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I’ve just been responding to a survey for a forthcoming book, Embedding Sustainability across the Higher Education Curriculum, being put together by a researcher from Brighton University. It looks like a great project and a thoroughly needed piece of research.

These were my very brief responses to my experiences so far, but something I’ll be thinking about more as term starts up again and teaching begins. It’s something we also thought about during the training last week in the Certificate in Higher Education Teaching and Learning that I and colleagues took part in, which was a fantastic, inspiring eye-opener into the different theories and applications of teaching styles that puts the teacher-learner relationship back to its rightful place, as the focus of what we do. Everything this page says about Caroline Walker Gleaves (”one of the best in the country”) is true!

More to come on this subject of embedding environmental sustainability into the journalism curriculum, but here were my answers to the researcher:

1. What opportunities are there in your disciplinary area for embedding environmental sustainability issues and concepts in curriculum, teaching and learning?
For me there seems to be good enough opportunity for embedding environmental issues and concepts within curriculum at the modular level, due to the level of autonomy we have in shaping the content of what we teach in meeting learning outcomes. My experience so far of making changes that need to go to official module or quality boards has also been good: they seem receptive and generally much quicker to get things done than I had expected.

During my interview for the role (I’ve been in post seven months) my environmental communication background at OneWorld and the Green Party in Brighton was seen as a real positive and something that could be put to use in developing new programmes based around environmental sustainability and communication within media and journalism. However, programme level changes seem to be much more difficult to implement because of the necessary economic and reputational aspects of doing things that will both a) attract an audience of students and b) deliver high quality.

What I have found to be a significant challenge to embedding environmental sustainability ideas and concepts is in fact the different focus of the students. A handful are interested: I teach across four journalism programmes and a public relations programme, but overall students are not that interested in concepts of environmental sustainability. Individual ideas, such as don’t wear leather or fur, yes, or climate change in general, but not environmental sustainability in its conceptual or political forms.

2. How would the disciplinary field and sustainability-related education generally benefit from this?
As you know, we live within a cultural and social system where the full costs, the externalities, of the system are not included in the ‘price’ we pay for our lifestyles. An alternative to this is Natural Capitalism. There are three or four areas where this can be remedied more easily than each person individually changing their lifestyle or demanding full costs: government, business, education, and the media. Embedding environmental sustainability into media and journalism education is an essential element in pressuring government and business, as well as the individual, to recognise and respond to the full cost of the current societal lifestyles we lead, without externalising the hidden costs of environment or sustainability. A good book on this is Unveiling Wealth, by Peter Bartlemus.

Another area is what I see as the dual opportunity of encouraging a low-carbon lifestyle at the same time as reinvigorating local media. A low-carbon lifestyle will essentially mean living a more local life, and the Transition Town movement is testament to where that might go. As local and regional media suffer a crisis in sales and advertising, embedding environmental sustainability within the core values of local media just might be one way of renewing the media communications industry hand-in-hand with environmental awareness. This could start with entrepreneurs in the media, but is just as likely to start with the next generation of media, journalism and communication students.

Education benefits because it is playing a connected, integrated role in developing the industry which it is linked to.

3. Are there obstacles impeding the take up of sustainability-related issues and concepts in your disciplinary area?  If so, what are these?
Structural issues, such as the global commercialisation of the education system, means that environmental sustainability can only be embedded if financially appropriate. Some global commentary on this.

The attraction to students is not always there within media and communication. And of course the time to do it.

The commercialisation of the media, which, despite carbon audits and cutting emissions in newsrooms, is still driven by one aspect above all others, which is the capitalisation of its production for profit. The commercialised media does not see environmental sustainability embedded within its feeder education courses as an essential element to its success. Nick Davies’ wrote recently that the media are becoming ‘ghastly news factories’ and where entertainment is far more important than education.

4. Are, and if so how are, sustainability concepts and issues dealt with in your curriculum / teaching?  Please give a concrete example including the context, eg, course, level of study, etc, description of activity and any outcomes.
At the moment they are done so at the modular level, with individual lectures or examples of study injected into existing modules outside of the quality accounting system (this is not a bad thing!). For example, I am seen as our ‘environmental/media expert’ and so I do a number of guest slots on other people’s modules, such as International Journalism, Introduction to Media Studies, Social Media, where I provide an environment/sustainability lecture or workshop under the rubric of the overarching module direction.