How much of a priority do you consider ESD to be within your institution? (Please tick the most appropriate answer).

Table 4.5 - Level of ESD Priority

Answer Choices – Total Responses: 8 Responses

Highest priority 0 0%

High priority 5 62.50%

Medium priority 1 12.50%

Low priority 1 12.50%

No priority 1 12.50%

Although the number of survey respondents was low, it is encouraging that over 60% of those who did respond advised ESD is considered a ‘high priority’ within their college (Table 4.5). Interpreting this more subtlety however, it could be that colleges who have confirmed ESD is a high priority are then more likely to respond to a survey measuring ESD. The majority of colleges failed to respond to the survey, and it has to be considered that one potential reason for this is because they do not consider ESD important enough to comment on. One college did advise ESD was of ‘no priority’ which appears to be

confirmed later in the chapter when I evaluate the transparency of available sustainability and environmental policy documents from the survey respondents.

Colleges may not consider ESD important if they believe the key organisations that guide their practice, such as College’s Scotland (now College Development Network) and the Scottish Funding Council do not consider it is significant enough to be a key outcome or objective. John Henderson, who was Chief Executive Officer at Scotland’s Colleges at the time, asked The David Hume Institute to conduct research, and report on the role of the college sector within the Scottish labour marker and wider economy in 2012. The subsequent report makes no reference to sustainability; it does however mention citizenship and social inclusion (The David Hume Institute, 2012). The David Hume Institute did not report that sustainability or sustainable development were important within the Scottish labour market or the wider economy, and Scotland’s Colleges did not request sustainability to be considered or question its omission from the report.

Furthermore, the report highlighted that FE funding, particularly for teaching, has declined in recent years and that funds received from Government will be substantially lower in 2013-14 than 2012-13. Funding reductions will have left Scotland’s Colleges and college Principals with difficult decisions to make, and further work on learning for sustainability may have suffered as a result.

The Strategic Plan for College Development Network 2013-15, does not include sustainable development in its strategic objectives explicitly either. It may be included implicitly, for example by ‘guiding and support for learning and teaching, including

Curriculum for Excellence’ and to ‘support local dialogue on specific national, regional

and local curriculum issues’ (College Development Network, n.d.), which could both have sustainability connotations. I do believe though that in many cases, college senior

management teams will not afford learning for sustainability the priority it requires unless they are explicitly told to. However, I believe this would be the case with any new

sustainability. For example, the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (now Learning and Teaching Scotland), first discussed education for citizenship in 1999, however when I started working in FE in 2007, I still remember this being a contentious issue.

One explanation of why sustainability may not be considered a priority, or a high priority, (Table 4.5 and by lack of response) may be because ‘implementation of an innovation, such as sustainable development, is more troublesome when the adopter is an organisation rather than an individual, especially if the innovation is an abstract idea’ (Rogers, 1995 cited in Lozano et al., 2013a, p11). Additionally, though there are a number of guidelines now in place, ‘sustainable development could still be considered as radical in different universities [and colleges] and radical innovative ideas will undoubtedly face resistance when being incorporated and institutionalised’ (Lozano, 2006, p790, brackets mine). It was put forward by Rogers (1995) that some HE departments, or the university as a whole, would fall into one of the following adopter categories – innovators, early adopters, early

majority, late majority, or laggards (Rogers, 1995 cited in Lozano et al., 2013a, p11).

This argument could also be applied to Scottish colleges – where there are a number of major initiatives in place – that some are innovators and early adopters with the rest being the late majority and laggards. The colleges that took part in the survey may therefore largely be the innovators and early adopters and other colleges may not have replied if they belong to the late majority or laggards. To overcome the resistance of incorporating a radical innovative concept such as sustainable development it ‘should be done

incrementally and with the participation and empowerment of all the stakeholders to reduce the resistance to change and the appearance of unnecessary conflicts’ (Lozano, 2006, p796). However, colleges may be naturally cautious of change, even when incremental because ‘colleges operate within narrow financial margins, where relatively small changes can turn planned surpluses into deficits and deficits into surpluses’ (Audit Scotland, 2015, p31). Moreover, as learning for sustainability can be considered an abstract idea, it may be difficult for institutions to see what return they are getting on their investment. Colleges need to see their external stakeholders pushing an agenda in order to engage with it. Once employers, industry and commerce demand a skill it will be

incorporated, otherwise there is no incentive to do so. Just like the anti-racism agenda was pushed and everyone had to do it, so attitudes started to change, or like Education for Citizenship which was incentivised in the beginning and is now part of the fabric.

If ESD does not appear to be a priority in FE – or a number of colleges appear to be laggards – progress within Scottish schools is far more promising, and was identified by Education Scotland in response to the UNDESD. Education Scotland states in

Conversations about Learning for Sustainability that ‘from a policy perspective there is

much to be optimistic about as Scotland seeks to build on all that has been achieved over the last 10 years and sets its sights on another decade of progress’ (Education Scotland, 2014, p3). Education Scotland did not include FE in this report, and the study only

involved Scottish schools and pre-school education. This encouraging ‘policy perspective’ now needs to be continued into Scottish college education. The report also recognised the ‘biggest achievements within the school sector have been embedding global citizenship and sustainable development education as themes across learning within the new national curriculum, Curriculum for Excellence’ (Education Scotland, 2014, p3). Quite clearly the same level of success has not been achieved in Scotland’s colleges and although Scotland has embraced the opportunity of the UNDESD by producing Learning for the Future (2006) and Learning for Change (2010), neither of these documents appears to have translated into practice to a great extent within FE.

Reasons for resistance to ESD in tertiary education have been raised in previous chapters; however, it is important to bring these to the fore again in response to the answers

supplied. The resistance in universities to engaging with sustainable development has been well documented – such as lack of expertise, over-crowded curriculum and perceived relevance (Cotton & Winter, 2010; Scott & Gough, 2004; Dawe et al., 2005; Lipscombe, 2008). Whilst these reasons for resistance to ESD have not hitherto been researched to any great extent in Scottish FE, it seems clear that similar factors prevail in Scotland’s Colleges in general.

It has already been stressed that for learning for sustainability to be successful the re- orientation of the higher education curriculum is required (Sterling, 2004). However, in relation to HE ‘the idea of the university as an ivory tower is eroding and being replaced by the idea of a university that serves the community of which it is part’ (Wals, 2014, p10). In many respects, colleges may be ahead of universities in this key respect, because they are often active partners in community initiatives and necessarily networked to a whole range of stakeholders intimately connected with their educational mission. The college where I work regularly has students working with community partners, two recent extra- curricular examples include, students collecting blankets for use by the Dog’s Trust, and an ongoing project by the colleges Student’s Association and the Dumfries branch of Lesbian,

Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth Scotland to tackle homophobic concerns within the college. Owing to the work I have been involved in, and the many initiatives of which I am aware of at other Scottish colleges also, I have direct experience of college-community collaboration being successful in Scotland, particularly by linking the formal and informal curriculums. This has also been evidenced by research in HE by Lipscombe, (2008), and I believe this link will prove to be a powerful tool in colleges transformation to becoming more sustainable organisations. This makes me feel positive that although most colleges did not respond to a survey regarding ESD, by the very nature of the work they undertake within their local communities, they are oftentimes engaging with learning for

sustainability by default and through the ongoing discharge of their educational

responsibilities. However, engaging by default is still not enough, and students need to be made aware these initiatives are part of the bigger sustainability agenda.

4. Have you audited ESD practice across the curriculum and/or in relation to your