in deciding what exactly is valued by those involved in community engagement, how to add value in

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these situations and how to critically evaluate and reward the attainment of this value. As researchers, we were left in little doubt about the extent to which some of our university colleagues engage with the wider community, nor about the sophistication of the models within which they may conceptualise both the need for, and nature of, evaluation of impact. What appears to be most important here, however, is the realisation that evaluation is not possible without simultaneous reflection on what is valued. If what we value is no more than student satisfaction or the number of hours that academic colleagues spend in ‘service’, then we have functional evaluative processes already in place. But we surely doubt their efficacy with respect to some broader roles for community-engaged scholarship. If institutionally we value enhanced student learning in this context, we do need to develop programmes and evaluation processes accordingly.

Some Conclusions and Possible Ways Forward With respect to our major task of finding ways for higher education in New Zealand, and elsewhere, to contribute to the intellectual independence of our students, this chapter is not all positive. On the positive side, the broad literature on critical reflection and service learning does suggest that, if done well, community engagement may make significant contributions to the cognitive and affective elements of our students’ intellectual independence. In particular, community engagement provides one of the high-impact learning opportunities that universities can provide for their students. Community engagement puts students into positions where they have experiences that, in turn, demand reflection and internal comparison with their existing mental models of the world that surrounds them. By and large these experiences and subsequent reflections can be essentially social and very much part of a socially constructed process of learning. Clued-up universities and their teachers can construct their learning and teaching activities and intended learning outcomes around these possibilities. All good so far. On the less positive side, we need to acknowledge some problems or at least some issues to address. It appears that university people here in New Zealand, and likely elsewhere as well, conceptualise community engagement in a range of ways, some of which do not necessarily lend themselves to a focus on high-impact learning. Institutional rhetoric that promotes ‘giving back’, for example, emphasises the service aspect of community engagement without necessarily acknowledging or leveraging the learning that in other respects is associated with the service. Institutional processes that evaluate, or measure the value of, the community engagement that university teachers either participate in or organise, but do so in terms of hours spent rather than impact, likely fail to promote or encourage university teachers to take the risks that they, quite reasonably, perceive to accompany an academic lifestyle associated with community engagement. Academics who are community engaged

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emphasise the long timescales involved in this endeavour, and outcomes and outputs that do not necessarily align with institutional expectations of research papers published and citations achieved. Institutions, of course, are well within their rights to shift the blame upwards. If institutions are not funded to engage with communities, the odds are stacked against them doing so. If institutions themselves are measured using international rankings that favour publications over local impact, we must acknowledge how difficult it must be for institutional leaders to abandon some of their successful performance indicators in order to achieve a bare pass for others. It is, of course, a matter of balance and dare I say leadership and imagination, and all the more reason to acknowledge and celebrate that some university teachers work hard to ensure that their students not only become community engaged but also use this community engagement to achieve opportunities for student learning.

References Association of American College and Universities. (2019). High-impact educational practices. Retrieved February 8, 2019, from https://www.aacu.org/leap/hips. Ash, S. L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1, 25–48. Blanchard, L. W., Strauss, R. P., & Webb, L. (2012). Engaged scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Campus integration and faculty development. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 16(1), 97–128. Boland, J. A. (2011). Positioning civic engagement on the higher education landscape: Insights from a civically engaged pedagogy. Tertiary Education and Management, 17(2), 101–115. https://doi. org/10.1080/13583883.2011.562523. Boyer, E. L. (1996). From scholarship reconsidered to scholarship assessed. Quest, 48, 129–139. Brown, K., Shephard, K., Warren, D., Hesson, G., & Fleming, J. (2016). Using phenomenography to build an understanding of how university people conceptualise their community-engaged activities. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(4), 643–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07294360.2015.1137880. Dewey, J. (1910). How we think; heath. USA: Boston, MA. Gelmon, S. B., Jordan, C., & Seifer, S. D. (2013). Community-engaged scholarship in the academy: An action agenda. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 45(4), 58–66. https://doi.org/10. 1080/00091383.2013.806202. Kerr, S. (2012). Kaupapa M¯aori theory-based evaluation. Evaluation Journal of Australasia, 12(1), 6–18. Shephard, K. (2015). Higher education for sustainable development. Palgrave Macmillan UK: London, UK. Shephard, K., Brown, K., & Guiney, T. (2017). Researching the professional-development needs of community-engaged scholars in a New Zealand University. Sustainability, 9, 1249. https://doi. org/10.3390/su9071249. Shephard, K., Brown, K., Guiney, T., & Deaker, L. (2018). Valuing and evaluating communityengaged scholarship. Tertiary Education and Management, 24(1), 83–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13583883.2017.1395904.

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Tolich, M., Scarth, B., & Shephard, K. (2015). Teaching sociology students to become qualitativeresearchers using an internship model of learner-support. Journal of Social Science Education 14 (4), np. https://doi.org/10.2390/jsse-v14-i4-1314. University of Minnesota Centre for Community-Engaged Learning. (2011). Benefits of servicelearning. Retrieved February 8, 2019, from http://www.servicelearning.umn.edu/info/benefits. html. University of Otago. (2013). Strategic directions to 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2019, from https:// www.otago.ac.nz/otago053226.pdf.

Chapter 10

Empowering Students in Higher Education

Higher education in New Zealand and elsewhere is clearly implicated in the current unsustainability of our economies, our societies and our environments and likely in a good position to do something about this. But at present higher education is providing some deeply mixed messages about its roles and responsibilities. My own view, advanced over the past few chapters, is that our primary responsibility is to support our students to develop the skills to think deeply, critically and independently, and the dispositions to do these things. I have grave doubts that we can collectively educate our students for sustainability in any conventional sense but I have some hope that higher education can help our students to develop these thinking skills and dispositions, and do it well. I described my hopes for community engagement to support this task in the previous chapter, but in this chapter, I want to examine what higher education might look like if the power balance between academics and students was different from what we generally accept it to be. I have to accept that within this broad analysis I understand one side of the formula far better than the other. As a professor myself, and having been an academic for many years, I think I have a fair grasp of the challenges involved in achieving these outcomes from the perspective of the university teacher. But I only have a limited understanding of this same situation seen from the perspective of the students involved. How could it be otherwise? As I write this, I have to admit that I fit into the elderly category of university teachers. It has been sometime since I experienced the life of an undergraduate student.1 I have children and perhaps I have learned something of the student perception of these issues through their eyes. I also teach students, and I know the literature quite well, but I don’t have either a complete picture or a fair understanding of what it is to be a university student at this point in time. Nevertheless, I’m committed to writing a chapter about empowering students 1 Although,

during 2015 and 2016, I completed a level-3 tertiary certificate course in beekeeping. At least in part, I did this because I wanted to experience tertiary study as a student again. I hope that I was not too troublesome for my hard-working and enthusiastic tutor, but I did find being a student far from easy. I do recommend the experience to all my colleagues in higher education, but not necessarily with bees.

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to think for themselves and to want to think for themselves, and to incorporating within this chapter the best model of a current student point of view that I can come up with. And from the outset I have to say that I cannot be particular positive about my student’s point of view in this context at present. Relative to days gone by, our universities nowadays cater for a higher proportion of young people from our societies. They almost certainly have a wider range of intellectual ability and motivation to study than previous generations did, and we expect them to pay fees. We put them in larger groups than was common when I was a student. And while we want them to learn the curriculum that we have designed for their benefit, some of them are not as interested in what we teach them as they are in getting a decent job at the end of it. Even so, the system that controls our students’ experiences has not changed much in the nearly 50 years that I have been part of it. Perhaps students are nowadays represented on academic boards, and certainly student opinions do influence what and how we teach, but at the end of a student’s learning programme, only those students who meet our expectations will achieve a degree. Power is firmly in the hands of the academic body. It may be that the particular picture that I’m painting here is not one that all readers will share but I struggle to see contemporary higher education nowadays in a different light. The title of this chapter suggests that I imagine a different kind of higher education in the future; one in which students are more empowered or emancipated. Indeed, the terms ‘empowerment’ and ‘emancipation’ are increasingly used in higher education discourse nowadays. Elsewhere, I have commented on an apparent dichotomy in how the educational enterprise of ‘education for sustainability’ is envisaged by the academics involved in it. The dichotomy emphasises a difference between an instrumental approach to ‘educate for sustainability’ and an emancipatory approach. But what, exactly, are students to be empowered to do or emancipated from? I’m repeatedly surprised at how challenging it is for academics to reach consensus on such seemingly simple matters! My own perspective is that, broadly speaking, an instrumental approach is one with a defined and predetermined outcome, and an emancipatory approach focuses on the freedoms provided to students to choose a learning programme and an outcome of their own design. An empowered student, in this context, is one who has been or is being emancipated and is in a position to make his or her own choices about how and what to study and what outcomes may be involved. What other perspective is possible here? Rest assured, academics around the world are themselves empowered to see things in very different ways (see, for example, Cincera et al. 2018 for some alternative viewpoints). For some, students need to be empowered to make the correct decisions, and to develop competencies that will enable them to make the correct decisions, where ‘correct’, of course, refers to a point of view or perspective or conclusion provided by the knowledgeable academic, likely (in our context) of an assumed sustainable nature. I have to remind myself that emancipated students may well choose a pathway designed for them rather than designed by them. There is nothing compulsory about empowerment! This discourse includes not only the dichotomies between instrumental and emancipatory, but also between transmission teaching and

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transformative teaching, and between being teacher-led and student-led. I don’t see the possibility of academic consensus on these issues any time soon, although my own research has contributed to address the anomalies in this discourse (Shephard et al. 2018). A similarly fraught discourse is evolving around the term ‘students as partners’. As described by Cook-Sather et al. (2018), ‘the term aims to capture an aspiration for working together in higher education in a way that rejects traditional hierarchies and assumptions about expertise and responsibility’. (1) Naturally, not all partnerships achieve this aim and even those that do might not necessarily aim for or achieve empowered and emancipated students. Nevertheless, there are some interesting parallels between the discourses of ‘Education for sustainability’ and ‘Students as partners’ that should be explored. I describe below research into this interesting development in higher education.

Empowering Students in Higher Education to Teach and Learn In 2013, I visited Uppsala University, Sweden, and learned how that institution empowers students to teach sustainability through their Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS).2 In CEMUS, undergraduate and postgraduate students plan, run and evaluate credit-bearing multidisciplinary courses. The students collaborate in their work with a reference group of researchers, university teachers and sustainability practitioners. I was deeply impressed by the idea of CEMUS but as an educational researcher, I wanted to know what impact these experiences had on the students involved. Does it support them to develop deep, critical and independent thinking skills and the dispositions to use these skills? Back at the University of Otago, students, university teachers, researchers, administrative colleagues and I developed a programme where the nature of student empowerment could be explored in detail. Students volunteered for the programme and involvement in it provided them only with experience, as no academic credit was offered. As our enquiry was inspired by CEMUS, our conversations initially focused on the development of a taught programme but our empowered students eventually set about creating a series of student-led learning events, styled as discussions, open to students, staff and to the wider community. The three events asked ‘What is sustainability?’, ‘What is the current state of sustainability?’ and ‘How can we change the world?’. The discussions were well organised, mostly well attended and exciting to be part of. A sub-group of the students involved joined with academic colleagues to form a research group which asked if the students involved were empowered to use facilities, personnel and the infrastructure of the university to achieve something that they themselves set out to achieve, and what processes might help this institution learn from their experiences. Students in the research group became co-authors in 2 Readers

can find out more about this interesting educational phenomenon at http://www.web. cemus.se/about/.

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the subsequently published research article (Shephard et al. 2017). I cannot in all honesty claim that participants (staff and students) emerged from this project with enhanced skills in deep, critical and independent thinking, or with greater disposition to use these skills, but our research was illuminating nonetheless in relation to our broader questions in the context of empowerment. A dichotomy developed at an early stage relating to perceptions of whether university staff or ‘empowered students’ were driving the project. While the project was inspired by the ideal of a ‘partnership of equals’, participants in the project indicated a range of experiences. In particular, the group debated the dilemma of how much structure and guidance to offer students. Those involved were aware that without some structure, or organisation, students might encounter only vague possibilities. On the other hand, structures and organisation could be seen as imposing an academic or managerial point of view on a group of students who were consequently far from empowered to make their own decisions. Closely associated was the nature of leadership in the student group itself, and how the concept of student leaders resonated with that of student empowerment in the project. At a particular stage in the project, students adopted a democratic, distributed form of decision-making, not unlike a typical academic model, with leaders taking temporary roles that included passing on responsibility to those who followed, but getting to that stage was fraught with questions about who was in charge. Our project also questioned the extent to which students were engaged in this project. Students were proud of the events they created and identified the discussion format as something different from their experience as undergraduate students in our institution. But overall student engagement in this project mirrored the popularity of sustainability in student-led discourse, in general, and the inevitable barriers encountered by students managing multiple demands on their time. Being empowered and doing something with it may be different things, emphasising the challenging nature of empowerment in the context of where students fit within our institutions and our societies. Our discussions after the project focused on ideas about power relationships in higher education, and in society in general, and about the extent to which higher education prepares students to occupy more powerful positions in society after graduation. We concluded: … as a research project, we aimed to explore the opportunities, advantages and barriers to empowering students to establish a student-led program within our institution. This article confirms that indeed an opportunity was available and was seized, and that key to this was the juxtaposition of a group of university teachers with an interest in exploring change in the broad area of sustainability- education, educational researchers able to act in collaboration with colleagues in many departments, and university students open to the possibility of a different kind of university education. In a real sense, our students felt empowered to use, albeit with assistance and limitations, the facilities, personnel and infrastructure of the university to achieve something that they themselves set out to achieve. But whether or not students in our institution would be similarly empowered to do the same again, or to go on to develop a more comprehensive programme of learning, is in doubt. Our doubt relates to whether or not our institution has the mechanisms in place whereby it could learn from the processes described here; and to what impact this learning would have on us, individually

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and as an institution. Institutionally, are we interested enough in what happened here? And for those involved, those who clearly are interested, how have these experiences changed us? University teachers and researchers in this project may be less clear now than before about how our students fit within our own institution. Are they partners, clients, customers or are these labels unhelpful in a world where higher-education institutions are struggling to identify their own role in society? Do we listen to our students or explore the world alongside them? The university teachers involved in the project are unified in wanting a higher education that empowers students and convinced that a higher education that does not empower students to be responsible for their own learning is inadequately preparing them for life after university; but we are collectively overawed by the enormity of the changes that may be involved (Shephard et al. 2017, 54).

References Cincera, J., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Goldman, D., & Simonova, P. (2018, in press). Emancipatory or instrumental? Students’ and teachers’ perception of the EcoSchool program. Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1506911. Cook-Sather, A., Matthews, K. E., Ntem, A., & Leathwick, S. (2018). What we talk about when we talk about Students as Partners. International Journal for Students as Partners, 2(2), 1–9. https:// doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v2i2.3790. Shephard, K., Brown, K., Connelly, S., Hall, M., Harraway, J., Martin, J., et al. (2017). Empowering students in higher-education to teach and learn. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 52(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-016-0072-x. Shephard, K., Rieckmann, M., & Barth, M. (2018). Seeking sustainability competence and capability in the ESD and HESD literature: An international philosophical hermeneutic analysis. Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2018.1490947.

Chapter 11

On Assessment and Evaluation, and Researching the Practices of Higher Education

In some respects, this chapter has proven to be the most challenging chapter to write. I’m fully aware that by now many for whom this book is intended will have lost patience with a perceived impracticality of the major themes developed in the book. Education for sustainability, like sustainability itself, is proving troublesome. The most ardent sustainability educators amongst us, those who want to advocate for sustainability, do not necessarily wish to divert their attention to other educational outcomes (like deep, critical and independent thinking) that may have dubious links to sustainability. And everyone else has issues with the whole EforS affair including if it is even our role to get involved at all. This chapter is in danger of consigning even their last remains of optimism to the too-hard basket. An underlying ethos of this last chapter and the crux of my present dilemma is that, educationally speaking, you really have to be able to measure something if you are to create change towards it. But all too often colleagues tell me that my ideas, involving measurement, simply add to the impossible burden of accountability that they already face in today’s higher education. The last thing we need is yet another chapter on assessment and evaluation, and accountability, in higher education. Yet that’s just what we do need (he says to the one remaining reader who has reached this stage). We should first recap how we got here. Previous chapters established arguments that: Higher education at present might be contributing more to unsustainability than it is to sustainability (Chapters 1–6); A wide range of factors, including those that are socially induced, influences people’s beliefs and actions. Higher education is important but needs to be focussed if it is to have the impact that many hope it will (Chapter 7); Only critical thinking, deep thinking and independent thinking can help people make decisions or come to conclusions that could counteract their upbringing (Chapter 8); Some educational approaches may be more likely than others to result in these forms of thinking (Chapters 9 and 10).

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6_11

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On the way, we wondered if only a critical mass of people thinking in these ways could have any serious impact on societal and international sustainability and if it was the responsibility of higher education internationally to get us to this position. Rather than simply set our sights on this future destination, and hoping that we are heading in that direction, and bearing in mind that we as educators are skilled in such matters, we really ought to be putting together some processes that might help us to plot our progress. For this mission to have any chance of success at all it is important that higher education has a yardstick or measure to understand its impact. We shall focus on the issue of accountability in the next section, along with some other issues that will undoubtedly get in the way of us assessing or evaluating our progress towards educating a critical mass of young people with the skills and dispositions to think deeply, critically and independently.

Some Assessment and Evaluation Issues to Address Opposition to an Accountability Culture Apparently, a long time ago, higher education was different from what we experience nowadays. University teachers were appointed and ostensibly just let to get on with the teaching, research and service as they saw fit. And it all worked out fine then. Nowadays, of course, everything we do in higher education is measured and compared with what others do, in an environment that many would identify as neoliberal (see Seal 2018, for an interesting account of the neoliberal university and how it came into being). So our teaching is measured, often in the name of quality improvement. Students offer their opinion, often numerically, about the quality of the teaching they receive and these numbers contribute to academic decisions about salaries, promotion and keeping our jobs, as well as we hope about how teaching is developed by the teachers involved. We also hope, of course, that other measures are included such as peer review, self-review and whether or not the students pass their examinations. We do hope most earnestly that our students actually do learn what we say they should learn and, by and large, what they hope to learn, and much of this is measured. Similarly, our research is measured. We produce publications such as research articles and we measure how much these are read or cited and draw conclusions about what impact they have had. Our service role is also measured; most often in the form of how many hours we spend doing this, that or the other. We shall address what these measures are used for in the next paragraphs, but for now, the fact that so many measures are involved in higher education should be enough for us to be reluctant to accept more. The issue of measurement has been particularly contentious in relation to those learning outcomes that many institutions identify as aspirational rather than as promised. Graduate attributes have long been problematic for higher education in this respect. We do encourage our students to become, for example, team players,

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and we try to give them many opportunities to practice being team players and to receive feedback from us and from other students about how effectively their practising has contributed to their team-playing qualities, but we do identify measuring attributes such as being a team player as a challenge, and potentially as one challenge too far. Adding the measurement of sustainability attributes, or of deep, critical and independent thinking, to an already over-measured profession is simply going too far. I have struggled to counter these arguments, at least in part, because I share the discomfort of having much of what I do being subject to this ‘accountability culture’, but also because the culture that I experience appears to me to be obsessing about entirely the wrong things, thus creating even more opposition to accountability. In my view, for example, our obsession with student opinions about our teaching, often as a gatekeeping contribution to the acceptability of our teaching quality, is misplaced, damaging to the profession of university teaching and likely contributory to the grade inflation that universities internationally are being blamed for. Clearly, we do not trust university teachers to adjudicate the quality of university teaching, and hence our obsession with asking students for their opinions. And given the impact that student opinion has on what university teachers teach, we do not appear to trust university teachers to decide what to teach either. Trust is certainly a central factor here. But I can find a counter-argument. My own view is that any professional person should accept without question the responsibility to evaluate his or her own practices. It seems to me to be essentially unprofessional to leave this task for others. I don’t personally see academic freedom as any sort of rational for not evaluating the quality of what we do in higher education and yet sometimes our opposition to an accountability culture is couched in these terms. And to be clear, for me this generic professional obligation has a particular manifestation in higher education. Higher education is of course synonymous with scholarship. Scholarship by its very nature is a quality based on the premise of researching one’s own practices and communicating the products of this research within a community of peers. A peer-to-peer discourse that ignores aspects of the quality of what we do and what we achieve appears to me to be something other than scholarly. So to be clear, if university teachers want to teach their students to be deep, critical and independent thinkers, and to develop dispositions to do these things, then as professional people we should get on and do it, and integrate within our ‘doing-itactivities’, means to evaluate how well we do it. And we should do it before somebody else does. I don’t personally see this as a question of accountability. For me, it’s more a question of professional responsibility. And to be fair to the principles inherent to this book, if there are university people who do not want to teach their students these things, I would prefer they didn’t try. I do hope there is nothing in this book that might suggest that university teachers should be teaching something they don’t want to. Others can suggest that, but not me.

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Good Intentions Subverted Oh dear, it seems so simple stated like that. We teach. We assess our students to discover which of them has learned what we hope that they will have learnt, and we evaluate our activities to discover how well on balance we have managed to teach what we have intended to teach. Our evaluation will feed back into our teaching in a professional manner, so that we will improve as teachers, year in year out. And then someone somewhere subverts our good intentions into something that altogether seems less worthy. Of course we want to get promoted. That’s not why we work so diligently, but promotion should be a just reward for industrious service to a profession. Of course, our institutions want to promote good teaching and so, of course, they want to promote good teachers. And as professionals it’s up to us to demonstrate our qualities as teachers. So all of the data that we have painstakingly gathered to help us to develop as teachers is now being used as a means to add evidence of our good teaching to our application for promotion and to support our institution’s claims about good teaching. Even if we don’t wish to get promoted, we still need to gather and present the evidence to keep our jobs. Somehow, others have subverted our good intentions for our students’ benefit into self-promotion for our own benefit. In our neoliberal universities, there is competition between teachers for a limited number of jobs, and often for a limited number of promotions (although notably not at the University of Otago, where promotion is criterion based). So, now, it is in our interests to collect as much data as we possibly can to demonstrate our qualities. Similarly, with research, of course, it is in everybody’s interest that our research is as good as it can be. And so it seems perfectly reasonable that research funding should be supplied by governments to those universities, to those departments and to those academics, who have proved themselves most able to conduct research of high quality. So in New Zealand we have the performance-based research fund and in the UK the research assessment exercise, and nowadays the research excellence framework, and as these pools of research funding are limited, this is a competition and we must do our utmost to win, unless we wish to be losers. Winning is of course also relevant internationally. Nowadays, universities cannot just teach and research as individual entities; they must be entered into international ranking scales where our research scores and teaching scores are compared with those of other institutions worldwide. And so, collectively our individual passions for teaching, and perhaps for researching our teaching, become part of an accountability and competition culture that I cannot deny exists. With the best intention we may wish to measure only those thing that will help us improve as teachers, but now we must measure everything, and measuring whether or not our students learn to become deep, critical and independent thinkers is on top of all the other measurements that we make, and even I think that this is too much. To make room for more measurement, we really ought to find something else to get rid of, and while we are at it I suggest that we clear a substantial burden of accountability from our in-tray. We have more important things to do.

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Attempts to Agree Measures of Learning Gain And even then our good intentions stall. When I started to draft this chapter, a substantial exercise was underway in the UK to develop a national programme of assessment to help universities, employers, students and their parents to get to grips with the learning gains associated with particular degree programmes and particular institutions. Here, in New Zealand, I was eagerly waiting to learn what had been developed. By the time I’d finished the chapter, the exercise had been abandoned and flagged as simply too difficult. No doubt others were interested and disappointed. Progress on this and related projects was also being followed by the Times Higher Education Supplement (see Mckie 2018 for an interesting summary). In some respects, the problem is political rather than educational. Research into assessment in individual courses, programmes and even institutions suggests that it is possible to assess the achievement of almost anything. It is far harder to assess affective outcomes than it is to assess cognitive outcomes, but if institutions are willing to work at the level of cohorts rather than at the level of individuals then an analysis of many affective learning gains is certainly possible. My own research, described more completely in Chapter 5, demonstrates at least to my satisfaction that this is so. Institutions and those who fund them run into particular problems, however, when the same instruments and approaches are simultaneously being used in a competitive situation, say between institutions, and this is particularly so when the driver for this assessment involves the perspective of funders such as governments. By and large governments need instruments that allow comparisons between institutions on the basis of value for money. Recent research at the University of Cambridge, for example, used a mixture of survey questions and tests to research students’ affective and cognitive development. Researchers discovered that while measurements made sense within an institution they made less sense between institutions. Within an institution, it is possible to identify rationales for variation in the data, which the institution can address. But when the same variations are used as a means to compare or criticise institutions, or even worse to allocate funding to institutions, the value of the data obtained becomes far more questionable. The OECD and the EU have similarly attempted and failed to develop and promote standardised graduate tests. Politically, of course, and seen from the perspective of a government or of taxpayers, somehow differentiation between institutions becomes necessary; if institutions can’t do this themselves then some externally applied measures will need to be involved. The U.K.’s Teaching Excellence Framework is one such application. Internationally there are other extant examples of standardised testing, implemented ostensibly because every institution has its own intentions for student learning and its own ways of assuring this learning, so comparisons between institutions based on institution’s own analyses are not possible. At the heart of this discourse, however, is a nagging suspicion that institutions and their academics may not be trusted to do their job professionally. Employers, in particular, seem less convinced nowadays than that they were in times gone by, that the first-class honours degree

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possessed by young Philip is actually representative of the kinds of skills that they anticipate their future employee will bring to the job. In the USA, for example, the CLA (Collegiate Learning Assessment) is often sought by employers in addition to individual institutional qualifications. Although research suggests that success in this test is discipline- and context-dependent and that its reliability at the individual level is limited, nevertheless the test is valued. More amusing (in some respects) is that even higher education institutions tend not to trust each other when it comes to certification of the learning of their graduates. Perhaps because of the lack of uniformity in the way that USA higher education institutions assess and evaluate their students, entry to graduate school takes into account an independent assessment, the Graduate Record Examination or GRE. This is a standardised external examination designed to measure general verbal, quantitative and analytical skills, and knowledge and understanding of subject matter basic to graduate study in specific fields. The GRE is generally required by graduate schools and is used to assess the qualifications of applicants to master’s and Ph.D. programmes.

Do Higher Education People Have the Skills and Dispositions to Think Deeply, Independently and Critically? While we are busy critiquing lines of enquiry relating to what students learn while with us in higher education, we had better attend to the elephant in the room. It is often said that we can’t really teach something unless we know it well ourselves. Perhaps, in particular, teaching values-based ideas properly does require those who teach to, in some deep way, possess these values themselves. Higher education students, at least those who think in deep, critical and independent ways, are not easily misled by hypocritical teachers. This concept was an important element of the grounded theory of ‘education for sustainable development’ that I described in a previous book (Shephard 2015). The theory emphasises the importance of teaching students to think critically about everything, but especially about what they are being taught in higher education. So as we emphasise the importance of teaching deep, critical and independent thinking we should at least question whether or not university teachers themselves have the skills and dispositions to think deeply, critically and independently. Opps, I think it best, for now, to step quietly over or around that particular elephant. I strongly suspect that if and when higher education changes to address its role in promoting unsustainability, or sustainability, these issues will come to light. I would rather not cross that bridge until we at least see it on the horizon.

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What Should We Measure, Assess, Evaluate or Research? This is where this chapter can start to be more positive. If we have learned the lessons from our past follies, we will not attempt to adopt standardised testing that could be used to set one institution against another. Instead, we shall celebrate diverse measures and use them to follow our own institution’s progress towards our own institution’s mission. Nor will we be foolish enough to imagine that we can measure the progress, or heaven forbid, the performance of individual students as they develop at least some of the attributes that we are interested in. Rather we shall be interested in cohorts of students and be grateful if our students are similarly interested in how their peer group develops. Under these conditions, there is already a huge range of research instruments suitable to help us to measure, assess, evaluate or research the learning that we are interested in. These are described in the next section, but we must keep in mind the problems associated with punctuating our progress with milestones, performance indicators and targets. Perhaps particularly in management studies, some academics are familiar with Goodhart’s Law and so with the problem of confusing measures and targets. Targets are things that we really must achieve, while measures are metrics that allow us to understand our progress towards targets. Put simply, Goodhart’s Law suggests that when a measure becomes a target, it can no longer function as a useful measure. Where simplistic targets are utilised they often drive users towards particular behaviours that may achieve the particular simplistic target but that do not necessarily help us to achieve our broader objectives. We should put targets to one side for now. Targets will introduce too many problems for us particularly if they become targets that pitch one institution against another. For now, we should focus on understanding measures, changes in which will indicate to us if we are developing the kinds of thinking, being or doing that we are seeking. In higher education, we should be researching our practices and, where sensible, using measures to help us, and be confident that this is something that we are good at, if we choose to do it.

Direct Measures of Deep, Critical and Independent Thinking Skills The disciplines of education and psychology have between them worked diligently to develop research tools and instruments that help researchers to understand the nature of learning and the progress of individuals and of groups as they learn. I suggest that the number of peer-reviewed and published articles that address ways to monitor, assess, evaluate or otherwise research critical thinking skills of our students would be measured in the thousands. Such is our capacity as academics for creating subdivisions of our key concepts not all relevant discourse uses the term ‘critical’, or indeed ‘thinking’ as key descriptors. Some of these subdivisions were described in Chapters 7 and 8 where I commented that my own particular interests relate to

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subdivisions of critical thinking such as active open-mindedness and willingness to change my mind. The more that I have struggled to write this book the more I appreciate the need for clarity in thinking, and to a degree, the ability to change my mind. Independent thinking is often identified as a subdivision of critical thinking but also has an academic life of its own. Deep thinking could be identified as a collection of many other subdivisions of critical thinking but also has strong links to the educational concept of taking a deep approach to learning (as opposed to a surface approach to learning). Educationally speaking, taking a deep approach to learning involves many of the attributes that psychologists are likely to identify as critical thinking. Over the years, a few research instruments have been developed that no doubt do tell us something about the abilities or skills that our students develop and use to support their thinking. Some institutions in some parts of the world regularly use these instruments and use the results of these instruments to support their own development as educational institutions but also to support their marketing approaches to attract new students to their institution. Perhaps the best known is the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) available for purchase as a commercial product. ‘The CCTST is designed to permit test-takers to demonstrate the critical thinking skills required to succeed in settings where solving problems and making decisions by forming reasoned judgments are important. Used throughout the United States and in many countries and languages around the world, the CCTST has been proven to predict strength in critical thinking in authentic problem situations and success on professional licensure examinations’. (Insight Assessment 2019a, np). The CCTST can be used in many ways. If it is used by institutions to monitor the development of critical thinking by cohorts of students, all of whom are anonymous in the process, I think that the data obtained would be very valuable for the institutions involved. Often the instrument is not used in this way, so my main reservations about instruments like this relate not necessarily to the instrument but to the ways they are used. Perhaps, in particular, I am also concerned that institutional use of an instrument like this is too far removed from the academic work of the teachers involved. In some situations, particular departments of administrators are established whose task it is to collect data like this with relatively limited interaction with university teachers. No doubt academic fears of accountability are involved but also high academic workloads limit the enthusiasm that academic teachers have for such monitoring. Under these circumstances, I would far prefer some less commercial application of a research instrument to the particular circumstances of an individual academic teacher, by that particular academic teacher, even at the cost of the reliability of the instrument involved. If higher education is to take the task of assessing or evaluating the critical thinking skills of its students seriously, or indeed researching its own practices seriously, I think it needs to be done at the level of university teaching, or at least with the direct involvement of university teachers. Personally, I am experimenting with the active open-minded thinking scale described in Chapter 8 of this book.

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Addressing Societal Lack of Trust in Academia I doubt that any readers are as frustrated as I am about the circumstances described and critiqued in these paragraphs. There should be no doubt that higher education already teaches its students to be deep, critical and independent thinkers. For many educators, these are the very qualities inherent to disciplinary discourse. To succeed as a scholar of mathematics, history and chemistry, students surely need the cognitive skills of analysis, evaluation and creativity. These are all identified as higher order cognitive outcomes in much of higher education and they are manifested as the disciplinary skills that we teach and assess in higher education. And yet few would doubt that higher education nowadays does find these things to be problematic to teach and to assess, and perhaps always has. When a student graduates with a good degree in history, perhaps with a first-class honours or a high grade point average, are we to assume that they know a lot about history, or that they can talk and write a lot about history, or that they are good at analysing history and applying their analysis to arguments about history. Perhaps we should also assume that they are good at synthesising complex analyses and applications or being creative in interpreting history or in evaluating the data inherent to historical accounts. What if their degree combined history with other disciplines? Were they good at these other things too? Were they similarly adept at applying their critical faculties to science, committed as it is to other ways of thinking about and applying knowledge? Perhaps a first-class honours degree suggests that our student is a good all-rounder, with some excellent skills compensating for some less excellent skills. But which skills might be deficient? And what if the missing skills are particularly important to the nature of independent and critical enquiry? And what of the students who didn’t get a first-class honours degree? Which skills might be missing or less well articulated in these particular students? I add to this our almost universal concern about grade inflation in higher education nowadays and I do wonder how societies can trust higher education to educate cohorts of students to develop the kinds of deep, critical and independent thinking skills that we need. Indeed, perhaps at the core of my concern, I’m not at all sure that higher education is empowered to do these things. In our rush to educate as many of our young people as possible to the same standards of a higher education in days gone by, and to emphasise employability above much else, I worry that we have hamstrung our colleagues in higher education to the extent that they will find it extraordinarily difficult to achieve the outcomes that societies need. Indeed, we should worry that we might be putting higher education into situations where society simply cannot trust what higher education is achieving.

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Skills or Dispositions? Teaching and assessing the skills involved in deep, critical and independent thinking should be straightforward, particularly if undertaken as a routine aspect of learning and teaching in higher education. After all, the vast majority of university teachers do identify critical thinking as a skill or ability that they particularly value and teach. Treated in this way, students do not need to make an active choice about whether or not they will get involved in their institution’s quest for graduates who can think in deep, critical and independent ways. In my own experience, taking the process one stage further and running departmental or institutional evaluations, or measures, of the skills that students and institution value is possible. But because students are anonymous in the process they also need to be voluntary. They do have to make a choice to be involved and many will make this choice. Choice is a key aspect in this field of enquiry. The research suggests that choice is also an important factor in the practise of deep, critical and independent thinking. The research is surely backed up by personal experience; not just mine but also I suspect the personal experience of readers of this book. As with the choices that people make about sustainability, they also make choices about whether or not to think deeply, critically and independently. As I tend to say … we can teach them knowledge and the skills to put this knowledge to effect but what they choose to do with the skills and knowledge we have taught them is very much up to them. It is quite simply hard work to constantly and persistently think deeply, critically and independently about everything that we experience in life. It is so much easier to have somebody else do the thinking for us or to just go with the flow. In Chapter 8, we talked about educational approaches to encourage young people to develop the dispositions, or tendencies, to think deeply, critically and independently. We identified some educational approaches that may help us achieve this challenging outcome but we also emphasised the challenges that we face and the research that we must do in order to get better at this task. There is no doubt in my mind that we are working fairly and squarely within the affective domain of educational outcomes if we take this task seriously. Choice is a key aspect in this field of enquiry. And if we do take it seriously, we will of course wish to monitor our progress. We shall want to monitor the extent to which the students who we are teaching to develop a particular disposition are actually developing this disposition. Not only do the students need to show us that they have the skills to think deeply, critically and independently, but they also need to demonstrate to us that they have the disposition to do so, so that they will continue to do so even after they have left university without the pressures of assessment and examinations. This, in my view, is the greatest challenge that higher education faces, if it is to meet society’s expectations that it will educate for sustainability. How will we rise to this challenge? I offer the hope that we shall do so by researching the issues, rather than by ignoring them or pretending that we already have the answers. We do of course already have some answers. The research described in

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Chapter 7 that led to the CCTST also led to a companion test, the California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (CCTDI), similarly available as a commercial product. As described by the supplier ‘The CCTDI invites respondents to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree with statements expressing familiar opinions, beliefs, values, expectations and perceptions that relate to the reflective formation of reasoned judgments’ (Insight Assessment 2019b, np). In line with the research that underpins the inventory ‘The CCTDI measures seven attributes that influence an individual’s capacity to learn and to effectively apply critical thinking skills: the disposition toward truth-seeking or bias, toward open-mindedness or intolerance, toward anticipating possible consequences or being heedless of them, toward proceeding in a systematic or unsystematic way, toward being confident in the powers of reasoning or mistrustful of thinking, toward being inquisitive or resistant to learning, and toward mature and nuanced judgment or toward rigid simplistic thinking’ (Insight Assessment, 2019b np). In effect, the instrument asks respondents to be honest about their normal approaches to thinking and, with that underpinning logic, combines aspects of other instruments in this domain. As with other approaches to address higher order affective characteristics of respondents, the instrument likely has value if respondents are anonymous in the process. Anonymity is the surest, and possibly only, indicator of honesty. I see value in linking the CCTDI and CCTST together to follow aspects of our students’ development of the skills and disposition to think deeply, critically and independently, but I also warn against separating this monitoring too far from our students’ other educational experiences. At the very least, university teachers need to encourage their students to take part in this anonymous exercise and be seen by these same students to value the exercise. To this end, I suspect that many university teachers would prefer to use something less commercial, less prone to institutional capture for marketing purposes, and more directly related to that individual teacher’s scholarship, in the context of researching their own practice. I see greatest value in diverse monitoring approaches that are clearly identified as scholarly, research-based attempts to understand the links that exist between teaching and learning. Otherwise, we are in danger of simply exposing our students to unsolicited aptitude tests, of the kind that they may have to face as they seek employment, and in situations when they cannot be anonymous.

Measures of Pro-environmental and Sustainability Attitudes, Ecological Worldviews and Similar Things Quite reasonably, critics of my approach to education for sustainability suggest that even if higher education does manage to substantially address the deep, critical and independent thinking skills of our students, there is no guarantee that the product of such thinking will move our societies towards sustainability. My own way of expressing this worry, that I do share, is to comment on the dilemma of what society should

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do with so many knowledgeable bystanders to economic, environmental and cultural unsustainability. I suggest that institutions set on researching their own practices will share these concerns and at the very least be monitoring the extent to which these fears are being realised. Personally, I have great confidence in the NEP, the New Environmental Paradigm scale, as an indicator of environmental attitude or ecological worldview. If institutions measure changes in the NEP of their anonymous students as they study within their systems, I think that the institutions involved will learn much about the impact of their teaching on aspects of student learning of great significance to sustainability. My own research, substantially completed as a member of University of Otago’s Education for Sustainability Research Group over more than a decade suggests that the NEP can be used within a higher education setting to monitor differences in ecological worldview not only between different groups or cohorts of students but also within individual cohorts over the course of their education. Higher education institutions could use tools such as the NEP combined with well-applied statistical models for the purposes described in this chapter. And to be clear, the NEP is simply one of many such tools. One of the developers of the NEP, Riley Dunlap, researched the range of research instruments already developed for such purposes in the 1970s and identified several hundred attempts by academics to develop scales, measures or research instruments that could be used to monitor environmental concerns of populations (Dunlap and Van Liere 1978). I have no doubt that better instrument than the NEP will be developed in due course. Indeed, I’d like to see a time when every institution or even every department develops its own instrument related to its own particular aspirations. Higher education institutions that care about these things will wish to monitor their own progress towards their own missions. The discipline of sociology, in particular, is developing concepts and ideas that may be highly relevant to institutional sustainability missions. Concepts such as social capital, political capital and cultural capital may all provide viable missions for educational institutions and, with the benefit of research applied to them, may all produce viable research tools or instruments that could be used to monitor students’ development of these qualities. In all of these situations, I do hope that educational institutions will heed the warnings inherent to Goodhart’s Law and do everything that they can to avoid mixing measures and targets.

What if Institutional Measures Over the Coming Decades Do not Identify Progress? In some respects, this is a question for another book. This book has developed and promoted the rationale that teaching students to be deep, critical and independent thinkers is likely the best that higher education can do as an educational contribution to our societies’ sustainability missions. The book has gone on to express the hope that a critical mass of deep, critical and independent thinkers let loose on the world

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will make different decisions than my own generation has. But it might not work. I guess that many hope that it will not need to work as technological developments that are the product of other aspects of higher education’s endeavours will avoid the need for the negotiations and compromises inherent to the kinds of sustainability imagined in this book. Let’s hope so. But if these technological solutions do not come to fruition and all we have are populations of knowledgeable bystanders to economic, environmental and cultural collapse then so be it. I guess that if higher education does its best to research and evaluate its practices, at least we will have some warning of our inadequacy and societies may well be in a position to identify that the higher education currently envisaged is not fit for purpose. Such is my commitment to the current manifestation of higher education I would like to think that at least we have a fair shot at doing our best.

References Dunlap, R., & Van Liere, K. (1978). The ‘new environmental paradigm’: A proposed measuring instrument and preliminary results. Journal of Environmental Education, 9, 10–19. Insight Assessment. (2019a). California critical thinking skills test (CCTST). Retrieved February 28, 2019 from https://www.insightassessment.com/Products/Products-Summary/Critical-ThinkingSkills-Tests/California-Critical-Thinking-Skills-Test-CCTST. Insight Assessment. (2019b). California-critical-thinking-dispositions inventory (CCTDI) Retrieved February 28, 2019 from https://www.insightassessment.com/Products/ProductsSummary/Critical-Thinking-Attributes-Tests/California-Critical-Thinking-DispositionInventory-CCTDI. Mckie, A. (2018) Standardised tests measuring learning gain fail to make the grade. Times Higher Education Supplement (September 13, 2018) retrieved January 9, 2019 from https://www. timeshighereducation.com/news/standardised-tests-measuring-learning-gain-fail-make-grade. Seal, A. (2018). How the university became neoliberal the Chronicle of Higher Education. June 8, 2018, Retrieved January 19, 2019 from https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-the-UniversityBecame/243622. Shephard, K. (2015). Higher education for sustainable development. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

A Final Conversation with a Critical Friend

Critical Friend About this critical friend thing, I’m beginning to wonder if I am now your only friend, so I better be kind with my feedback. Kerry No… The point about being a critical friend is that you’re able to be brutally honest and I won’t take offence because you are my friend. So let me have it. Critical Friend Let’s start off with your messages from your previous book before we get onto this one. As I understand it, your primary message has been that as higher education for sustainability is going to be such a tough task for higher education it would be good if everyone in higher education could work together rather than be at each other’s throats. I seem to remember you saying that rather than force academics who don’t want to educate for sustainably (and probably couldn’t do it very well anyhow), to do it, it would be better to get everyone to do what they want to do, but better than they currently do it. As everybody wants to teach their students how to be critical thinkers that’s the thing to focus on. And I remember you being specific also that while this was happening it was vital that higher education would evaluate its progress. I saw these as two quite simple messages, so how did that work out? Kerry Not so well. Some advocates for sustainability thought that I was betraying their cause, and mostly they won’t make the link between critical thinking and sustainability thinking. And many who don’t want to advocate for sustainability think they already teach critical thinking so didn’t really have to make any changes at all. And absolutely no one in higher education wants more evaluation, or accountability. I haven’t discovered a single higher education institution anywhere in the world that systematically and reasonably explores the impact that higher education experiences are having on the worldviews, or sustainability attributes, of students. There is a lot of research mind you, and a lot of promises, but the idea of a systematic enquiry seems to be too much for everyone. And without © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Shephard, Higher Education for Sustainability, Education for Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1940-6

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that, to be honest, any sort of change process is hamstrung from the beginning. So, all in all, not much progress I am afraid. Critical Friend Exactly my point! As I see it, your well-crafted and relatively simple previous messages have had virtually no impact and yet here you are again, now with much more complicated arguments ready to take on the world again with even more. I think you’re suggesting now that higher education does know how to teach critical thinking skills, and probably does teach these skills to some degree, but in general is not taking into account the need to simultaneously teach students to have the dispositions to think critically along with the skills to do so. Otherwise it’s easy just not to bother, unless you have to for an examination or for some other form of assessment. I have to admit that I’m on side with this take on critical thinking. Quite often I find myself in situations where I know I could get to a particular answer if I made the effort but often I’m just not inclined to make that effort. And I see it in my students all the time. And I certainly see the links to sustainability, and to sustainability education. If every time before I got on an aeroplane I forced myself to think about my rights and responsibilities as national and global citizen, my fair share of the world’s resources, how in taking more than my fair share I’m depriving others of their fair share, and the likely impacts of my decisions on animals and plants here there and everywhere else I dare say that I likely wouldn’t be flying anywhere near as much as I do. If I went through the same thought processes every time I made almost any kind of decision I would probably make different decisions. The only thing that keeps me sane is I don’t think that deeply and critically about most of the decisions I make. Kerry Don’t forget the links here to intellectual independence! I think it’s key that intellectual independence includes not only the skills to think independently but also choosing to think independently. That is why am packaging up deep, critical and independent thinking, and emphasising how important it is in higher education that we engage with those aspects of learning in the affective domain that emphasise the extent to which we value these things, and the value base of ‘why should I bother’. But I have to agree with the complexity of what I’m introducing here. I don’t think these ideas are intuitive, although I think that colleagues can draw on their experiences to reach the same conclusions as I have. And on top of that I have to admit that higher education, perhaps education in general, really doesn’t know enough about how to teach dispositions yet, let alone the issue of distinguishing different types of dispositions to separate those that should be taught in higher education from those that perhaps should not. Even something as simple as the disposition to be fair-minded in our deliberations likely

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needs teaching and learning approaches that we haven’t adequately grappled with yet. And until we do we don’t even understand how big the problem is going to be. Critical Friend But, you do know that it won’t work don’t you. Even if you came up with a simpler message about dispositions, and even if you didn’t have to punctuate that simple message with the bombshell that higher education doesn’t yet know how to teach these dispositions, all of this is still too big an ask for the higher education that you and I know. Kerry On my mind here is the idea that the kinds of transformations that may be necessary to get higher education to make a serious contribution to planetary sustainability, other than through technical fixes of course, are unlikely to come quickly. So when you say it won’t work, of course it won’t work, but perhaps some little bit of it will work. Just take, for example, the idea that higher education will grasp more seriously than it does at present the task of researching its own practices. To my mind this will be a major transformation that could in turn lead to much else. Although I do greatly value the independence of higher education, I see that it may be necessary for external players to work with higher education to encourage and facilitate this particular change. Already we have some external funders requiring higher education researchers to ensure that their results are communicated to the wider public, rather than just within academia, and some governments ask their researchers to research the impact of their findings on society. It is not going much further to ask institutions to systematically research their own practices. If institutions make commitments to achieve things, or to change, but fail to research the extent to which they succeed, what sort of message does this send to our students? That it is OK to make promises to get the money, to keep our jobs or to ensure the sustainability of our institutions, as long as we are not foolish enough to attempt to measure what we do achieve? That is certainly not the right message to tell higher education students right now. The key to so much of this is higher education’s reluctance to research its own practices. Whether my contribution to this change is significant or not, I am confident that this change will come. Critical Friend I don’t think that this message will go down well with many of your colleagues Kerry; but then neither do you. But I am impressed by your confidence that change will come, and it is good to end on a positive and optimistic note. Now the book is finished, perhaps we have time to go trout fishing one more time before the season ends? And after all, even though you persist in planning for the worst, hoping for the best is not out of the question. You may even catch something this time!

Index

B Bateson, Gregory, 119 Beliefs, 10, 84, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 100, 104, 110, 112, 113, 143, 153 Bigotry, 112 Bowers, Chet, 119 Boyer, Ernest, 128, 129 Brundtland report, 4, 45

Campus sustainability, 14–17, 21, 23, 24, 31, 52 Caplan, Bryan, 64 Carbon-neutral, 16, 17 Carson, Rachel, 29 Centre for environment and development studies, Uppsala University, Sweden (CEMUS), 139 Circuit of culture, 71 Cognition, 95, 106, 107 Colby college, 17 Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), 148 Community-engaged learning and teaching, 128, 131 Community engagement, 36, 37, 52, 125– 134, 137 Community service, 127, 129, 130 Compensation, 21–23 Competitive individualism, 5, 76, 93, 99, 101 Compliance, 36 Cornell University, 17 Critical friend, 157–159 Critical incident, 89 Critical mass, 105, 106, 119, 120, 144, 154 Critical reflection, 126, 133 Critical thinking, 83, 84, 94–101, 103, 106– 114, 120, 126, 143, 149, 150, 152, 153, 157, 158 Critic and conscience of society, 6, 27–38, 76, 130 Curriculum, 16, 21, 37, 47, 51, 90, 93, 138

C California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (CCTDI), 149 California critical thinking skills test, 150

D Darwin, Charles, 103 Debt (graduate), 5 Deep thinking, 143, 150

A Accountability, 36, 64, 129, 143–146, 150, 157 Adult and continuing education, 27 Advocate, 9, 34, 106, 115, 143, 157 Affect, 106, 107, 126 Agenda 21, 45, 59 Ako, 107 Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, 18 Anti-foundational, 126 Aramoana, 44 Assessment, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 38, 51, 56, 113, 119, 120, 143, 146–148, 150, 152, 153, 158 Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), 15, 18, 19, 21 Astroturfing, 87 Attitude, 21, 53, 64, 88, 95, 107, 113, 154 Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS), 16

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162 Dewey, John, 125 Disposition, 98, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112– 115, 118, 140, 152, 153, 158 Diversity, 19, 27, 28, 32, 48, 51, 60, 63, 64, 69, 75, 76, 103, 106, 112, 129

E Economic instrument, 92 Education Act (1989), 60, 61 Egan, Tony, 110 Emancipation, 138 Empowerment, 138–140 Engineering, 51, 91 Environmental education, 4, 7, 41–47, 51, 53–55, 75, 103 Environmental education for sustainability strategy, 55 Evaluation, 36, 56, 87, 96, 107, 132, 133, 143, 146, 151, 157 Every little bit helps, 9

F Facione, Peter, 95, 97, 98, 108, 109, 114 Factory farming, 18 Fairness, 97, 99, 114–118 Fishing, 42, 44, 48, 49, 159 Fossil fuel, 3, 19, 22, 91 Framing, 71, 73, 86, 87, 89

G Generation Zero, 19 Global citizen, 5, 69, 70, 158 Global perspective, 69–76, 99 Goodhart’s law, 149 Good intention, 146, 147 Governance (of universities), 38, 52 Graduate Record Examination (GRE), 148 Guide to belief and action, 83, 84, 95

I Independent thinking, 106, 110, 118, 119, 128, 130, 139, 140, 143, 145, 148, 150–153, 158 Instrumental, 138 Intellectual independence, 27, 104–106, 125, 126, 128, 130, 133, 158

J Joy, Mike, 29, 30

Index K Knowledgeable bystander, 22

L Laclau, Ernesto, 117, 118 Lakoff, George, 73, 86, 88, 89 Land ethic, 29, 100 Land Grant Universities, 28, 128 Learning-gain, 147 Leopold, Aldo, 29, 99, 100 Lincoln University, 16 Lovelock, James, 29 Low-emissions economy, 92

M M¯aori, 60 Measure, 7, 15, 17, 35–37, 53, 55, 63, 133, 143, 144, 146, 148, 149, 154, 159 Montana, USA, 10, 91 Motivation, 76, 88, 89, 98, 113, 138

N National Science Challenges, 34, 35, 129 National Strategy for Environmental Education, 44, 45 Nation of Curious Minds, 34, 35, 129 New Ecological Paradigm scale (NEP), 53, 54, 154 New Forest National Park (England), 8 Nudging, 85, 86

O Open-mindedness, 97, 112, 113, 115, 150, 153 Origami, 34

P Pacific Islands, 3 Palace Pier, Brighton, England, 42 Papua New Guinea (PNG), 116, 117 Partner, 44 People and Planet, 15, 16, 19 Pirsig, Robert, 10 Polytechnics, 5, 51, 60 Price-related behaviours, 92 Productivity Commission, 60, 61, 92–94 Professional education, 93 Professional values, 90, 91, 110

Index Q Quality, 3, 10, 11, 18, 30, 46, 48, 49, 60, 62, 112, 115, 144–146

R Reflection, 84, 95, 97, 126, 133 Research, 6–9, 16, 19, 20, 22–24, 27–31, 33–36, 38, 47–49, 51–56, 61, 62, 64– 66, 70, 71, 73–76, 89, 92, 101, 105, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113, 117, 119, 126–132, 134, 139, 140, 144–150, 152–155, 157, 159 River Wandle, England, 42, 43 Road map to education for sustainability, 104, 106 Role models, 14, 17, 23, 24, 89, 90, 93, 103, 113 Ruskin, John, 43

S Scholarship, 33, 36–38, 107, 128–130, 133, 145, 153 Science communication, 33, 34, 36, 37 Scriven, Michael, 83, 84, 94–97, 99, 108, 109, 114, 116 Service learning, 126, 127, 133 Shades of grey, 6 Silent Spring, 29 Social and personal identity, 84, 88, 89, 93 Social media, 36, 38, 87, 99 Sustain, 6, 7, 74, 126 Sustainability (Journal), 6, 7 Sustainability strategic framework, 16, 52 Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS), 15, 16, 18– 22 Sustained-unsustainability, 4 Sweden, 56, 139

T Taiaroa Head, 44 Talloires Declaration, 30, 52

163 Tertiary education, 5, 16, 28, 51, 55, 60–66 Theory of natural selection, 103 Theory of planned behaviour, 88 Theory of reasoned action, 88 Tolich, Martin, 127, 128 Trees, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 33 Trust, 32, 62–64, 66, 85, 97, 145, 148, 151

U Unemployment, 5 United Nations, 7, 45, 46, 50, 59 United Nations Conference on environment and development, 4, 45 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 7 United States of America (USA), 10, 14, 15, 17, 22, 28, 64, 65, 73, 76, 87, 91, 128, 130, 148 Universal intellectual values, 96, 97, 99, 109, 116, 118 Universities, 5, 8–10, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 24, 27–30, 35–38, 44, 51, 52, 55, 56, 60, 66, 70, 72, 74, 75, 85, 90, 91, 96, 105, 115, 116, 119, 125, 127–130, 133, 138, 145–147 University of Otago, 8, 13, 16, 19, 52–54, 70–72, 74, 75, 129–131, 139, 146, 154

V Value, 7, 8, 10, 11, 19, 20, 32, 33, 42, 44–51, 55, 60, 63, 64, 69, 70, 73, 76, 83, 84, 87–91, 93, 95, 96, 99, 101, 104–109, 114, 116–118, 126, 128, 132, 133, 147, 152, 153, 158, 159

W Walton, Isaak, 43 Wantok, 117 Warren, John, 116, 117 Wicked problem, 7, 94, 107, 109, 118, 119