Seeking Sustainability Competency and Capability in the ESD Literature – An Hermeneutic Analysis

Author(s):

Marco Rieckmann(submitting)Kerry Shephard(presenting)Matthias Barth(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 08 B, Whole Instituton Governance: Defining goals, leading, evaluating

Paper session

Time:

2017-08-24

09:00-10:30

Room:

K6.18

Chair:

Arjen Wals

Contribution

Many hundreds of higher education institutions worldwide have signed the Talloires Declaration agreeing to, amongst other things, ‘Educate for Environmentally Responsible Citizenship’. Recent commentaries, however, suggest that higher education institutions and those who teach within them do not necessarily agree on what is supposed to be incorporated within this form of education (Shephard and Furnari, 2013) and are not necessarily making substantial progress towards graduate and societal outcomes such as environmentally responsible citizenship (Ryan and Tilbury, 2013; Barth, 2015).

The research described in this paper focuses on the possibility that miscommunication or misunderstanding of key concepts within this field of enquiry is contributing to slow progress towards the objectives of HESD (higher education for sustainable development). Shephard and Brown (2016), for example, explored the possibility that conceptual stretching of the term ‘democracy’ and its resulting confused status within the HESD discourse has been a contributory factor slowing progress towards a ‘democratic’ higher-education sustainability strategy. Inherent to this analysis was a consideration of the nature of HESD as a multidisciplinary project. The discipline of education, with its intrinsic terminology and ways of understanding, finds itself in juxtaposition with a range of social science and science disciplines in the context of sustainability. It is perhaps inevitable that disciplinary concepts such as pedagogy, learning outcome, competency and capability provide a challenge for those involved in this multidisciplinary discourse to understand and use as part of this discourse. Added to this, HESD is an international movement and draws in concepts that derive from different parts of world and different languages. Concepts such as Gestaltungskompetenz (de Haan, 2010) and Bildung are now part of the HESD vernacular. Participants in this field of enquiry do need to reflect on whether or not we have common understandings of the key concepts that enable us to share ideas within our communications. In this paper we focus on the concepts, in English, of competency and capability. Both terms are widely used within the HESD discourse, in particular in relation to the learning that occurs as a result of education (Barth et al., 2007; Barth, 2015; Rieckmann, 2012; Shephard, 2015; Wiek et al., 2011, 2016). But what do they mean and do these terms mean the same to all those who use them?

The authors of this paper express commitment for higher education to contribute to sustainable development but also concern that the complexity of usage of the terms competency and capability may detract from their usefulness in HESD communication, particularly with respect to often assumed, rather than specified, links to the pedagogical approaches used to achieve these competencies, and capabilities. All three authors undertake research internationally, but for this project, leveraged to advantage their different language and national backgrounds and their varied interests in these terms to better understand how they are being used in the broad and international HESD literature.

Against this background, this paper asks: How are particular conceptions of ESD/sustainability competencies described in identified research articles and how do they relate to explicit, or implicit, expressions of the pedagogy suggested for their teaching, and learning?

Method

Based on philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer, 2004; Shephard and Brown, 2016), the authors analysed and discussed key articles from the discourse on HESD and competencies. Philosophical hermeneutics is both a philosophical method and a research approach designed to aid interpretation of difficult and complex issues; particularly where different interpretations of the same articulations are likely and conflicting. Whereas traditional hermeneutics is a form of text analysis and has been used extensively in the discipline of theology to uncover the original meaning of text that has become obscured over time, philosophical hermeneutics is used far more broadly as an approach that addresses how text and other communications are interpreted, and what influences this interpretation, and it was the research approach adopted in this project. The three authors regularly met, using videoconferencing, throughout much of 2016 to collaboratively engage in depth with 5 research articles. Their meetings allowed them to: iteratively and progressively formulate their research question; agree on what texts to engage with, and to argue about, to address their research question; and how to resolve the questions that this engagement led to. This paper describes how these three researchers attempted to resolve their different interpretations and came to reach a common understanding of these differences. As a general procedure, having collectively chosen an article to read, we did so individually, noting our individual understanding and concerns. We compared our notes verbally during our meetings and shared where our points of view differed, a process that resulted in questions that each of us returned with to the text to ask. Often, we each had different questions for the text. As our questions were resolved we shared our often-nuanced new understanding, by email, and in the subsequent videoconference meeting. Although we recorded most of our conversations, we also kept and shared notes from each meeting. It is important to note that we refer to conversations with texts, not with authors. No doubt conversations with the authors would have been very different. The conversations focused particularly on the following issues: the description of sustainability competencies and capabilities; the links between these competencies, or capabilities, as learning objectives, and the pedagogical approaches designed to achieve them; the extent to which this learning is expected to change learners' (future) behaviours (or dispositions to behave in particular ways); and positions on a functional/instrumental approach and an approach aiming at freedom and agency.

Expected Outcomes

Our hermeneutic analysis progressively focused on substantial internal contradictions and inconsistencies in the HESD literature that independently and collectively our conversations with chosen texts elicited. Some of our main conclusions are: - There is no consensus in our chosen articles that relates intended outcomes, processes to support learning, and where described, methods to assure learning. - Terms, such as competence, are used in diverse and often not clear ways and the argumentation often is not consistent or clear. - Differentiation between competence (to be able to do) and performance (to do) is important, but often is not made explicit. - Values are important in HESD, but there is no consensus on how HESD can deal with values in a non-indoctrinating way. We agree with Fien (1997) that in not being explicitly against something we may be, de facto, for it, but we personally struggle to identify with a higher education that pushes students to one side or the other. - There are contradictions in our chosen research articles, where, for example, on the one hand the importance of participatory learning, open-ended, real life and purposeful enquiry and developing the ability and confidence of students to think for themselves is emphasised, while on the other hand the intended learning outcomes directly include achieving sustainable livelihoods and commitment to social justice. We are aware that in our own hermeneutic journey of nearly a year, our own understandings of these matters have evolved. We thought that at least part of our personal development of understanding was associated with our own engagement with what Meyer and Land (2005) identify as troublesome knowledge. Once one understands particular types of knowledge in particular ways, it is difficult to return to a time when one didn't.

References

Barth, M.; Godemann, J.; Rieckmann, M.; Stoltenberg, U. (2007): Developing Key Competencies for Sustainable Development in Higher Education. In: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 8 (4), 416-430 Barth, M. (2015): Implementing sustainability in higher education. Learning in an age of transformation. London: Routledge de Haan, G. (2010): The development of ESD-related competencies in supportive institutional frameworks. In: International Review of Education 56 (2), 315-328 Fien, J. (1997): Learning to care: a focus for values in health and environmental education. In: Health Education Research 12 (4), 437-447 Gadamer, H. (2004): Truth and method, Second Revised Edition (Translation revised by J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Mar), New York, Continuum Meyer, J.H.F.; Land, R. (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. In: Higher Education 49(3), 373-388 Rieckmann, M. (2012): Future-oriented higher education: Which key competencies should be fostered through university teaching and learning? In: Futures 44 (2), 127-135 Ryan, A.; Tilbury, D. (2013): Uncharted waters: Voyages for education for sustainable development in the higher education curriculum. In: The Curriculum Journal 24 (2), 272-294 Shephard, K. (2015): Higher education for sustainable development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Shephard, K.; Brown, K. (2016): How democratic is higher education for sustainable development? In: Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, published online: 25 Feb 2016, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01596306.2016.1150254 Shephard, K.; Furnari, M. (2013). Exploring what university teachers think about education for sustainability. In: Studies in Higher Education 38 (10), 1577-1590 Wiek, A.; Withycombe, L.; Redman, C. L. (2011): Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development. In: Sustainability Science 6 (2), 203-218 Wiek, A.; Bernstein, M. J.; Foley, R. W.; Cohen, M.; Forrest, N.; Kuzdas, C. et al. (2016): Operationalising competencies in higher education for sustainable development. In: Barth, M.; Michelsen, G., Thomas, I.; Rieckmann. M. (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Higher Education for Sustainable Development. London: Routledge, 241-260.

Author Information

Marco Rieckmann (submitting)

University of Vechta

Faculty of Education and Social Sciences

Vechta

Kerry Shephard (presenting)

University of Otago

Higher Education Development Centre

Dunedin

Matthias Barth (presenting)

Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany

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