Summary on Tilbury & friends

Sooooo, I wanted to get through this reading...
Brief outlines help me understand & pay attention to my readings. (Thanks 9th Grade Teacher!!)
I thought I might as well post it regardless of the fact that I cant stand walls of text *vomit*, eeehhemmm, oh well.

Incase anyone is interested in delving a bit deeper into the subject matter, here is an outline of :
Tilbury et al's (2005)

National Review of Environmental Education and its Contribution to Sustainability in Australia: Further and Higher Education

This document is: 

an overview of environmental education in higher education and the experience of changing from principals of environmental education to practice in higher education.

This the document covers:

1. Learning from Greening the Campus.                            
2. Learning from Sustainability in the Curriculum.        
3. Declarations of Commitment to Sustainability.          
4. Institutional Learning for Change                                 
5. The Changing Nature of Work                                       
6. Generic Skills                                                                     

*Attention* 

This indicates personal reflections. 

Below is a personal Overall reflection on the document.

Learning from Greening the Campus.

• Greening a campus generally means that sustainability initiatives focus on improving the environmental performance of campus operations to reduce environmental impact and minimize operational costs. 
• Throughout sustainability and education literature the linking of campus greening initiatives to curriculum change for sustainability is commonly advocated. Such practice allows staff and students to simultaneously approach learning for sustainability through practical and conceptual understanding. 
• There is a wide range of tools to “green” a campus, such as:
• building and rating tools,
• management and reporting systems, 
• energy management tools, 
• ecological foot printing, 
• and life cycle analysis tools.
• Nevertheless, “greening” a campus must also develop the capabilities of staff, exercise engagement with stakeholders to improve practice, “green” the campus supply chain from on campus service providers to waste management, form collaborative networks on campus greening, and involve students.

Learning from Sustainability in the Curriculum.

• Current paradigms of education seem to be contributing to societies current predicament, yet they can also become part of a solution. 
• Higher education establishments foster the upcoming generations of leaders and professionals and present a critical opportunity to spark a wave of eminent change in today’s global society. 
• A crucial tool to seize this opportunity is through curriculum change. 
• All sectors of society need to be equipped to actively engage in change for sustainability
• thus, curriculum change must be across all programs of study offered by higher education, rather then restricted to programs focusing specifically on sustainability issues.
• However, such a seemingly drastic measure is accompanied by a need for staff development, the development of teaching and learning resources, and the revision of existing courses, as well as new courses all together, so, many barriers present themselves resisting fluid curriculum change.
• Realizing a curriculum change depends on:
•  the extent of preceded deep learning in a higher education community and by its’ policy makers and their evolution in matching changes.

Declarations of Commitment to Sustainability.

• There is a growing amount of higher education establishments that have responded to declarations of sustainability commitment. 
• There is controversy on how significant signing a declaration actually is due to lack of formal signatory evaluation, which raises the argument of “greenwashing’ in higher education.
• However, the declarations are influential in the sense that they set a framework for incorporating sustainability principals, but they need to be accompanied by a process of “institutional strengthening and professional capacity building (pg 22)” to put the principals into practice.

This is an outline of the most significant declarations.

Institutional Learning for Change

• Higher education establishments are like a small towns and cities. To achieve sustainability they should focus on:
•  resource efficiency 
• as well as address the underlying and interconnected reasons for unsustainable consumption amongst its’ staff and students.
• However, for deep and lasting change and to truly contribute to the local to global push towards sustainability, institutional learning should:
•  involve learning based strategies for  change that involves all sectors. This is critical.

The Changing Nature of Work

• A globalized economy increases adoption of technological changes, which in turn influence the skills required by workers to secure and maintain employment. 
• Practice in higher education and its’ future developments can’t be understood in isolation from globalization, therefore it must prepare for creating a ‘new world order’ in the workplace to improve quality of life. 
• This must be done through participatory envisioning processes and collaborative stakeholder dialogue.

“Internationally, it has been recognized that further education has a crucial role to play in realising the objectives of  culture of peace, environmental improvement, social cohesion and international citizenship (pg 29).”           

Generic Skills

• Is about the development of generic or ‘employability’ skills in the workforce, which are relevant to all education sectors. 
• Currently emphasis on skills required for SD is lacking, there is a perpetual interest in generic employability skills that reveals an opportunity for recognition and integration of SD skills across education sectors.  
• ** I recall being in the US while President Obama was running for office. I remember that he made many references to training workers for “green jobs”. To determine that it was actually done, I’d have to do some research. However, this is a snippet to show that generic skills is are at the forefront of the publics worry for a shift to a green economy. 
• *“Will I lose my job if we “become green”?*
  If so, then becoming green will be perceived as  the publics enemy rather then savior. 

Some Final Thoughts.

What I found Interesting.

This document (ARIES), which focuses on Australian advancements in Australian Sustainability mentions that the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) and its who is very active in the debate on changing the nature of work  (aka Vocational Education and Training (VET)) addresses many stakeholders in their national strategy ‘Shaping our Future’ but they leave out the actual workers. Student organizations and workers representative bodies (trade unions and professional associations) are left out of any collaborative decision making.

I was very surprised when I learned this because I was one of the leaders of a student group who collaboratively was a huge catalyst in changing my previous higher education center. If representative bodies of students and workers are left out of stakeholder inclusion than  (1) true sustainable practices of full stakeholder inclusion aren’t being used to reach the desired sustainable practice outcome, thus (2) change will not be as effective because these stakeholders were not included.

ARIES recognizes this by saying:

“ This suggests that Australian VET policy needs to extend its focus from the provision of training for industry, to address professional development as an ongoing process of lifelong learning that builds capacity for change towards sustainability.”

Another thing that I found interesting was that the ARIES document focused on environmental education instead of sustainability education or EfSD.  Environmental education insinuates that the environment can be improved independent from our values and habits today, when in reality that is simply delusional. Other than these few things I resonated with the article very much, the topics that it covered were well rounded and I felt that its’ observations were insightful.

___Cite___

Tilbury, D., Keogh, A., Leighton, A. and Kent, J. 2005,  A National Review of Environmental Education and its Contribution to Sustainability in Australia: Further and Higher Education, Canberra: Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage and Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES).