Case Study 14 Developing a sustainability mindset: a
collaborative approach to staff development
Stephen Scoffham, Canterbury Christ Church University
Jane Buckley Sander and Julia Bracewell, Commonwork1
Overview
This case study focuses on the importance of collaborative, experiential learning as central to
effective teacher education. The case study demonstrates the importance of partnerships being
built on mutual trust and common philosophies, to develop critical and complex thinking and
understanding. It highlights the capacity of staff development of this kind to develop 'ambassadors
of change'.
Introduction
In the summer of 2012, Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) collaborated with
Commonwork, a local centre in Kent for education for sustainable development and global
citizenship (ESDGC) to run a joint staff development event. This case study explains how the
collaboration came about, the principles which underpinned it and the elements which led to its
success. The evaluation suggests that the programme was particularly effective in enabling
innovation and creativity and building capacity amongst initial teacher education (ITE) tutors. The
opportunity to construct shared understandings and the chance for tutors to develop their selfimage were also noteworthy. Further research would be valuable to understand more fully how
such partnerships can be most effective and lead to lasting legacies.
Background
Until recently, education for sustainable development (ESD) at CCCU was restricted to a few
‘bright spots’, and depended largely on the enthusiasm of a small band of committed individuals.
This is now changing. The university has appointed a Director of Sustainability Development, and
the importance of sustainability has been recognised at senior management level. The strategic
plan for 2011-15 includes an ambition to ensure that ‘staff and students understand the need to
sustainably manage the environment’ (CCCU 2011:65). Furthermore, in 2011 the university made
a successful bid to participate in the ‘Green Academy’ – an initiative run by the Higher Education
Academy (HEA) – which has raised the profile of ESD and provided space for detailed discussions
about underlying principles and values.
Promoting sustainability awareness to over a thousand academic staff with a very wide range of
professional and academic interests is no easy task. As Chalkley (2012) notes, few higher
education teachers feel equipped to produce ‘sustainability literate’ graduates. Building and
1
http://www.commonwork.org/
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developing this capacity is crucial. The challenge is to do this with very limited resources, without
trespassing on academic freedom and without placing new demands on colleagues or adding extra
material to courses that are already overcrowded.
The approach that has been adopted at CCCU is to build on existing strengths and enthusiasms,
to encourage inter-disciplinary and inter-departmental collaboration and to involve students
wherever possible in the planning process. Colleagues who are interested in re-framing and
repositioning their courses to address sustainability issues have been invited to participate in a
programme called the Futures Initiative and to bid for small-scale funding. At the end of the first
year (July 2012), staff who had participated in the Futures Initiative were then invited to a training
event, with the aim of building shared understandings and deeper self-awareness. Such an
approach was based on the notion that staff development is about nourishing the whole person
rather than focussing on externally imposed targets.
Collaboration with Commonwork
There were good reasons for CCCU to collaborate with Commonwork on a staff development
event. As a long established environmental and educational organisation committed to exploring
how to be human in a global world, Commonwork explores through practical action and
experiential learning how to live and work sustainably. It understands and recognises the
interconnectedness of the environmental, social, economic and political aspects of sustainability.
As such a centre of ESDGC, Commonwork was able to bring a unique perspective to the
programme (see Buckley Sander and Bracewell, 2010). Moreover, Commonwork’s education team
had worked with higher education institutions, think tanks and other academic groups in the past,
and had the experience and confidence to take a leading role in developing a programme with
CCCU (see Buckley Sander and Blair, 2011).
Mutual trust and a common philosophy were essential in forging a successful and credible
programme. Staff from both Commonwork and CCCU agreed that notions such as ‘critical mass’,
‘tipping points’, ‘wicked problems’ and ‘unexpected consequences’ all help to develop new
thinking. The value of mindsets which acknowledge messiness, confusion and complexity were also
affirmed. The fact that professional relationships between individual staff in the two organisations
stretch back over twenty years was a significant factor in facilitating preliminary discussions.
Part of the appeal of joint working also relates to ‘place’. A vital part of Commonwork’s ethos is
the idea of ‘hosted space’ (Court, 2011); a way of acknowledging that the mind behind a place is
crucial to our experience of it. This notion is a vital part of Commonwork’s approach to exploring
and practising sustainable living at Bore Place, where it offers residential courses in a lovely
historic manor house based on its organic dairy farm and gardens. This ‘hosted space’ offered the
advantage of providing CCCU staff with an environment well away from the pressures of everyday
academic life. Wasam-Ellam (2010) suggests that ‘third spaces’ in general can provide low stakes
contexts in which to explore emerging ideas. Scoffham and Barnes (2013) extend this argument by
contending that place can be a powerful catalyst to creative thinking in its own right.
The residential programme was based on a number of agreed principles and understandings,
including:
(a) the importance of making connections to oneself, to others and the environment;
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(b) a commitment to organic, evolutionary and voluntary change that emerges from practice
rather than being imposed from above;
(c) a recognition that learning involves emotional and spiritual as well cognitive dimensions;
(d) a willingness to tolerate uncertainty.
These principles and the pedagogy used in the programme chime neatly with the values that
permeate sustainability discourse set out in The Future Fit Framework (Stirling, 2011:36-7). They
also reflect the complexities that are inherent in environmental and ecological issues.
Staff development event
The programme was developed through planning meetings and email exchanges over several
months. The central aim was to bring CCCU staff together to develop their understanding of
sustainability education, develop shared understandings and increase their motivation and
confidence as a group. Underlying principles were exemplified in the pedagogy with a clear
commitment to experiential and participatory learning rooted within the hosted space. Holistic
approaches involving reflection, group discussion and collaborative activities were given a high
priority.
Staff came from a variety of discipline areas – Business, Media, Biological Sciences, Community
Nursing and Education. The sustainability manager, employability advisor and Dean of Chapel also
took part, making a group of sixteen including four students. The group, which was extremely
diverse, had a roughly equal gender balance and a good mix of age bands. However, it would be
misleading to suggest that it was representative of the wider university community. Participants
were almost entirely self-selecting and had volunteered to become involved in sustainability
initiatives. Significantly, however, many of the participants were meeting each other for the first
time. There is no evidence that the quality of the discussion or the confidences that were shared
were impaired as a result. Quite the contrary. The rich mix of staff and students from a variety of
disciplines led to a fascinating discourse, and Commonwork staff were struck by the way the
discussion was informed by a deep understanding of sustainability and how readily it focussed on
fundamental issues and values.
The programme involved a combination of practical activities, reflection and discussion spread
over a period of two and a half days. An opening ‘ice-breaker’ exploring the identities and qualities
of global leaders led to a scoping exercise, in which participants used their connections with
objects to explore their links with the past and future. A compass rose exercise (adapted from
TIDE, 1995) provided a useful way of identifying different aspects of sustainability. Further practical
activities included making links with string to show ecological and social connections, responding
creatively to the natural environment, and cooking a meal together. Participants were also invited
to take part in a late night walk and given the chance to milk cows in the early morning. The
identity of the group was further developed through a community of enquiry activity, while ‘future
scoping’ allowed space for creative thinking about the transferability of practice observed at Bore
Place. The programme finished with group discussions about the qualities for a ‘sustainably literate
graduate’, and reflections and thoughts for the future.
The programme involved a graded mixture of practical and reflective activities designed to
promote holistic understanding, as this table illustrates:
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Event
Description
Wednesday evening
Ice breaker
Wednesday evening
Participants selected photographs of global leaders and sought out a partner
with whom they had common interests.
Futures scoping
Exploring hopes and fears for the future using artefacts as a prompt.
Night walk
Exploring the local area in the dark to make new and unusual connections with
the natural world.
Thursday
Guided walk round Bore Place
Thursday
A chance to see an organic farm in action, focusing on social, economic and
political as well as environmental aspects.
Compass rose exercise
Exploring different dimensions of sustainability using the cardinal points of the
compass as a prompt.
Defining sustainability
Working in groups, participants discussed key features of sustainability and
used these terms in a single sentence definition.
Connecting to the living world
Working in a woodland glade, participants used a ball of wool to illustrate
connections between different forms of life and then engaged with the
environment on a more individual level through creative art activities.
Visioning CCCU campus and
community
Envisioning change through a modelling exercise.
Cooking dinner
A collaborative exercise in which all participants worked together to cook an
evening meal and informally explore global food related issues.
An open discussion on learning so far.
Friday
Early morning milking
Friday
A chance for participants to connect directly with food production.
Community of enquiry
Exploring through literature and structured discourse the value of the
collective development of critical thinking and the self in the group.
Exploring relationships
A psychological perspective on readiness and resistance to change.
Collective planning
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Evaluation
The long term impact of the event has yet to become apparent. Feedback from the verbal end of
day reflections and the written pre-course and post-course evaluations nevertheless provide
valuable data. These responses indicate changes on a number of different levels – personal,
emotional, cognitive, motivational. The following comments are indicative of the range of the
learning that appeared to be taking place:
What has happened here today is absolutely priceless.
I learnt about the value of learning from mistakes and failures as an essential component of
sustainability.
It was like taking a deep, deep breath. I drew a deep breath today.
Key to my understanding is the need to engage with students and colleagues as I move this
notion forward.
Don’t imagine there are magic solutions. Go for co-operation and value diversity.
Will we need to develop a different relation to time?
The overall consensus was that the programme was motivating, helped to generate much new
thinking and provided ideas for action. Participants particularly appreciated the chance to spend
time together. Not only did they get to know each other better, they also began to form groups
which in future might take collective action at CCCU, moving beyond and strengthening the
impact of their individual activities. The increased awareness amongst participants of their role as
agents for change was also apparent. The student representatives, in particular, found the
experience both stimulating and affirming.
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Image 1: Staff and students worked together to develop common understandings and build their self-image as agents
for change.
(Image reproduced with kind permission of Karen Shepherdson)
A few comments reflected dissatisfaction. Two participants were disappointed that the event had
not led to more tangible outcomes, such as a plan for next steps. Perhaps the programme outline
gave a misleading impression in this respect. A couple of others said their ideas about sustainability
had not changed; it would be helpful to investigate what lies behind these comments. However,
most participants indicated that their understanding had matured and deepened as a result of the
programme. This is neatly summarised in the following response:
I leave with more questions than answers. But with increased confidence in formulating the
questions and a developing framework from which to develop a response. I am seeking time
to reflect on my own practice and curriculum development. I haven’t done this yet but I
have considered broader ideological institutional positions during the programme. This has
been highly beneficial.
There are a number of questions that the planning and delivery team might need to consider in
future. The ambiguity of some of the terminology such as ‘sustainability literacy’ and ‘futures’
perhaps inhibited rather than encouraged shared understandings. There is potential to extend the
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theoretical and philosophical base of the programme, drawing, for instance, on the work of Paulo
Friere (1973) to illuminate aspects of agency and explore notions of critical consciousness. There
is also a need to reconsider the balance and pace of activities to make better use of experiences
and discourse. However, the positive experience of the joint facilitation far outweighed the
tensions, and there are already plans for a repeat programme.
Moving forward
Staff development and curriculum change are slow processes and only likely to happen over long
periods of time. There are many questions at the current moment about the purpose of
education, the extent to which it should engage with real world issues and how best to prepare
students for an uncertain future. This debate is taking place against a backdrop of environmental
and ecological change that appears to be threatening the balance of life at a planetary level. It has
been argued that small-scale changes towards ESD are likely to be ineffective, especially if they are
to happen within a framework of mechanistic thinking which is poorly suited to understanding
current problems (Sterling, 2001). Calls to recast education and for whole-scale paradigm change
have come from a variety of sources including the United Nations (UNESCO, 2011). This is a huge
agenda.
The type of collaboration outlined in this study is not going to resolve global problems. However,
it is a step in the right direction and must be seen as a promising development. Those who
participated in the programme have the potential to be ambassadors for change within CCCU. If
development education centres (DECs) and organisations like Commonwork can enter into long
term partnerships with universities to build capacity across disciplines and subject boundaries, they
can sow the seeds of change. Further research is needed both to understand more fully how such
partnerships can be most effective, and to establish their long term impact. There is every reason
for urgency. Universities in the UK, as in many other countries, have been remarkably slow to
embrace the sustainability agenda. To put it simply, we are running out of time…
References
Buckley Sander, J. and Bracewell, J. (2010) Habitats and Humanity. Bore Place, Chiddingstone:
Commonwork.
Buckley Sander, J. and Blair, F. (2011) Leading for the Future. Bore Place, Chiddingstone:
Commonwork.
CCCU. (2011) Strategic Plan 2011-15. Canterbury: CCCU [unpublished internal report].
Court, G. (2011) Hosted Space. Bore Place, Chiddingstone: Commonwork.
Chalkley, B. (2012) Foreward. In Cotton, D., Sterling, S., Neal, V. and Winter, J. (eds.) Putting the ‘S’
into ED – Education for Sustainable Development in Educational Development: SEDA Special 13.
London: SEDA.
Freire, P. (1973) Education for Critical Consciousness. London: Continuum Press.
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Scoffham, S. and Barnes, J. (2013) Fieldwork, Creativity and the Future. In Scoffham, S. (ed.)
Teaching Geography Creatively. London: Routledge.
Stirling, S. (2001) Sustainable Education: Re-visioning learning and change. Dartington: Green Books.
Stirling, S. (2011) The Future Fit Framework. York: Higher Education Academy.
TIDE. (1995) Development Compass Rose: A consultation pack. Birmingham: Teachers in
Development Education.
Wasam-Ellam, L. (2010) Children’s Literature as a Springboard to Place-based Learning.
Environmental Education Research. 16 (3-4), 279-294.
UNESCO. (2011) Education for Sustainable Development: An expert review of processes and learning.
Paris: UNESCO.
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