TRANSITIONING FROM THE PANDEMIC: Sound Advice from the OECD


As governments proceed to reduce the lock down measures implemented to contain Covid-19 they are being encouraged to implement a 5-step decision making framework which takes account of longer-term impacts of climate change. We do not need gung-ho business as usual changes which stimulate carbon intensive industrial and consumption growth, knowing only to well that this will need further decoupling in the very near future in response to the climate and biodiversity crisis. Makes sense doesn’t it?
OECD FRAMEWORK
• Systematically evaluate possible unintended negative environmental impacts of new short-term fiscal and tax provisions. While the priority is rightly on providing urgent relief to impacted businesses and individuals, a careful screening of the environmental impacts of stimulus measures would significantly add coherence to policies and avoid creating perverse and unintended environmental consequences that might damage the future resilience and environmental health of societies.


• Do not roll-back existing environmental standards as part of recovery plans. As countries implement urgent measures to tackle the health and immediate economic impact of the crisis, it will be important not to retreat from the gains made in recent decades in addressing climate change, air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and other environmental challenges.

• Make sector-specific financial support measures conditional on environmental improvements where possible. The use of financial support measures such as preferential loans, loan guarantees and tax abatements could be directed towards supporting stronger environmental commitments and performance in pollution-intensive sectors that may be particularly affected by the crisis.


• Ensure that the measures will enhance levels of environmental health to strengthen the resilience of societies. A cleaner environment will have a positive impact on human health; for example, reductions in air pollution will improve the health of vulnerable segments of urban populations and can make them more resilient to health risks.

• Communicate clearly on the benefits of improving the overall environmental health of societies. Underscoring the benefits to well-being and prosperity from more resilient societies can strengthen public support for measures aimed at enhancing environmental health.


As the COVID-19 emergency evolves, the effects of governments’ stimulus packages will need to be assessed with respect to the long-term environmental impacts. A focus on the transition to low emissions and resource efficient economies will be a central component of such a process. For example, the investment plans associated with recovery will be critical in setting the environmental pathway for the next few decades, crucial for global efforts to avoid dangerous climate change.

SHOULD UNIVERSITIES BE A FORCE FOR SOCIAL GOOD?


Imagine if a university totally reoriented itself around redeveloping its locality. It would only offer teaching and research directly relevant to this mission. It might bring in local employers, partner with private training providers, and only carry out research that would benefit its local communities.
This idea by a leading consultancy firm was headlined in the Times Higher last week. Yet, it failed to mention a range of opinion and research on this issue emanating from academics in the UK and worldwide. In an earlier blog I mentioned the extensive work by the philosopher Nicholas Maxwell on the role of universities in learning for wisdom and their contribution to social progress. Another important contribution was made recently in a report by the Civic University Commission, chaired by former cabinet Secretary Bob Kerslake.
It argued that universities play a key societal role through their teaching and research work. But they can also play a hugely important role in the sustainability and environmental wellbeing of the cities in which they are located.
The importance of this civic role is growing. For example, in the city of Sheffield there were 4,000 students and nearly 45,000 people working in the steel industry in 1978. Today there are around 60,000 students and around 3,000 steelworkers. Universities have become one of the largest employers – next to the National Health Service in many cities and areas of the country.
In the United Kingdom , for example , which has grappled with the challenges of low growth, low productivity, the impact of austerity and widening spatial inequalities, universities can be (alongside local authorities and the health sector), significant ‘anchor institutions’, able to make an enormous impact on the success of their places. But this impact is often framed solely in terms of their economic impact, with limited consideration of the wider sustainability agenda set out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)
National education policy has tended to ignore the importance of regions and cities. This ignorance of place – and how different places have experienced growth, globalisation, and shifts in a country’s sources of wealth – has led to huge inequalities across many countries. Many universities have seen themselves as increasingly global first, national second, and local third.
There has been some shift towards place-based policy making – most notably in the UK through the industrial strategy and city deals, but also – for example – through opportunity areas in schools’ policy.
University policy in England remains almost wholly national, including:
• A lack of recognition in recent policy and legislation that universities are anchor institutions in ‘left behind’ places and their closure could have drastic effects on those areas.
• Funding for teaching that is nationally designed.
• Funding for research which is still almost wholly awarded based on national and international excellence.
What is needed is a greater focus on creating Civic Universities with the following characteristics:
• A clear strategic rationale for how teaching, research and professional civic engagement benefits the city/city region.
• Along with a civic engagement plan which is negotiated and evaluated with key organisations in the city via a time dependent “Performance Agreement” Which is in line with what happens in Holland.

Universities can actively promote co-creation of societal transformation that goes far beyond technology transfer and other economic contributions, which is what the concept of a “civic university” demands. The idea of a civic university takes a university’s role in society much further and at scale towards active engagement and mutual learning. If a university takes on this role, it enhances its chances of transforming itself as an institution and becoming a sustainability role model in its community. This is especially true when active engagement and mutual learning are paired with participatory processes, since this creates an environment that promotes critical, systemic, and future-oriented thinking. A good example of such engagement is the development of city-wide citizens assemblies to develop climate emergency and net zero carbon plans( Good examples include the universities and cities of Nottingham, Bristol, and Leeds)
Another example is a recent study carried out by the University of Sheffield: it addressed the question; Is there space to grow vegetables and fruit in the city? In the United Kingdom, approximately 16,000 km2 of land is designated as urban, of which green infrastructure constitutes approximately 50% (an area 5.3 times larger than that used nationally for the commercial production of fruits and vegetables). To understand the extent to which urban horticulture can make use of this apparent land resource, the researchers used high-spatial-resolution datasets to analyse the current and potential productive space for urban horticulture for the UK city of Sheffield. With 582,500 inhabitants, Sheffield has the sixth largest population in England and Wales. Results indicate that there is more than enough urban land available within the city to meet the fruit and vegetable requirements of its population. Such studies illuminate the recent proposals made by Tim Lang in his book-Feeding Britain- that we need a systemic reappraisal of our food system so that we avoid a food security crisis.

Transformative Change: How do we get there?

The pandemic lockdown is offering groups of like-minded individuals the opportunities to come together to talk sensibly and sensitively about our global futures. Here in Derbyshire the Climate Coalition group recently initiated a zoom conversation on why and how to create a “movement of movements” on climate change. It was a robust and creative session but limited by the inevitable complexity of the question. At a time when humanity is facing a growing number of unprecedented and interdependent existential crises, how do we make progress? Is there realistically a convergence of solutions to both the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change?

Paul Raskin, the founder of the Great Transition Initiative (GTI: https://greattransition.org/), offers some encouraging ways of approaching this complexity. He argues that we need a global citizens movement. He believes we need stronger and more motivational answers to the burning question of action. He uses a simple framework of 4 questions to address this conundrum:

  • Where are we?
  • Where are we going?
  • Where do we want to go?
  • How do we get there?

The questions offer an ascending order of difficulty. On the first 3 questions there has been a growing catalogue of progress. Not least in terms of the scientific understanding of many of the so-called wicked sustainability issues we face.

We are also getting a wholesale and frightening introduction to the social, psychological, and economic impacts of a global pandemic.

The fact that most nations have signed up to implementing the 17 UN  Sustainable Development Goals provides us with a global road map of where we are going and more importantly where we want to go.

Other international agreements like the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sendai Framework on disaster risk reduction add considerable weight to the beginning of a global response to these crises. But much more is needed to embed these agreements into national and sub-national governance systems along with the transformation of institutional and organisational structures and cultures.

To tackle  the question “How do we get there?”  we need a systemic transformation. This requires a systemic movement to lead us in a vast cultural and political transformation which  can shape a new and vibrant sustainable future.

Maybe the systemic movements initiated by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion show the way. Maybe the clean air in our cities, arising out of the current pandemic, is also showing people a new and different future.

Crucially this movement must ensure that its ends animate the means. It needs to find ways of balancing a unity of purpose with the diversity of  human engagement, whilst renouncing the extremes and polarising influence of top-down vanguardism and bottom-up spontaneity.

The Intelligence Trap: Why do clever people make stupid mistakes?

I have argued that our universities are not yet addressing, at scale and urgency, some of the systemic existential issues of our time. We are currently facing the Covid-19 pandemic and our collective understanding of this crisis is woefully inadequate. And this underpins some of the ill-judged policy decisions made in response to its impact.

David Robson, the author of a recent book “The Intelligence Trap”, has advocated that there is no direct link between intelligence and wise decisions! Based on many famous case studies, he argues that “smart people can make seriously stupid mistakes”. These include Albert Einstein, Arthur Conan Doyle, Linus Pauling, Kary Mullis and many others. In short ,experts make wrong decisions  again and again. AND geniuses can be wildly irrational too.

 As we enter our fourth week of isolation in the UK, we are subjected to meaningless statistics on everything, from the use or not of face masks and the numbers of deaths, which include ONLY those in hospital. The government’s fallback position in justifying its policy decisions is a parroted “we have followed expert medical and scientific advice”.

The 21st century presents us with deeply complex problems like pandemics and climate change that require a wiser way of reasoning: one that recognises our current limitations, tolerates ambiguity and uncertainty, balances multiple perspectives, and bridges diverse areas of expertise. So it is becoming more and more important that our education systems help create more people with these attributes.

For some considerable time, a philosopher called Nicholas Maxwell has been arguing, that the quest for wisdom should be at the heart of a university’s purpose. He advocates that they should prioritise this through “an organised inquiry which is rationally designed and wholly devoted to helping humanity learn wisdom and learn to create a more enlightened world.” But, you might ask, isn’t this what they already do? Apparently not. According to Maxwell universities have taught and advanced, in ever increasing detail, our knowledge of science, the humanities, and the social sciences, but with limited understanding of how this knowledge can be applied to benefit wider society. All of which has helped create the modern world. But it has been a mixed blessing, as many of us now recognise. This enhanced knowledge has had a profound influence for public good, in health, agriculture, transport and communication. But this has also been globally damaging for all humanity in terms of modern warfare, terrorism, inequality, destruction of our natural environments and climate change. He posits that our universities have become conditioned by the idea that they are there to enhance our knowledge and technological innovation. But there are limits to knowledge inquiry if it bypasses reason and wisdom. A good introduction to Maxwell’s position can be found here, in a recent TED talk. In it he offers a simple-4 stage solution for giving this intellectual priority in our universities.

The Urgent Need to Bring About a Revolution in Academia: Nicholas Maxwell at TEDxUCL

Our House is on fire

I have written in an earlier blog about Greta and my links with Sweden and its education system. I have also been honoured to work with Karl Henrik Robert the founder of the Natural Step a framework for sustainability  (https://thenaturalstep.org/approach/ ). And, following the 2002 Earth Summit, I worked as a facilitator of an amazing international consultation on education for sustainable development  called “Learning to Change our World” held in Goteborg in May 2004.

So, Sweden has a special place in my development and engagement with sustainability. No surprise, then that I ordered this new book narrated, largely by Greta’s mother, Malena Ernman, the Opera singer.

Wow, what a family story, littered with the family trials of two daughters, Greta and Beata, who struggle with speaking, eating and other disorders. It highlights how these and other wicked family issues lead  them to link their own suffering to the suffering of the planet.And which then leads to a global movement when 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a solo “school strike for the climate”. A teenager who became the unlikely face of climate activism. Our House Is on Fire is, among many other things, the story of how and why Greta came to be sitting on the pavement outside the Swedish parliament with a home-made placard.

This book has diminished my positive views of the Swedish education and social systems.  It wastes no time in dispelling any notion that Sweden is a utopia of public services. The description of getting help and a diagnosis out of the adolescent psychiatric services – “Where everyone is burned out from struggling with a constantly growing workload and where much of the time is spent putting out fires” – will have parents across the world groaning with grim recognition. Not a lot better is their view on mainstream education, “where all pupils must function in exactly the same way and where overworked teachers on a conveyor belt end up hitting the wall”. Greta was bullied, her school was indifferent, she lost 10kg in two months and reached the brink of hospitalisation before she was, eventually, diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, selective mutism and Asperger syndrome. “Perhaps we will never be fine, but we can always get a little bit better, and there is strength in that. There is hope in that.”

For me the message is clear, despite  the turbulence and stress in their lives every family member rose up and made transformational changes  in their work and lifestyles to become celebrated global role models.

WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION FOR? ARE WE EDUCATING EARTH LITERATE LEADERS?


Is there a Case for Re-Purposing our Universities?


We are now citizens of the Earth joined in a common enterprise with many variations. We have every right to insist that those who purport to lead us be worthy of the task. Imagine such a time! (Orr, 2003)
Hundreds of delegates met late last year in Madrid(Cop25) to discuss climate change and the UN’s Secretary General headlined with his statement that” we have reached a point of no return!” The UK will hold the next climate conference (Cop26 )in Glasgow in 2021 and our government is making much of how well the UK is mitigating greenhouse gas emissions despite our increasingly prolific use of fossil fuels and our unsustainable consumer lifestyles.
If we look back on the World Summit for Sustainable Development (the Earth Summit)) in Johannesburg (2002) and many of the other international summits which followed, and reflect on their impact, the overriding conclusion is that political leadership the world over has failed to rise to the challenges of sustainability. And yet it is likely that most of the hundred or so leaders who attended the earth summit would have had a higher education degree from some of the world’s most prestigious universities. This raises some serious questions for our university leaders and their governance structures. Why, as the American academic, David Orr once remarked, is it that the people who contribute most to exploiting poor communities and the Earth’s ecosystems are those with BAs, MScs and PhDs and not the ‘ignorant’ poor from the South ? And, why is the illiteracy amongst the world’s politicians as to how the world works as a living system so widespread? Why is it so rare that we encounter in our leaders the qualities needed to enable sustainability: humility, respect for all forms of life and future generations, precaution and wisdom, the capacity to think systemically and critically challenge unethical actions? And more worryingly based on current performance, what hope of improvement is there for future leaders?
The fact that the higher education sector is seriously failing society by producing leaders incapable of addressing our most pressing problems should trigger some critical consideration about the fundamental role of universities in society, based on three key assumptions: If universities are the nursery of tomorrow’s leaders and educate most of the people who develop and manage society’s institutions, then the sector bears “profound responsibilities to increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies, and tools to create a sustainable future”, as the Talloires Declaration (signed by many of the world’s university leaders) stated in 1990 (ULSF, 1990). This clearly implies that graduates of every discipline (whether as engineers, teachers, politicians, lawyers, architects, biologists, banks managers or tourism operators, etc.) will need a sound working knowledge of sustainability.
Moreover, sustainable development is now a mainstream policy issue around the world ( in 2015, 150 world leaders signed up to implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals) and there is an increasing demand for graduates with a broad interdisciplinary training in sustainable development and problem solving. Universities as centres of the most advanced knowledge can through their teaching and their institutional practice, act as role models for wider society and be overt, ethical leaders and advocates of best practice for the future.
Last September the proportion of young people in England going to university passed the symbolic 50% mark for the first time and a further 2.5 million optimistic students arrived at our universities. Should we celebrate these significant milestones? Or is their optimism misplaced and is the achievement of this 20-year-old policy target good for our society? OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher believes that achieving this target is a good thing, whilst at the same time he argues that UK’s record in measuring the learning in schools is “leading the world”, we are less effective in measuring the learning taking place in our universities. If we are not adequately measuring the output of a university education how can we assess its effectiveness and how does this influence a student’s choice of a university? And, more fundamentally, how does the absence of clear learning outcomes, help us to understand the purpose of a university education?
A recent book written by Professor Kerry Shephard (Higher Education for Sustainability) asks a more fundamental question: “What does guide our beliefs and actions? / and, to what extent might higher education be guiding the beliefs and actions of our students?” Without assessing the outcomes of a university education, there is no answer to this question. Shephard argues that universities should develop and enhance their student’s critical thinking and related dispositions because this captures more precisely the social, environmental and ethical needs of civil society in a complex and rapidly changing world. In the absence of this kind of explicit purpose, then as one Finnish academic has recently commented, the university “has already become an empty shell, or a soulless organism reduced to dead matter”
The traditional view is that a university education provides a basis for extending and deepening human understanding in a disciplined, ethical and illimitable manner. But this liberal view has been overtaken in recent years by the prevailing commercial wisdom which holds that the purpose of higher education is to advance knowledge, promote social mobility and help ensure perpetual economic growth and competitiveness. As one commentator has suggested:
‘This commercialisation of higher education serves a bigger purpose, though. It softens students up for the rigours of globalisation. By creating a market, young people are encouraged to think and behave like rational economic man. They become ‘human capital’, calculating the rate of return on their university investment. A degree becomes a share certificate. Commercialisation conditions students to expect no help from others, or society, and therefore never to provide help in return. Debt and economic conditioning discourage graduates from going into lower-paid caring jobs – and instead into the City, where the real ‘value’ is. It fashions a Britain that competes rather than cares.’ NEF University Challenge
This commercialisation creates citizens who remain as mainstays of the prevailing economic system and, consequently, are unable to lead as agents of progressive social change. But complexity, volatility, and potential social collapse increasingly define the lives of today’s graduates, as well as most (around 87%) of our political representatives in parliament who have undertaken a university education. If our universities are to provide us with leaders capable of making a positive rather than a negative impact on human survival and wellbeing in these changing times, they need to rethink their purpose.

What Do We Mean by a Crisis?

Massive social lock down has closely followed the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Like many I’m struggling with how this is being communicated and, more importantly, how the required actions are being implemented. More than ever we need clarity and understanding from everyone. Yet we continue to see pictures of breaches to the government mandate to socially distance when we shop or walk for exercise. We all face difficult decisions and painful dilemmas as we begin to understand the implications of the crisis we face. As one commentator recently suggested, we are in a kind of stasis, shrouded by deep anxiety, as the scale and urgency of the crisis unfolds.  And, we cannot fathom the transformative change we face, much of which is unknowable. ‘Experts’ have no access to infallible truths to guide us towards a safer and more sustainable future. Yet our political leadership continue to repeat the mantra that their actions are based on the best scientific evidence! Perhaps, it would be wiser to say based on the “best available evidence?”

The word “crisis ” is derived from the Greek “krisis” which means a decision or judgement. This derivation also includes a critical state or condition such as a medical state, which can develop positively towards a cure or, negatively and lead to long term ill health or premature death. Hence, the outcomes of a crisis are unpredictable and unknowable. 

Those of us who are deeply concerned about another crisis – the climate emergency, will inevitably look at Covid-19 and draw comparisons. But this is ultimately a flawed exercise because Climate Change does not have the same dynamic as that we are currently experiencing.  It is much slower to develop and so does not pose an immediate threat to our very existence. It doesn’t have the same imminent sense of threat that Britain faced as German troops massed on the other side of the channel, ready to invade. Therefore, it has less influence on our collective social consciences to initiate rapid behavioural change.

What does an emergency mean when we face a crisis?

An emergency is a situation where the normal ways we manage society and the economy cannot adequately deal with the risk we face. It implies, therefore, a change to what we do, commensurate with both the scale and urgency of the risk.

Declaring an emergency should result in the development of a plan, underpinned by strong leadership, that communicates, coordinates and deploys the practical capacity and financing to protect communities from the threat, including the most vulnerable. In most emergencies, only the state has the authority and capacity to act  in this way. All of us rely on the state  to do so.

As a result of Covid-19 we now better understand  the basic characteristics of an emergency response. As the Breakthrough Climate Centre describes it:

“In emergency mode we stop ‘business-as-usual’ because nothing  else matters as much as the crisis. We don’t  rush thoughtlessly in, but focus on a plan of action, which we implement with thought, and  all possible care and speed, to protect others  and get to safety.”

Could the devastating impact of the new coronavirus pandemic destroy the momentum that the climate movement has built up over the last year? Some say so, believing that the economic fallout will push climate down the list of priorities for governments. But rather than seeing the solutions to Climate Change and Covid-19 as independent, we should recognise that appropriate behaviour changes can  mitigate both risks concurrently. For example, good air quality improves people’s health and mitigates climate change.

In fact, I believe the last few weeks, as terrible as they have been for so many people, have taught us crucial lessons that we needed to learn in order to enter a new era of radical, collaborative action not only to plan for further disease outbreaks but also to cut emissions and slow climate change. Like everyone else, I can’t believe we’ve learned  so many devastating lessons in a matter of days. Once we are freed from this cruel threat we should face up to the absurdity of our unsustainable lifestyles and the precariousness of the human condition.

Matlock Floods investigated by East Midlands BBC News

On 6th March the East Midlands news team descended on Knowleston Gardens, site of the Bentley Brook pumping station. Contrary to local understanding the film crew took evidence from the Environment Agency who confirmed that the November 2019 floods were caused by surface water rather than flooding from the river. The volume of the water was such that the pumping station could not discharge this water in enough volume and rate into the river. Hence the water back flushed through the drains into the town centre causing the flooding that we all saw.

This is not the first instance of surface water flooding affecting the town; it occurred on 20 September 2018.

The housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, told MPs on Thursday that officials would review the policy of building homes on high-risk flood plains and bring forward changes “in the coming months”.

The announcement, made at the end of a wide-ranging speech on the future of planning, will have significant implications for the government’s aim to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s to ease the chronic housing shortage.
It comes after the Guardian revealed that one in 10 of all new homes in England since 2013 have been built on land the government considers at the highest risk of flooding, with more than 11,000 planned for high-risk flood zones in the counties battered by storms in November and February.
Building on land prone to flooding is a risk to new homeowners and compounds the danger for surrounding areas, experts have said, as flood water that could otherwise be soaked up by green space instead runs quickly off concrete and into rivers.
Greenpeace’s chief scientist said “The government has provided no details on this, but it seems as if ministers may have finally realised that building new homes in areas with high flood risk and inadequate defences is a recipe for continual disaster.
“This is one of many examples where for far too long, the government has talked about the climate emergency without treating it as if it was real. The widespread damage and human suffering from the recent flooding have shown just how real it is.
“The government should work up a more sensible policy that empowers local councils and the environmental watchdog to stand up to pressure from developers who are putting profits before people’s safety.”

CONTAINING THE CONTAGION

LESSONS LEARNT?

Human history is littered with stories of plagues and we are currently facing yet another. This latest one is a respiratory virus, first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has now infected thousands of Chinese citizens and spread to several other countries. It has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization and has prompted Chinese authorities to quarantine several major cities.

Here in Derbyshire our last plague was in the village of Eyam, in the Peak District National Park. It began in 1665 when a flea-infested bundle of cloth arrived from London for the local tailor. Within a week his assistant George Vicars was dead and more began dying in the household soon after.

Eyam became famous because the villagers eventually agreed to quarantine themselves within the village to prevent the bubonic plague from spreading into the north of England. The plague ran its course over 14 months and one account states that it killed at least 260 villagers, with only 83 surviving out of a population of 350. But the surrounding towns and villages were not infected – so the villagers achieved their objective, but at great personal cost.

What can history tell us about quarantine and a more sustainable way of living which might contain such massive contagions?

In a society where everything is global – how can we possibly isolate ourselves for a few weeks to prevent human to human contact? Our food chains are so long and complex that even here in the UK we cannot feed ourselves for more than a few days. How can cities of 11 million people be isolated? Long distance travel is the norm and people can be halfway round the world in a day – longer than it takes an infection to incubate and show symptoms.

Another wicked sustainability issue?

Infectious diseases are a part of the cycle of life, but it is our lifestyles that turn them into pandemics. Can our political leadership enable us to develop a more sustainable lifestyle where quarantine is the standard response to an infection but where it does not  destroy individual livelihoods?

Higher Education for Sustainability: Seeking Intellectual Independence

Late last year I received the manuscript of a book from a reputable publisher asking for my views on its strengths and weaknesses. I have done several book reviews in recent years, but I must admit this one was both a pleasure and surprise. I had heard of Kerry Shephard from a previous review of a huge tome on research on a similar theme.

This book has taken  a very different and more accessible perspective. It frames the research in terms of  the role and purpose of universities in the 21 Century:

  • It  addresses what role universities should play in educating for a sustainable world.
  • It explores the role that education can play in creating critical thinkers with the behavioural disposition to act and realise the potential pathways towards a more sustainable future.
  • It explores what forms of teaching and learning might facilitate such dispositions.
  • It addresses some of the barriers to realising the transformation processes needed, including critiquing the current role and approaches to learning offered by most academics and students, including experiential community programmes in  which both act as co-creators of  transformative learning.
  • And, it offers some challenging and thoughtful approaches to institutional evaluation on learning outcomes related to critical thinking and in turn to those co- related dispositions.

Repurposing the University

By framing this book through the lens of critical thinking Shepherd offers a more realistic and grounded exploration of how we might judge the effectiveness of a university education. He avoids the pitfalls of ESD and EFS and other adjectival descriptors of current educational approaches to sustainability.

 Moreover, he argues that if universities  develop and enhance individual critical thinking and related dispositions, this captures more precisely the social, environmental and ethical needs of civil society in a complex and rapidly changing world. In the absence of this kind of explicit purpose, then as one Finnish academic has recently commented, the university “has already become an empty shell, or a soulless organism reduced to dead matter”.

An outstanding read!