Sustainable Educational Ecologies
Final Report
Dr. Suzanne de Castell, Dr. Kieran Egan, Dr. Kumari Beck, Dr. Roumi Ilieva, Dr. Bonnie
Waterstone, Dr. Michelle Nilson, Dr. David Paterson, Dr. Kevin O’Neill, Dr. Stephen Smith, Dr. Sean
Blenkinsop, Dr. David Zandvliet
Milena Droumeva, J. Melanie Young, Mathew Menzies, Greg Scutt, Olivia Zhang, Carlos Ormond,
Jacqueline Ashby
This project has been realized with generous support from SSHRC
SEE©2009-2010
Motivation
For the last decade or so, the notion of sustainability has been an intersecting point of socio-political
debates around resource management, economics, environmental conservation and policy. Funding
for ‘sustainability research’ has trickled down to nearly every academic discipline, and while each
one has served to enrich, transform and delimit what ‘sustainability’ means, it has typically done so
within its own discursive system of knowledge and legitimation (Foucault, 2002; Habermas, 1976)
thus somewhat resisting the advancement of sustainable practice as a holistic, multi-faceted and
trans-disciplinary notion. In the field of education, notwithstanding increasing awareness of the high
energy costs of public educational institutions, specifically schools and universities, and wide
recognition that there may be more environmentally sound ways for educators to do their work,
there are no well-developed frameworks available to use to measure environmental impact or to
guide effective changes in practice. Even as conserving energy has become the current decade’s
most popular performance goal, sustainability-related education offerings and recruitment programs
have declined by two-thirds since 2001 (Carlson, 2008: A25).
So although educational administrators are doing a stellar job of focusing on the performance of
buildings and facilities in response to what are now understood as critical environmental conditions,
educational institutions are doing a far worse job of educating students to contend with the
environmental challenges they face in the 21st century (Keniry, 1995). Very likely such efforts have
been considerably impeded by the very problem they are set to address: that most people have had
little consciousness or understanding of the environmental harms we have been effecting in the
ways we live our lives, the tools we use, the institutions we build, and the practices we carry out
within them—including, most importantly, our research practices, teaching and pedagogy, resource
management and attentiveness to the places that we inhabit.
Typically, environmental audits (including those of Faculties of Education) refer to building structure,
composition and design, heating, cooling and illumination, mobility and communication systems, and
these are by no means unimportant considerations. Most ‘environmental checklists’ feature energy
and other resource consumption audits including water consumption, paper usage, gas/electricity
costs, composting, waste disposal, and bottled water bans, among many other ‘greening the
campus’ initiatives in recent years (Fien, 2002; Gaudino, 1999; Carlson, 2008; Chernushenko,
1996). On the other hand, the emergent concept of “education for sustainability” (Huckle, 1999;
Gonzalez-Gaudiano,1999; Sauve, 1996) has come into circulation as a way to infuse educational
research with issues that are traditionally underrepresented by environmental education such as
educational disparity based around student ability or social background (Wals & Jickling, 2002).
However, not much research has attempted to explore the concrete interactions between
environmental education initiatives at the university level and the educational and pedagogical
impact that these policies have in the post-secondary context (as well as in the K-12 system as a
consequence of teacher training). In addition, few studies have focused on analyzing and assessing
specific pedagogical practices and concrete characteristics of educational environments as
‘sustainable’ instances of practice - patterns endemic of a larger ‘educational sustainability’ of a
given institution.
In other words, there is still a gap between ‘green campus’ initiatives and environmental education
on one hand, and pedagogical and education research on the other as these investigations continue
to be practiced and seen as separate. What this has resulted in, is an implicit permission for
environmental education research to remain largely deaf to pedagogical and socio-cultural issues,
while at the same time, general education research focused on learning and pedagogy most
frequently fails to concern itself with environmental or sustainability issues and concepts. Most
significant by its omission in all such “environmental” and “sustainability” inventories is any serious
attention to the educational ecologies that must be sustained for the realization of worthwhile
learning outcomes. These include, but are by no means restricted to, ecologies of language
diversity, preservation and maintenance, and literacy development (Barton, 2006; Van Lier, 2002;
Gorter, 2006) ‘epistemic ecologies’, that is to say, the sustainability of what is taught and learned,
weighting educational and environmental costs and benefits of alternative delivery systems which do
not depend upon the currently extensive and expensive provision and maintenance of large facilities
for face-to-face instruction, and environmental auditing of educational communications systems,
from physical/technological to ideological/semiotic.
There is then, an urgent need to draw together scientific and technical research with related inquiry
in the social sciences and humanities towards an exploration of educational sustainability, one that
closes this gap between environmental sustainability on one hand, and social, pedagogical, physical
or relational sustainabilities on the other. Thinking of education as both a sustainable practice and a
sustainable experience necessitates a holistic understanding of education that encompasses not
only environmental conservation and awareness, but also physical characteristics of instructional
space, socio-cultural experience of place, modes of instruction, types and qualities of learning at
both the personal and curricular levels, economic, global and multicultural aspects of education,
among many others. What we would argue is, despite current inadequacies, educational research is
uniquely well positioned to carry out studies which span traditionally disarticulated disciplinary fields;
it is already an interdisciplinary field, its theoretical affordances both require and support the creation
of disciplinary bridges across empirical and conceptual inquiry.
Our Project
What we go on to present in this report are the research agendas, initiatives and outcomes of a
faculty-wide research project in our own Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, focused
specifically around developing and interrogating the notion of an “educational sustainability” both
through an attentiveness to deeply subjective and qualitative [pedagogical] dimensions, as well as
through examining quantifiable empirical indicators and demarcating the physical/material
characteristics of space/place. We begin by providing a brief historical overview of the term
‘sustainability’, and particularly the ways in which it has gained currency in the education fields;
following that we provide a summary of existing assessment tools aimed at addressing [typically
environmental] sustainability in education; we then present six case studies conducted concurrently
as part of our faculty-wide initiative, and offer a discussion not only on the implications of the results,
but also – and more importantly – on the saliency of doing this type of multi-disciplinary research
and contending with the integration of qualitative, quantitative and environmental data.
Rather than staying at the level of verbal gymnastics over the concept of sustainability, our purpose
is to design and develop an environmental assessment instrument, which attends to both the
obvious kinds of physical space and resource issues at a university setting, as well as to the need
for an environmental sustainability analysis of the ideas and practices constitutive of daily
institutional practices of teaching, learning, program and curriculum development, and course
delivery. Finally, we offer, based on the case studies conducted, a prototype of a widely usable
template for a comprehensive environmental inventory of other Faculties of Education, and
ultimately – educational institutions in general.
This project’s conceptual innovation is in operationalizing “environmental sustainability” so as to be
both inclusive of, but as well to deepen and to extend that concept beyond, its familiar referents:
resource conservation and environmental education. The substantial distance between objective,
quantitative data on environmental impacts of an institution’s physical environment [plant] at one
end, and curricular theories and educational practices to promote learning about the natural
environment on the other, stand in need of theories of the middle range, capable of bridging
between them, providing a theoretical basis and methodological tools for a comprehensive analysis
of sustainability for the assessment of educational environments. As such, the present project seeks
to contribute to environmental studies in two respects: first, to inform practice for monitoring
sustainability in educational environments; second, to contribute conceptually and empirically to the
design and testing of innovative trans-disciplinary “bridging” methodologies whose explicit aim is to
articulate the linkages which connect scientific and technological with social and phenomenological,
specifically with regard to educational studies of the environment.
Sustainability: Background
In order to develop a notion of educational sustainability we need to first understand the discursive
contexts in which concepts of sustainability have traditionally become articulated and solidified. The
epistemological and methodological lineage of ‘sustainability’ draws back to fields such as Biology,
Ecology, Economy, Architecture, Engineering and other traditionally scientific fields. Naturally, these
influential paradigms exploring sustainability have served to guide and delimit the term’s uptake in
other areas. Perhaps due to its focus on the study of natural systems, Biology is one discipline that
has most directly impacted the way in which the term ‘sustainability’ is understood. There,
“sustainability refers to an equilibrium between an artifact and its supporting environment, where
they interact with each other without mutual detrimental effects (Faber et al., 2005 p. 5). Other
scientific and applied disciplines such as agriculture, economics and urban architecture (to name a
few) have developed indicators to systematize the application of sustainability principles addressing
particular discipline-based concerns (Bradley & Kibert, 1998; Pannell & Glenn, 1999; Lindenmayer,
Margules & Botkin, 2000). In the field of education particularly, efforts to address sustainability have
traditionally centered on the inclusion of environmental concerns into curriculum, and the
implementation of socially relevant (or ‘fashionable”) norms related to environmental practices within
educational institutions.
The concept of sustainable development was introduced in the late 1970s in North America
(Hopwood, Mellor & O’Brien, 2005) and was emphasized strongly in the ‘World Conservation
Strategy,’ published in 1980 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme and the World Wildlife Fund (IUCN
et al, 1980). Their document “Towards Sustainable Development” identifies the main agents of
habitat destruction as poverty, population pressure, social inequity and the terms of trade and it calls
for a new international development strategy with the aims of reducing inequities, achieving a more
dynamic and stable world economy, stimulating economic growth and countering the worst impacts
of poverty. Another important international document on sustainability "Our Common Future"
published in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland
Commission) popularized the term ‘sustainable development’ as one that “seeks to meet the needs
and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future.” Many
alternative theoretical formulations and applications of sustainability have been developed since,
and most of them are founded upon common concerns and principles, but with different emphases
(Gibson, 2001). As the Workshop on Urban Sustainability of the US National Science Foundation
(2000) points out, “sustainability is laden with so many definitions that it risks plunging into
meaninglessness, at best, and becoming a catchphrase for demagogy, at worst” (p.1). Despite this
conceptual and political ambiguity, there seems to be an appeal for “sustainability” to stimulate
research and to serve as guidance for policy decisions. As the practice, research and hence –
definition of sustainability – evolve and mature over time, more researchers call for a view of
sustainability not as an achievable goal, but as a continuing process of improvement that demands
an explicit recognition of local conditions in each discipline and setting (Faber et al. 2005).
Sustainability and Education
The operationalization of sustainability in educational research is a microcosm of divergences of
goals, approaches, ideologies and epistemological assumptions endemic of larger socio-political
debates around sustainability. Traditionally, comprehensive and large-scale sustainability
assessment tools for the university/school context focus largely on eco-efficiency (Shriberg, 2002;
Herremans & Allwright, 2000; Chernushenko, 1996; Ruy & Brody, 2006) with a variety of repots and
frameworks generated on a national, international and institutional scales in support of ‘green
campus’ initiatives and environmental resource management, including NWF’s State of the Campus
Environment (2000), the Global Reporting Initiative Sustainability Guidelines (2002) and the New
Environmental/Ecological Paradigm scale (Dunlap et al. 2002) who revise their original framework of
1878. Specific instruments for assessment of environmental sustainability and sustainable
development in higher education are also widely available, and also tend to focus on environmental
issues alone, or a combination of environmental and economic issues, with some attention to
curricular coverage of said issues.
Among them are the Canadian-based Environmental Performance Survey (Herremans & Allwright,
2000) based on the EMS (Environmental Management System) set up by the Canadian Standards
Association; the EMS self-assessment tool developed by the Campus Consortium on Environmental
Excellence (2000); New Jersey’s Indicators Snapshot and Guide (2001) focused exclusively on a
comprehensive environmental ‘footprint’ combined with practice-based factors such as structural,
economic and curricular initiatives for sustainability (2001); the self-reporting, volunteer STARS Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System developed and distributed by the Association
for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE, 2010) – a standardized
instrument measuring higher education institutions’ progress towards sustainability; the
Sustainability Assessment Questionnaire created by the Association of University Leaders for a
Sustainable Future (1999); and many others.
Many of these reports and assessment tools often refer to sustainability as an ongoing process that
encompasses economic, social and environmental considerations, and many have made
considerable strides towards incorporating more “human-level” research considerations into what
has traditionally been a heavy focus on environmental resource management. However, where
many instruments come short is the effectiveness with which they combine, integrate and translate
different types of data and approaches to inquiry into one single tool for evaluation of educational
sustainability. This is further complicated by varying working definitions of sustainability, which, as
we discussed in our introduction, often equate sustainability in education with education about
sustainability, and don’t consider ‘sustainability’ as a multi-faceted metric, a property of the system
of education itself, including not only educational practice but also affective and qualitative
estimations of the space/place in which these practices are carried out.
A more recent and comprehensive “sustainability audit” initiative, aiming to span all aspects of the
educational experience at the institutional level, the Sustainability Academic Strategy (2009), part of
the 2009 Strategic Plan of the University of British Columbia, defines sustainability as “the
emergent property of a societal conversation about what kind of world we want to live in, informed
by some understanding of the ecological, social and economic consequences of different courses of
action” (p. 1). Consequently, the set of academic dimensions that this strategy comprises, such as
teaching and learning, research, operations and administration among others, are developed as a
way to contribute to this ongoing conversation, projecting their contributions to transcend academic
boundaries (SAS, 2009). As far as we could tell, however, the extent to which “educational
sustainability” is considered or accounted for in this report, is in advocating inclusion of sustainability
and environmental studies issues in course content across the curriculum, thus providing students
of all subject areas and training with access to study environmental issues. In this way, “measuring”
progress towards sustainability becomes simply about course content tweaks, or at best, a
redesigning of curricula on a larger scale to be reinterpreted through environmental concerns – a
dangerous notion, as it perpetuates a scientific view of sustainability as resource management,
policy and economics, somewhat obscuring more ecological notions that include subjective
experience, socio-cultural relationships, power dynamics and epistemological dimensions of
education.
Campus Ecology, another comprehensive initiative by the Student Environmental Action Coalition
(Keniry, 1995) encourages the conception of sustainability as a process and focuses on life-cycle
analysis and sense of place, alongside environmental issues. The injection of metaphor into studies
of sustainability in education has also proved to be a useful perspective, as exemplified in the
Compass for Sustainability project where clusters of indicators themed Nature, Economy, Society
and Wellbeing are presented as directions on a compass. As another innovation, the Graphical
Assessment of Sustainability in Universities initiative attempts to combine a number of indicators
related to economic, environmental, social and educational sustainability in order to graphically
represent the sustainability efforts of universities for the purposes of facilitating analysis, longitudinal
referencing and benchmark comparison.
Stepping away from large-scale institutional initiatives of “education for sustainability,” research on
sustainable education originating within education faculties has its own complex legacy. Concern
over pedagogical implications and practices has caused research questions to center around quality
assurance issues such as teacher-to-student ratio, physical environment, and teacher education.
These studies typically utilize Likert scale surveys, rankings, and multiple-choice questions for
quantitative data collection and analysis. Most focus on measuring student achievement in some
quantitative format, such as grades, test scores, and other learning outcome measures. (Mcburni &
Ziguras, 2001; Van der Wende & Westerheijden, 2001).
Far less research appears to focus on the experience of individuals who work, study or teach in
educational environments, particularly through the use of more qualitative approaches such as
open-ended questions, interviews, or focus groups that explore perceptions and give a more indepth consideration of individual experiences (Menchaca & Bekele, 2008; Noble, Temmerman,
Henderson, Parry & Foong, 2009). Attempts to privilege the element of “sustainable relationships” at
an individual level within projects of (inter)national cooperation and ‘sustainable’ institutional
initiatives are few (Noble, et al, 2009; Verbitskaya, Nosova & Rodina, 2002; Smolentseva, 2000).
Conceptualizations of sustainability that espouse more sensitivity to human-scale indicators and
affective considerations include research focused on individual perceptions of classroom
environments (Villar an Alegre, 2008; Veltri, Banning & Davies, 2006 ), learning outcomes defined
through deep and affective engagement (Warburon, 2003; Shephard, 2008) and the role of space
and place to teaching and learning (Preiser and Nasar 2008; Johnson & Lomas 2005; Holt &
Segrave, 2003).
So is our study just another case study? Another “faculty’s journey”, the perils of which have been
already documented, addressed and critiqued for being too introspective and grounded in only one
institutional reality (Corcoran et al., 2004). We think the perils lie in dismissing the lessons that can
be learned on a scale of specificity that only casework can provide. While the international and
institutional reports we discuss above aim for wide-reaching and generalizable measures, they often
gloss over the idiosyncrasies of particulars, of individuals, of concrete, physical habitations. Rather
than asking what does sustainability mean in the context of education, we ask what does “learning
in depth” mean to sustainability; how can we talk about sustainable internationalization practices;
how can place become a teacher in the educational ecology of our institutional pedagogy. Thus the
strength of our project becomes in weaving together questions of educational sustainability
spanning various reach – from more general to extremely specific; further, we translate and combine
data of different types – from a 100+ people survey to 15 open-ended interviews in addition to
environmental measurements of light and sound; finally we offer innovative and compelling ways of
visualizing the information, knowledge and implications of our work as a way of erasing and
rebuilding some of the disciplinary paradigms in which we, as colleagues, function and think within.
This iterative process of defining and re-defining educational sustainability, as well as refining the
operational questions and indicators result, ultimately, in a template for understanding educational
sustainability in each particular context it hopefully becomes utilized in – specific, yet customizable
and general enough to enrich almost any inquiry relating to sustainability at the higher education
context.
A Cross-Disciplinary Education Sustainability Project
As mentioned before, our present undertaking is not an attempt to be comprehensive or exhaustive
in the set of issues or conceptualizations of sustainability that we offer. Rather, this is an illustrative
case study including 1) expanding definitions of sustainability in the field of education to the notion
of ‘educational sustainability’; 2) modeling cross-disciplinary methodological inquiry of sustainability
as a rich concept (including environmental, social and pedagogical criteria) and 3) showcasing
Faculties of Education as uniquely positioned and structurally illustrative of complex pedagogical,
environmental and socio-political issues that underlie challenges and opportunities inherent to
educational sustainability. Faculties of education are essentially silos of disciplinary knowledge
systems so what we hope to showcase is a type of methodological bridge-building that needs to be
done in order to expand the definition of sustainability and conduct the sort of mixed-method inquiry
of both quantitative and qualitative approaches that we feel is essential to fully addressing
educational sustainability.
One foundational part of our theory-building and conceptual brainstorming process was, incidentally,
the use of conceptual metaphor as a way of abstracting and linking the boundary objects (Kimble,
Granier & Goglio-Primard, 2010; Star & Greisemer, 1989) of our respective disciplinary notions of
sustainability. Metaphors that are both open and yet structurally specific serve as containers for
building ‘connective tissue’ between paradigms of thought, practice and action, providing our diverse
team a way of progressing with cohesion and integrity. By stripping down the disciplinary baggage
of precise language – a type of “impoverished syntax” (Latour, 2005; Callon, 1998; Barton, 2006;
Gorter, 2006; Van Lier, 2002) we were better able to synthesize new interdisciplinary notions of
educational sustainability and formulate new methodological approaches to studying it.
One such metaphor engendered the notion of carbon ‘emissions’ and ‘offsets’ as structures for
thinking not only about what is there to be gained, but also about what may be the side-effects of
adopting particular educational policies, structural decisions or ideological stances towards place,
learning environments or curricular design. Another metaphor involved thinking of and visualizing
“the building” – the physical plant of our faculty – as an interface. Representing a variety of structural
and environmental information onto a map of a building’s floorplan presents a window – an interface
– into its functions, context, challenges, limitations and affordance.
This next section presents the executive summaries of each of the six teams’ research programmes,
featuring their operationalization of educational sustainability, their research protocol, study design,
discussion and results, complete with a topical contribution to a comprehensive instrument for
measuring educational sustainability in a trans-disciplinary way. While our results are preliminary
and the final survey instrument not formally validated, we feel that our findings present insightful and
compelling future directions for the study of sustainability in educational contexts. The survey, other
related resources and full team project reports may be found on our website (www.sfu-see.ca).
Six Case Studies – At a Glance
Theme 1 “Internationalization of Higher Education”
Dr. Kumari Beck, Dr. Bonnie Waterstone, Dr. Roumi Ilieva
‘Internationalization of higher education is the process of integrating an international dimension into the
teaching/learning, research and service functions of a university’ (Knight, 1995, p.28).
Our research team set out to develop an approach that could assess the educational sustainability of
internationalization within a Faculty of Education, in relation to its human, institutional and educational costs
and benefits. Our interest is not in developing models of internationalization, but in bringing the experiences
of participants in the internationalization process, i.e. the faculty, staff, students and administrators, to bear on
the conceptualization of sustainable internationalization, and to build from that conceptualization empirical
indicators to assess its educational sustainability.
“Educational Sustainability” as conceptualized in “Internationalization”
We define the term “sustainability” as representing the dialogic relationality between students,
teachers, and curriculum which cultivates and nurtures educational experiences and knowledge building that
instantiate respect for and attention to global/local interactions and interconnections steeped within dynamic
relations of power.
Sustainability is commonly understood as maintaining practices and processes that have been
neglected and should be sustained in light of specific exigencies. However, our approach does not assume
that internationalization, particularly as defined in terms of or rationalized by economic or political
imperatives, is a necessary good that must be sustained. We recognize that, for instance, wealthy nations can
attract staff and students from less wealthy countries for their own financial benefits and the economic
sustainability of their own educational institutions, with little consideration to the preservation of competence
and talent in the less wealthy countries. Local initiatives sustained through globally unsustainable practices do
not constitute, on this view, educationally sustainable internationalism, since gains in one sector are
neutralized by losses in another sector whose resources are thereby depleted.
Building on environmentalist Mark Jaccard’s (2009) approach to calculating the environmental
impacts of climate change, we mobilize the ecological term “harmful emissions” as a metaphor for assessing
the educational sustainability of internationalist policies and programs.
Context/Data Sources:
This study, at SFU’s faculty of Education, used a combination of two methods: an online survey, including
forced choice (check-list, yes/no, ranking, and likert scale) questions, as well as open-ended questions, and a
semi-structured qualitative interview, to explore internationalization within the Faculty of Education in
relation to sustainability and ecologies of practices. Survey participants included 125 students (120 on-campus
students and five students currently living outside of Canada), 34 faculty members, 11 staff members, and one
administrator.
During the first stage of the research, we revised and re-administered the survey conducted by the Association
of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC, 2007) on the internationalization of higher education. In this
survey, we targeted students, faculty, and staff, the population omitted in the AUCC survey, as well as
administrators. During the second stage of the research we conducted semi-structured interviews with 13
participants, covering topics that relate to the experiences of participants in terms of curriculum, pedagogy,
personal/social outcomes and value of credentials obtained through international programs in the Faculty of
Education.
Results: “Harmful emissions” of Internationalization
Our first emission is largely drawn from the data we collected and refers to the lack of awareness and
understanding of processes and practices of international education amongst students, faculty, and staff
coupled with the similarly harmful blind acceptance of “internationalization”. This emission speaks to a
possible disconnect between students, teachers, and the curriculum and the lack of preparation for faculty and
staff to work within the context of de facto internationalization. It also seems linked to practices of
internationalization evident through Stier’s (2004) discussion of ideologies of internationalization and within
our data, which reflects unquestionable acceptance of “internationalization” as a valuable educational currency
to be perpetuated. This emission speaks as well to the lack of systematic engagement with internationalization
beyond pockets of activity.
Our second emission is linked to the already mentioned apparent coupling of internationalization practices
with economic rationales that lead to the marketization of educational activities and practices. This harmful
emission is evident both in the critique Stier and others offer of ideologies of internationalization in the
quantitative and qualitative data from all university stakeholders (faculty, students and staff) that we collected.
The third major emission we were able to discern on the basis of ecological and postcolonial understandings
of educational practices and the data we collected refers to the containment of difference, the possible erosion
of cultural diversity, and the somewhat inequitable relations of power that seem to be operating within the
context of internationalization.
Conclusions
Sustainable internationalization in education needs to counter the commercialization and marketization of
education. Raising awareness of internationalization can be a first step leading to vigilance against this
commercialization. In particular, these three areas should be addressed:
1.
2.
3.
Policy: missions, goals, and regulations/procedures: Policy statements should invite a dialogue that
would allow for reciprocity, mutuality and equitable outcomes in the beneficial effects of
internationalization of education for all involved.
Practices: supporting practices in curriculum designing, learning, and teaching environment etc.: Faculty,
staff and students should be aware of the need to negotiate curriculum and pedagogy. Diverse knowledges
need to be included in all program areas and participatory collaborative curriculum needs to be
developed.
Services and supports: Services should be in place to support faculty, staff and students in dealing with
the incommensurability of variation of experiences inherent in internationalization.
Our study also showed that the AUCC survey instrument was problematic in that question design could lead to
confusion. However, rich data were generated through the extensive answers to open-ended questions and inperson interviews.
Implications:
Our findings pointed to actions that need to be taken in order to reduce the emissions we identified and to
move towards a more sustainable internationalization within universities. These can be summarized as:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Recognizing, valuing and incorporating diverse knowledge, traditions, scholarship and experiences
through curriculum and pedagogy
Listening, acknowledging respectfully the other, mutuality and reciprocity in interactions
Expanding knowledge of different (educational) traditions
Expanding knowledge of institutional policies, engagement in policy generation, and broader
participation in institutional design and practices of internationalization
Collaborative curriculum, creative pedagogy, meeting social and educational needs, providing adequate
support
Providing support to staff and faculty to build capacity and engage in, research and theorize international
activities
Our checklist, included in our longer report, offers details that any faculty could use to assess their practices.
Theme 2 “Learning in Depth” (LiD)
Dr. Kieran Egan, J. Melanie Young
Knowledge comes as an answer to those questions that arise in the student from the case or practical
situation, and not an answer – as it was in the past – to the teacher’s questions. (Polanco, Calderón &
Delgado, 2004, p. 146).
The aim of Learning in Depth (LiD) is for each student to develop a significant amount of knowledge about a
particular topic by exploring it in a variety of ways over the whole period of their schooling. The aim of LiD is
for each student, by the end of her or his schooling, to generate significant expertise about that topic, and to
have explored it in multiple and multi-disciplinary dimensions. In the process students will learn something
important about the nature of knowledge itself—specifically how one secures knowledge claims and how one
distinguishes between knowledge and opinion. Students will also engage with learning in a new and intensive
way, they will learn a range of cognitive skills--such as critical thinking, reasoning, and the processes of
constructing knowledge, classifying and reclassifying knowledge, self-regulation, concentration, and strategies
of organizing increasingly complex material. The intention is that students will become imaginatively
stimulated by their topics, and they will build confidence as learners.
“Educational Sustainability” as conceptualized in LiD
The development of an understanding of knowledge construction and of attitudes toward learning that
encourage and support learning retention and life-long learning. Such an understanding of knowledge has
implications for:
1. The long-term retention of what has been learned both on the part of students and teachers;
2. The development of dispositions and habits of mind which support the pursuit of inquiry; and
3. The development cognitive skills such as critical thinking, reasoning, theory generation and the processes of
constructing knowledge
Context/Data Sources:
SFU Faculty of Education In-Service Teacher Education Program, Pilot Study Formative Assessment
Interviews with two teachers (Grade 1/2/3 & Grades 6/7/8) who implemented LiD. Structured interviews
focused on teacher buy-in, student engagement/ (dis)affection with randomly assigned topics (including
resistance, boredom and drop-out), Transfer from LiD to other curriculum areas, developmental
appropriateness of LiD topics.
Results: Empirical Indicators of:
1. Buy-in: Both teachers chose to continue LiD into a second year
2. Student engagement/disaffection: teachers did not follow prescribed randomized topic selection, based
section instead of ‘student interest’. No drop out, no resistance or disengagement. Evidence of
engagement: looked foreword to LiD classes, worked both in and outside of class on their topics,
communicated with parents, peers, high interest, experimentation, focusing in on specific aspects of topic
“Lots of questions. Which I need to note is something that is a rarity in my experience… So what I’m
getting is questions. I love it. I don’t have to ask anything.”
3. Transfer: teachers gave examples of students connecting the work they were doing in the regular class
curriculum with their LiD work; students sometimes made connections between their own or their
classmates’ topics to the topics being explored in regular classes
4. Developmental appropriateness: “…it really does seem to be a good thing for all ends of the spectrum of
learners. The higher achieving ones, they go in and they take off. But definitely, the people I thought would
struggle, didn’t.” Student had no challenges associated with particular topics…but because teachers
allowed students to chose topics based on their prior interests, further study of developmental suitability is
needed
Conclusions:
The evidence suggests that LiD can become a sustainable program. The teachers and students are definitely
engaged. These two teachers are taking it into the second and third year, and their students have shown
willing, even eager, to do so as well…Research at the post-secondary level suggests that one means of
improving knowledge retention is through providing more opportunities for students to direct their own
learning, which is the very essence of Learning in Depth.
Implications for Sustainable Learning within Faculties of Education:
How does this research inform our examination of Learning in Depth in Faculties of Education? There are two
sides to this question, namely: to what extent are the structures of the programs within the faculty
supporting depth learning; and to what extent are pre-service and in-service teacher education programs
actively teaching ideas and strategies which would support learning in depth in K-12 schools?
Theme 3 “Plants and People”
Dr. Michelle Nilson, Dr. David Patterson, Matthew Menzies
“…we need to view the educational system fundamentally as an ecological place of and for connections,
relationships, reciprocity, and mutuality”
What are the environmental factors that community members identify as being important components of
where they work and learn? And, how can administrators and those in charge of facilities work with the
community to provide a sustainable environment? The purpose of this study is to explore these questions and
to understand the perceptions of four stakeholder groups within one Faculty at a large urban Canadian
university about their current working and learning environments, and how they came to be where they are.
We sought to explore how the values of sustainability manifest in the culture of an academic Faculty, as
specifically manifest in the decision-making processes, and relationships between stakeholders and the
facilities they used. We specifically focus on how culture both influences and is influenced both by
community members’ perceptions of Faculty spaces, as well as by their perceptions of decision-making
processes relating to the use of space. By exploring these relationships, we can gain insight into how the
Faculty’s culture has been constructed and interpreted by community members and their interactions, and may
infer ways by which decisions can be better aligned with community members’ values towards a sustainable
educational ecology.
“Educational Sustainability” as conceptualized in the Plants and People Study
Fullan (2005) describes sustainability as, “the capacity of a system to engage in the complexities of continuous
improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose” (iv. In a sustainable educational organization
relationships between people and the physical plant of their working environment encourages the purposeful
development of the community.
Context/Data Sources:
A series of 12, forty-five minute semi-structured interviews were conducted over the period of a year. Using a
stratified purposeful sampling method, we sought insights from four stakeholder groups: students, staff,
faculty, and administrators focused on the themes of space allocation, uses and experiences, and of the
processes decision making around the uses and allocation of faculty space.
Bounding the study spatially within the Faculty of Education’s main building made good sense because it was
only over this physical space that the Faculty itself has control over, we sampled for maximal variation,
interviewing members of the faculty community across a variety of roles integral to the social construction of
this workplace culture.
Data collection methods focused on interviews and included note-taking, as well as audio recording of the
interview. Recorded interviews were transcribed, and coded.
Results: How Space Matters
1. All groups expressed a sense of value towards their physical proximity to colleagues, resources, and
between main and satellite campuses
2. Privacy is highly valued, both for confidentiality when students may be distressed or when data needs to
be kept securely, and for private concentration when work requires uninterrupted attention
3. Communal spaces, too, are highly valued: spaces that support learning and sharing of ideas, an
infrastructure that supports learning, including learning from modelled behaviour in an informal space
conducive to dialogue and discussion
4. Flexibility: being able to shift furniture, to create different environments that supported alternative
teaching and learning styles was valued, and specific failings of the present faculty instructional space
included loud heating and ventilating system, large pillars that impeded lines of sight, a generally dark
interior, “paper-thin” walls making over-hearing unavoidable, and the generally leaky, dingy and dusty
spaces physical plant of the faculty.
Conclusions:
Members of the community have clear ideas about the kinds of workspace they require, and an organization
focused on pedagogical research and practice has quite specific requirements, attention to which by
administrative leaders will greatly support the creation of an educationally sustainable relationship between
workforce and workplace. Interestingly, although interview questions explicitly encouraged participants to
talk about the processes whereby workspace was and is allocated in the faculty, informants seemed far less
interested in decision-making and consultation than in enumerating what were to them positive and negative
features of faculty space. This may point to a potential communicative disconnect, whereby members presume
administrators already know (and either do or don’t choose to act upon) what community members need to
advance and sustain their educational work, and administrative leaders, hearing no concerns, may not be
actively seeking out such insights, risking misdirected top-down decisions in their absence.
Implications for Sustainable Space Management within Faculties of Education:
There are several groups of students, administrators, staff, and faculty that will be able to use the findings of
this study. To begin, sustainable leadership is a prerequisite for sustainable education. Students and faculty in
architecture, planning, higher education leadership, or development should note that in any planned
architectural renovation or design of an institution, the feedback and input of those who will or do teach, work,
and learn in those spaces is a vital component of the process. Institutional spaces serve to create opportunities,
to structure social interactions, and by doing so, educate community members about the organization’s culture.
This idea should be recognized and explored amongst an institution’s community members, and to as great
extent as possible, be considered in the design of an institution and institutional spaces.
Theme 4 “Educational Delivery Systems”
Dr. Kevin O’Neill
“…distance learning delivery systems become more popular, institutions must make decisions about the extent
to which face-to-face courses and degree programs can and should be replaced by distance learning” Roblyer
1999, p. 257
The physical infrastructure of Canadian Universities is aging. Expansion-era institutions such as SFU are now
more than 40 years old, and the planned lifespan of many of their buildings has already elapsed. In this
context, University administrators and government ministers may find themselves wondering whether it is
worth the cost to renew this physical infrastructure, when many postsecondary courses can now be provided
online. The focus of this team’s research was on developing and piloting a practical protocol for institutions to
use in comparing learning outcomes and energy expenditure in the distance and face-to-face offerings of their
courses.
In many respects, SFU Burnaby appeared the ideal location for an “acid test” of the environmental benefits of
distance education, since it is an extreme case of the commuter campus. The location of SFU Burnaby was
chosen in 1963 to be within 30 minutes’ driving time of the majority of residents in the lower mainland of
British Columbia (Johnston, 2005). For most of its history it has had only a tiny resident population in relation
to the size of its student body, and due to its mountaintop locale and the fact that it is separated from nearby
residential areas by a large buffer of parkland, it is infeasible even for most students who live close by to walk
or cycle to it.
“Educational Sustainability” as conceptualized in EDS
Sustainability is conceptualized in this theme in two ways. The first is the energy expenditure involved in
students taking courses (as distinguished from the energy used by the University to offer them). Regardless of
whether energy can be generated in “greener” ways (ie. lower carbon footprint), we assume that it is desirable
to educate students in the least energy-intensive way.
This leads to the second conception, which relates to the sustainability of the University as an institution in
society. While educating students and delivering courses may be assumed to be equivalent in the context of
the University calendar, we as researchers do not assume this equivalence. As the data below suggest, even
today’s tech-savvy students may want more out of their education than they believe they can currently get
online. The University’s long-term survival may depend on its willingness to continue providing what students
have come to expect.
Context/Data Sources:
We used an online survey designed to be completed in under 15 minutes to minimize responder fatigue and
maximize the size and representativeness of our sample. Survey questions were a mixture of multiple-choice
and true/false (see appended instrument), with one open-ended question asking students to comment in their
own words on their choice of either the face-to-face or distance offering of the course. In return for completing
the survey, participants were entered in a draw for a small monetary prize.
Recruiting for the study took place in the spring semester of 2010, and varied by course delivery
mode. In the distance offering of EDUC 220, only 4 out of approximately 120 enrolled students responded to
our invitation to participate in the research. These responses were too few in number to support the planned
analysis. In the face-to-face offering of the course, 48 students completed the survey, or approximately 40% of
the enrolled students.
Results:
1. Most students (81%) taking the course face-to-face were aware that they could take it online
2. Most students commuted a considerable distance to campus (an average of 37 minutes one way)
3. Most students (60%) commuted to campus by transit
4. Most students choose to take the course face-to-face despite the inconvenience because they believe they
will learn more, and have a variety of theories about why
Data from SFU’s 2008 Student Experience Survey revealed that students' overall satisfaction with the
undergraduate experience was not substantially different if they took courses by distance education. However,
it does not follow that satisfied face-to-face students can be converted into satisfied distance educated
students. Respondents to the EDUC 220 face-to-face survey cited a number of specific reasons why they
believed they learned more in the face-to-face course. These included greater motivation to keep up with work
in the course, and greater ease of asking questions or getting advice from instructors and teaching assistants.
Students are evidently committed to these views, since they are willing to commute considerable distances on
the strength of them
Conclusions:
For f2f delivery, the “emissions” studies were the energy costs of transportation to/from classes. “Offsets” in
this case were measured by ‘student satisfaction’ of f2f vs distance delivery systems. A significant conclusion
with respect to sustainability was, however, less about the emissions of course delivery and more about the
sustainability of the university itself as a knowledge-provider. It appears both from the remarkably low rate of
participation in the pilot survey by distance students, as well as in the findings of the student satisfaction
survey, that increasing the use of distance delivery systems risks increasing the disengagement of students
from the university itself, threatening in a very real way the ecological sustainability of the university as an
educational environment through a loss of public support for face to face university education, rendering
superfluous in the process any other ways in which sustainability might be pursued within these institutions.
Implications for Educational Delivery Systems within Faculties of Education:
1. The scale of the environmental benefits that can be realized through distance education may depend
greatly on the demographics, geography and transit infrastructure at each institution.
2.
Through programs like U-Pass and by controlling access to parking, a University can positively
influence the choices students make about how they commute to campus. When students are made to pay
for transit as part of their tuition, the majority will use it.
Theme 5 “Place-Based Pedagogy” (PBP)
Dr. Sean Blenkinsop, Greg Scutt
What does it mean when all you can hear on campus is the sound of machines, humans, fans and cars? What
does that imply about our relationship to other non-human entities? What does it mean when the dominant
colour is grey, the space is Euclidian, the material is concrete and the culture was supposedly spending its last
years educating its youth in topics of sustainability. Is such dissonance sustainable?
Greg Scutt (SEE researcher)
The aim of the Place-Based Pedagogy (PBP) team
Talk about "environmental sustainability" in the context of place-based education refers to the educational
importance of experiencing and understanding place, and to what will likely support and sustain an
appreciation for and an understanding of how we learn ‘in place’. This team’s purpose was to try to
understand how ‘learning both in and from place” might best be cultivated and assessed in the context of a
teacher-education program.
“Educational Sustainability” as conceptualized in PBP
Talk about "environmental sustainability" in the context of place-based education refers to the educational
importance of experiencing and understanding educational places, and places as educational. Informed and
engaged multisensorial attentiveness to ones own environment, as a particular, situated and inhabited place,
and inquiry into and evidence of its educative impacts, is what ‘educational sustainability’ refers to in this
study. What supports and sustains an appreciation for and an understanding of how we learn ‘in place’?
As a semiotic-material set of multi-sensorial relationships, place engages us with our particularly situated
world, both found and made. Environmental awareness in the context of educational theory and professional
practice means giving serious attention to whether and how the places of professional education sustain (or
even, perhaps, undermine) efforts to engender teaching abilities, and no less importantly, whether and how a
faculty’s professional programmes cultivate understandings and dispositions concerned with the pedagogical
impacts of institutional environments for learning.
Context/Data Sources:
Beginning in Spring 2009, three focus groups were conducted in the context of the Professional Development
Program (PDP) in the faculty of education at Simon Fraser University. Two of the focus groups were
conducted with Faculty Associates (FA’s) and the third was conducted with their PDP students. Several
activity-based interventions intended to provoke consciousness of and discussions about place as
‘pedagogical’ were carried out with FA’s. The first, in December 2009, was to find out how FA’s were
already thinking about and making use of place as itself a ‘teacher’; the second, in April 2010, took place
following an ‘experiential day’ (visiting one of four designated outdoor sites and its purpose was to assess the
impacts on these FA’s of their ‘experiential day and associated activities, and specifically to see if there was
significant change in their understanding of and possible uses of place as pedagogy; the third in August 2010
was carried out with students of these FA’s, to see whether there was any ‘transfer’ from FA’s to their students
with respect to understanding and using place pedagogically.
Data sources took the form of audiotaped 30 minute conversations between FAs in small groups (12) and the
researchers focused on the relation between place, ecology, pedagogy and sustainability, in addition to focus
group discussions with PDP students about their experience of place and pedagogy, as evidenced through their
verbal reflections and PDP journals.
Results:
From the first (pre-intervention) focus group, FA’s describe their relationship to place in ways that suggest
they think places are predominately acted upon by humans in non-reciprocal relationships with the place. For
example teachers and students go “out” to places. They “take away” from places. They “experience” places.
They “act” in places. They “learn” from places. In only one case did an FA speak about experiencing place as
a kind of co-teacher. From the second (post-experiential day) focus groups, the insights that the FA’s provide
are generally not too different from those they offered up during the initial conversation in December, and
although they could talk about the idea of places being pedagogical, it appeared these FA’s needed more
support, including activities and theory, to realize the pedagogical nature of places in practice.
Based on PDP students’ responses in focus group discussions, there appears to have been no transfer of their
FA’s designed encounter with place and education (the ‘experiential day’ and associated activities). FA’s may
be talking about place and pedagogy, even practicing making educational meaning of their experiences in
place, yet it there is no indication that they are passing these ideas and practices onto the PDP students they
teach. PDP students (at least most of them) seemed to think that space and place were simply backgrounds that
host human actors (teacher and students).
Conclusions:
That a cultural shift towards place consciousness occurred in SFU’s PDP program during Experiential Day is
indicated empirically by fact that dialogue, activities and rich inquiry on the meaning of place and pedagogy
took place over two days. These activities and discussions contributed to suggestions for orienting EDUC
401/402 (the subsequent professional development core courses) towards place-based pedagogy, which could
be a longer- lasting effect of the dialogue and activities of experiential day, and an indicator of the potential
sustainability of this pedagogical approach.
Implications for Sustainable Learning within Faculties of Education:
The meaning and educational value of informed and engaged multisensorial attentiveness to one’s
environment, to a particular, situated and inhabited place, and attentiveness to inquiry into and evidence of its
educative impacts, is not a perspective already apparent in the teacher educators’ theories or pedagogical
practices. Creating and sustaining sustainable educational ecologies calls for concerted efforts to design,
implement and evaluate interventions, such as those found promising in this study, capable of sensitizing
teacher educators and their teacher-candidate students to the ways in which place can become an active
‘partner’ in education.
Theme 6 “Learning Environment Research” (LER)
Dr. David Zandvliet, Jacqueline Ashby, Carlos Ormond
Learning environment studies attempt to acknowledge and account for factors in both the physical and social
realm and describe how these socio-environmental conditions can influence the process and experience of
learning. Our project objective is two-fold: to gain a better understanding of student’s learning environment
perceptions and preferences of both informal and formal learning environments and to develop a sustainability
assessment instrument that attends to student perceptions of both physical and social aspects of campus
learning environments.
Sustainability as operationalized by LER:
For the purposes of this study, sustainable learning environments are defined as places that engage and
reinforce practices leading to deep knowledge. We operationalize this definition as a congruence of human
and environmental design as they relate to the academy and students’ subjective states of needing or wanting
i.e. Lewin’s conceptions of beta press. The implications of our work include:
1. Greater consideration taken in the effort to provide an environmental context that engages and reinforces
learning, curriculum and instruction.
2. Deeper learning can occur in environments that reinforce, and not occlude, from the process and relevant
aspects of learning.
Methodology
Student participants of the study were recruited in person by the researchers from the Global Communities
Module of the Professional Development Program (PDP) in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser
University. Additional student participants, external to the PDP program, were recruited and selected based on
their interest in the subject matter.
This study employed two surveys (PLACES & SPACES), participatory observations, and focus groups to
assess the relationship between the psychosocial and physical environment that students learn in. The
Structural, Physical and Campus Environment Survey (SPACES) was developed and piloted to address the
structural, architectural, and ambient features of the campus environment. Understanding students’ preferences
of their learning environment offers institutions insight as to how they can design and modify their space to
accommodate the implied, perceived or expressed needs of their learners. This survey measures five constructs
that consist of: 1) Spatial Environment (accommodation of the space for one’s physical body and learning
activities); 2) Scale and Aesthetics (the accessibility and attractiveness of the space); 3) Ambient Factors
(access to natural light, noise, air quality, ventilation); 4) Architectural Elements (flow and layout of space);
and 5) Visual Environment (lighting access, colour, task specificity).
Place-Based Learning and Constructivist Environment Survey (PLACES) was also utilized (Zandvliet, 2007).
Within the PLACES questionnaire there are eight constructs identified and measured: 1)
Relevance/Integration; 2) Critical Voice; 3) Student Negotiation; 4) Group Cohesion; 5) Student Involvement;
6) Shared Control; 7) Open-Endedness; and 8) Environmental Interaction. The use of the PLACES
questionnaire further investigates the relationship between these eight constructs assessing the learning
environment and educational sustainability.
Qualitatively, focus groups were used to further describe and expand on students’ perceptions of the physical
characteristics of their environment and how these features support learning their context and assisted us in the
design and refinement of the two questionnaires.
Implications for Sustainable Learning within Faculties of Education
Our study in learning environments provides an insight as to student perceptions regarding the context in
which they learn. This information may be further developed towards determining the context that best fits the
student and curriculum taught. Furthermore, those within the faculty may consider utilizing the greater campus
environment for pedagogical reinforcement.
Results
The results of the 6 study locations where we piloted the PLACES and SPACES instruments are presented as
both preliminary and descriptive case study results. Each of these descriptions includes a brief summary of
the study context followed by two charts depicting the pattern of student responses on these questionnaires as
students rated the most salient features of their psycho-social learning environment (as measured by the
PLACES instrument) and their physical /campus environment (as measured by the SPACES instrument). Brief
commentaries are provided for each case description.
The developed questionnaires can be said to attempt to measure important constructs in the learning ecology
that we attempt to describe here. Subsequent studies will also need to determine the validity and reliability of
these developed measures.
Conclusions
Research on learning environments and environmental learning is still in its infancy in the post-secondary
realm. Thus there is a need to continue similar research to what has been conducted here but on a greater scale
incorporating both preferred (ideal) and actual parameters of learning environments so that real education
assessments can be conducted as to the appropriateness of the learning environment we provide our students in
the post-secondary setting. Data such as these about student perceptions around our own pedagogies could
provide a rich forum for action research on what might constitute a sustainable educational ecology (eg. a
complex range of factors that relate to each other and support the learning process in our students).
See, Hear, Experience – a [not-so-virtual] tour of SFU’s Faculty of
Education
As we have already argued, one of our main aims with this project is to prototype a process for
conducting trans-disciplinary inquiry into educational sustainability by linking, relating and building
bridges between quantitative and qualitative research; between empirical, reflective and experiential
data and between the different paradigmatic trenches we occupy. While the six studies outlined
above offer a variety of methodological approaches as well as specific survey questions related to
investigating and assessing the learning, teaching and working practices in the Faculty of Education,
this section deals with demarcating the physical environment of our faculty – the actual spaces and
places where we, the researchers, engage with and experience its sonic, visual, phenomenological
- and by extension – pedagogical components. What we hope to demonstrate is the usefulness and
necessity of what we have been advocating all along – that rather than continuing to separate the
study of people from that of place as well as educational practice, we need to create opportunities
for all different types of research to dialogue with and enrich each other, uncover relationships and
identify both practical and semiotic patterns.
Advances in scientific information systems, GPS and imaging technologies have, in recent years,
greatly facilitated the development and use of visualization techniques in the representation of large
sets of data as an aide to understanding and analyzing complex results, more easily identifying
recurring patterns, and discovering relationships between different elements, agents and artifacts
(Dymacek, Hocova & Kintr, 2008). In the applied and social sciences, visualizing information has
also become increasingly popular as an analytical tool for visual ethnography, iterative
design/research process and organization of qualitative data (Isaaks, Falconer & Blackwood, 2008).
Given our multi-disciplinary inquiry comprised of seemingly disjointed types of questions and results,
visualizing and linking some of the outcomes and reflections with the actual – if not objective –
reality of place, seems to be the best way to proceed in organizing and interpreting this undertaking.
A reality of place: how do we
sum up what it is to occupy,
engage and contend with the
space that is our education
faculty? The concept of a
moodboard, a visual technique,
comes to aid. A moodboard is a
design concept used frequently
in rapid prototyping and iterative
design processes in order to
quickly, effectively and
impactfully communicate the
general ‘look and feel’, flow and
essence (if you will) of a given
style, concept, object, message,
etc. In our case, a moodboard
allows us to comb through and
identify the most salient features
– both positive and problematic
– that characterize the place we inhabit, and put them together in a visual collage. Sometimes these
elements might be prominent features that everyone would recognize and sometimes they might be
the untold stories, lacking from official blueprints, accounts and depictions.
An ‘augmented’ mapping
In this section is a type of concrete “visualization” of the Faculty of Education at SFU in the form of
an annotated floor plan of the three floors that the faculty’s main campus occupies, and where not
only the researchers, but also most participants work, study and teach. The blueprints are colourcoded according to room purpose – teaching facility, offices, programs, graduate studies, PDP
classrooms, labs, etc. Along with that, we have included vignettes of descriptive characterization as
well as sound level and light meter readings for each floor, area and space. The faculty is separated
in three levels that are somewhat tiered so neither floor is technically below street level. The main
level – 8000 is the largest and holds the majority of office, administration, student learning and
computer labs, social space and teaching classrooms. The lower level – 7000, the basement level,
houses more lab space and two large classrooms that have some access to natural light, while the
upper level – 9000 – has four small classrooms and some faculty offices.
th
A note on the technical side of things: all measurements were taken on mobile devices – 4
generation iPod Touch with the use of several applications for sound and light evaluation. SPL
made by Six Degrees Digital, is a professional grade sound level meter that we calibrated against a
digital pro Sound Pressure Meter at SFU’s Sonic Lab facilities, and scaled on a dBA scale. In
addition, we used the application dB, made by Faber Acoustical, which, a caveat, provides more
unstable and un-scaled readings, however, offers the capability to take a picture and overlay
readings on it including a caption and geo-spatial, temporal information. The fact that dB is unscaled means that it is more accurate in soundscapes of lower frequencies such as background
fans, traffic, etc. and less accurate in situation with human and impact sounds. The readings
presented in the write-ups below are taken with SPL, on two separate days – Friday afternoon
(about as quiet as one can get) and Monday early afternoon (about average level of activity for the
space). The pictures in this section are taken with dB (as indicated) and the readings have been
compared against SPL for accuracy and are accurate within +/ - 3dB. They represent the more
active times and locations in the space. Light readings were taken with two applications as well –
Pocket Light meter and Exposure Meter, both with 0 EV correction value, no calibration against
professional equipment.
The hardware of this device is limited to between 15dB to 99dB for sound and 3 to 16 EVs for light.
As a further reference to understanding these results, 10 to 15 EVs are the usual levels for natural
light, with 12 to 16 EVs for sunny and bright weather. Indoor light levels vary between 7 and 9 EVs,
with 8 to 11 EVs for large brightly lit (artificial light) venues, 5 to 7 EVs for low-level artificial light
such as the home, and 8 to 9
EVs for office and other
indoor work environments.
As far as sound readings,
around 40 dB is the level of
quiet study at a library; 45-50
dB the base level of a home
environment, with 50-55 for
average human
conversation, 65 dB for the
typical office/work
environment, as well as for
average level street traffic.
Loud workplaces and noisy
contained locations with a lot
of human, musical and object
sounds can measure around
75 dB, while officially
recognized noise levels are
ones equal to or exceeding
85 dB for continuing exposure (up to 8 hrs a day) and require the use of hearing protection. As a
reference, a typical café environment in an urban setting can measure between 65 and 80 dB.
The 9000 level of the faculty
is the upper-most level. It is
relatively small and the long
wing houses the department
of Archeology. The right wing
contains Teaching Assistants,
sessional and Faculty
Associate offices. It is
perhaps the brightest floor
with light meter exposure
values (EVs) between 8 and
9, and a skylight glass window
at one end. It is the only level
with normal to high ceiling
height. Many students
consider this floor the quietest
and use two sitting/meeting
areas at the front lobby for
quiet study. Incidentally, this
is exactly where two grey
mechanical boxes are located on that level that emit a constant buzzing static ranging between 49
and 53dB baseline, excluding human or other sounds in the area. The baseline levels of the wings
are 45-46 dB in the left one, and 46 47 dB in the right. There is at least one major ceiling fan, near
the back skylight that measures at 59 dB alone and can clearly be heard on the lower levels when
active.
The 8000 level is the main
space of the Faculty, and is
the largest and busiest area.
Its fairly low ceilings make it
seem shady even though
sufficient windows lead to
decks and Zen gardens
outside. The windows are
located, incidentally, at the
ends of each wing and on
both sides of the midhallway near stairs, thus not
usable by any teaching or
study spaces. Most staff
office spaces, however,
have some access to natural
light. Almost all faculty
offices have some natural
light and tend to be located
in the long narrow wings,
away from the noise and distractions of the common areas. The main lobby/hallway of the 8000
floor measures between 52 and 58dB in sound levels. The computer lab adjacent to CET comes at
52dB, and the study area at the back of CET is at its quietest around 49-52dB. The meeting space
at the very back including the Blue Room are also quieter at 49dB. Both sets of side wings all
measure around 44 dB at default and 54dB with average activity in the area quieting towards the far
ends. The main hallway through 8000 gradually quiets towards the far end, which contains a few
lesser-used small classrooms.
Three major ceiling fans on this floor produce a constant broadband hum at a low rumbling
frequency. In addition, the large classroom on the right typically used for PDP (teacher training)
instruction as well as departmental meetings and events, features another ceiling fan inside that is a
known offender among faculty and students. As a general note, all ceilings in the faculty are
exposed, which results in lack of any sound insulation for HVAC systems and other infrastructures.
The shape of the corridors and construction materials produce a persistent level of reverberation,
and the embossed lino floor cause a booming, deafening sound whenever anything with wheels rolls
on it – which happens often as all
equipment used for teaching is signed
out on wheeled carts.
The average light levels on this floor
measure consistently at 8 EVs for
designated study and social spaces
such as CET and the staff/faculty
lunchroom (one of the brightest
locations with access to natural light
and an outside deck), and 7 EVs for the
hallways, which are dimmer and less
well-lit, albeit being sites for much
incidental meetings, conversations and
socializing.
The 7000 level is the basement level
of the Faculty. It is the darkest floor,
measuring at 6-8 EVs, however, it is
still on street level and the classrooms
technically have access to natural
light. Many of the labs and offices on
the left side do not. The wing
designated as teaching space is lit up
with bright fluorescent lights. This floor
houses two mechanical / electrical
rooms that produce a constant static
buzz. As well, there are several
vending machines that contribute to a
base level of 53-56 dB for this floor
(on a quiet day). A couple of loud
ceiling fans are located in the large
teaching classrooms on the right that
are usually used for PDP instruction.
Returning to Educational Sustainability…
Finally, a look at the overall distribution of space, sound, light and function in the whole faculty
reveals fruitful geo-semiotic, hierarchical, functional and environmental patterns that essentially offer
what we have been after all along - a concrete tool for direct assessment and evaluation of such
aspects of ‘educational sustainability’ that have to do with place, space, agents, resource
management and learning environments; as well, a shorthand visualization of this sort can directly
serve as a tool for beginning conversations on an institutional and policy levels regarding
addressing, promoting and improving the ‘educational sustainability’ of our faculty. As an illustration
we enclose in the next figure below a tiered cross-section of the whole faculty, annotated for light,
sound and several recurring structural elements, with legend included. Note the legend applied to
the next figure below as well.
The Building as Interface
One of the metaphors, which became a working concept both in terms of thinking of the
relationships between people and space/place but also as an analytical construct for illustrating and
reflecting on these relationships, was the idea of the building as an interface. A place where we can
integrate visually and physically the different types of data, the “map” or the floor plan of our faculty
becomes incidentally an interface that allows access – by analytically going deeper – to the complex
structures that already exist – the environmental elements such as light and sound, but also the
organization of space according to stakeholder hierarchy and participation, and the various
allocations of function. Part of future work would be integrating both coded participant information
collected from research initiatives similar to what we’ve discussed here, as well as direct informant
quotes and commentary pertaining to particular spaces, conditions and relationships in the faculty.
This map will then become truly a “living” interactive interface opening up insights into the lives and
challenges of its inhabitants.
The next figure shows a detailed example of a pop-up interface of the faculty’s floorplan, including
organizational spatial structure, space functions, light and sound readings, and visual materials to
supplement the schema.
Conclusion and Future work
We started out this project with a commitment to pursue not only what sustainability means in the
context of education, but specifically to address what specific factors such as “learning in depth” or
“learning environments” or “space allocation” or “place as a teacher” mean to sustainability; how
these issues play out in an educational setting and how they can be identified, measured, described,
ameliorated and even resolved in these contexts. This kind of trans- and cross-disciplinary angle of
exploring “educational sustainability” is, we believe, both still largely missing from and yet critically
important to many sustainability audits and institutional studies. As mentioned earlier, one of the
contributions of our project is conceptual innovation around operationalizing “environmental
sustainability” presented in the context of six different inquiries that deepen and extend its definition
beyond the purview of environmental education, to include issues of social relationships, quality of
learning, experience of place and agency, and other factors that potentially have a stake in
sustainability.
In light of the still substantial distance that we articulate earlier between empirical quantitative data
on environmental impacts, and curricular initiatives in environmental education, our study offers
conceptual convergence, methodologies and theories of the middle range, capable of bridging
between objective and subjective measures towards a comprehensive analysis of sustainability for
the assessment of educational environments. While the survey instrument template to come of this
work is not yet validated, that is hardly the point – it is an exercise in showcasing a process of
engaging with sustainability and education on a multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary way, an
approach that – we hope to have shown – resists reductionism and necessitates both qualitative
and quantitative collection and analysis. As the individual projects we describe weave data from
vastly different sources and take on a variety of methodological approaches, the outcomes of each
study and its respective formulation of educational sustainability indicators serve not as definitive
evidence of an “educational sustainability”, but rather provide salient directions for further
exploration through a combination of granular detail, measures and analysis, and environmental
descriptors of parameters of the space itself.
Last but not least, we offer innovative and compelling ways of organizing and visualizing the
information, knowledge and implications of our work as a way of erasing and rebuilding some of the
disciplinary paradigms in which we, as colleagues, function and think within. This iterative process of
defining and re-defining educational sustainability, as well as refining the operational questions and
indicators result ultimately in a template for understanding educational sustainability in each
particular context, which hopefully becomes utilized in both specific and more general, customizable
fashion serving to enrich almost any inquiry relating to sustainability at the higher education context.
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