Assessing Sustainability: the value of critical observation and feedback

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Assessing Sustainability the value of critical
observation and feedback

• Seminar workshop
• Dr Colin Trier, University of Plymouth
• 24th March 2006

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Warm Up
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Stage 1

• Pick someone you have had little contact with so
  far
• Find out how well you both slept last night and
  whether the breakfast was enjoyed?

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Stage 1

• Pick someone you have had little contact with so
  far
• Find out how well you both slept last night and
  whether the breakfast was enjoyed?
• Consider the Sustainable People Search list and
  select the two statements that you individually
  most can relate to
• Briefly explain your choices to your partner

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Sustainability Breakfast Enquiry

• Link up with another couple perhaps with
  different choices

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Sustainability Breakfast Enquiry

• Link up with another couple perhaps with
  different choices
• Identify 5 questions to explore how sustainable
  your breakfast was? What are the important issues
  to consider about this meal in evaluating its
  sustainability?

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Next consider this hotel

• But this time consider what are the qualities
  that we need to sustain and nurture ourselves
  away from home? How well are they met by the
  hotel?

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Next consider this hotel

• But this time consider what are the qualities
  that we need to sustain and nurture ourselves
  away from home? How well are they met by the
  hotel?
• Vision a different place that met your needs
  fully?

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Next consider this hotel

• But this time consider what are the qualities
  that we need to sustain and nurture ourselves
  away from home? How well are they met by the
  hotel?
• Vision a different place that met your needs
  fully?
• From this what are some of the qualities that are
  most important and/or scarce in our lives?

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The actual teaching activity

• Seminar and assessment info.doc

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Consider how appropriate the following words are
in describing an underlying value (or quality?)
in our society?

• Mechanistic
• Socially controlling
• Cornucopian
• Individualistic

• Mental
• Aspirational
• Death denying
• Armed

Try and explore negative and positive
connotations. Can you think of other suitable
words?
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Education for Sustainable Development in
Universities
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Education for Sustainable Development in
Universities

• Diamond Ranking Exercise

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Education for Sustainable Development in
Universities

• We could now consider the same sort of questions
  applied to our universities we know and love so
  well
• What are the sustainability issues
• What are the qualities that by improving would
  enhance our experience
• What are the underlying values that emerge from
  the way these institutions operate
• But I want you to consider something different

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Education for Sustainable Development in
Universities

• What would a deeply caring university be like?

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The Global Context

• In groups of 8
• See handout

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Back to the individual

• Consider and share how you would like to be
  living in 20 years time?

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Feedback

• Student leaflet

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• Selby, D. (2001). The Signature of the Whole.
  Radical Interconnectedness and its Implications
  for Global and Environmental Education.
  Encounter. Education for Meaning and Social
  Justice, 14(4) , Winter, 1-16

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Adams D 1979.The hitchhikers guide to the
galaxy. LondonPan

• It is an important popular fact that things are
  not always as they seem. For instance, on the
  planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was
  more intelligent than dolphins, because he had
  achieved the wheel, New York, war and so on
  while all the dolphins had ever done was muck
  about in the water and have a good time. But
  conversely, the dolphins had always believed that
  they were more intelligent than man for
  precisely the same reason.