Developing Leadership for Sustainability: action research as education

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Developing Leadership for Sustainability action
research as education
Conference Action Research to promote the social
stewardship of Ecosystem Services University of
Bath, UK, 19 February 2009

• Judi Marshall
• Professor of Leadership Learning
• Lancaster University Management School, UK

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• This presentation is dedicated to the River Dart
  its surrounding woodland (Devon, UK)
• Pictures are courtesy of members of the MSc in
  Responsibility and Business Practice (Univ of
  Bath) network, who, with tutors, have walked
  the river on their deep ecology workshops
• Where do you hold dear?
• What who do you answer to?

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Action research as a ground of education

• Because educational form is part of the problem
• The crisis we face is first and foremost one of
  mind, perceptions, and values hence, it is a
  challenge to those institutions presuming to
  shape minds, perceptions and values. It is an
  educational challenge. More of the same kind of
  education can only make things worse.
• David Orr, Earth in mind, 1994, p.27

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• Action Research because
• Educational form can then match content
  -promoting experiential learning
• Practice can be developed alongside understanding
  
• Education can become radically participative
• Action research can become a discipline for
  living in challenging times inquiring, acting
  being

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Examples

• MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice,
  currently University of Bath but on the move
• www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/msc
• 1st intake 1997 now 257 graduates course
  participants
• MA in Leadership for Sustainability
• www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/L4S
• Lancaster University Management School
• 1st intake May 2009

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Action research fundamentally influencing

• Course design eg openness of some aspects of
  curriculum Qing purposes
• How topics covered eg mapping, Qing, review
• Educational philosophy processes -
  incorporating a pervasive spirit of inquiry -
  developing practices
• Learning objectives formats eg structuring in
  cycles of action reflection
• Assessment formats criteria course as
  learning journey, quality criteria include
  inquiry practice
• Course management eg tutors participants
  mutually manage significant aspects of course
  process content
• Tutors conduct

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Seeking to create radical educational spaces that

• Are Question-posing Critical
• Reflective Participative
• Values-aware Applied
• Can become liberating structures in Torberts
  terms (1991) with inherent paradoxical qualities
• that cultivate empowerment through development
  (p.98)
• Have to be lived anew by tutors course
  participants each day

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MSc in Responsibility Business Practice Deep
Ecology workshop
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Fitting into nature, living in context embodied
knowing

• Along the River Dart, clambering four-limbed
• over mossy slippery boulders
• under low hanging tree branches
• round thorny bushes
• at the waters edge
• well stretched tired from the day
• one slip would take me into the strong current
• I experience fitting into nature, move
  differently afterwards
• One image of a future form of leadership

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• Thank you for your attention