Journal of Geography in Higher
Education,
Vol. 23, No. 3, 1999, pp. 335-348
.
The TALESSI Project: promoting active learning for interdisciplinarity, values awareness and critical thinking in environmental higher education
|
Journal of Geography in Higher
Education, |
| http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ |
PETER C. JONES & J. QUENTIN MERRITT, University of Greenwich, London, UK
ABSTRACT
This paper introduces the TALESSI (Teaching and Learning at the
Environment-Science-Society Interface) project. It also serves as a point
of departure for the remaining contributions in this Symposium, all of
which have developed out of papers that were originally presented at a
TALESS! conference in April 1998. We principally seek to explain why and
how the TALESSI project promotes active learning for interdisciplinarity,
values awareness and critical thinking in environmental higher education
(including environmental studies, environmental science and geography). We
also introduce the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE)
Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL), which provides
the greater part of TALESSI's financial support, as well as the wider
strategic framework within which the project operates. This in turn
provides a context for TALESSI's own objectives, which (in summary) are to
develop, pilot, evaluate and disseminate teaching and learning resources
that promote active learning for interdisciplinarity, values awareness and
critical thinking; and to facilitate debate and the sharing of good
practice in these aspects of environmental higher education.
KEYWORDS
Interdisciplinarity, values awareness, critical thinking, active
learning, environmental higher education, TALESSI project, Fund for the
Development of Teaching and Learning.
The TALESSI (Teaching and Learning at the Environment-Science-Society Interface) project [1] developed from our experiences of teaching on an undergraduate programme in environmental studies at the University of Greenwich. Specifically, it grew out of our attempts to facilitate the integration of disciplinary perspectives which included those of the natural sciences (e.g. biology and chemistry), the social sciences (e.g. economics and sociology) and the humanities (notably ethics and philosophy). In so doing, we identified two related sources of interdisciplinary incommensurability: between disciplines that eschew, and those that address, questions of 'value'; and, more generally, amongst disciplines with widely divergent 'epistemologies' (or underlying beliefs as to what .counts' as valid knowledge).
Our approach to learning and teaching sought to problematise the 'knowledge claims' made from within those various disciplinary perspectives, in such a way as to reveal their epistemological bases and the entry of values into environmental debate. This approach, which was anchored principally in philosophy and sociology of knowledge, appeared particularly helpful in making sense of the contested character of many current environmental issues: that is, where knowledge is uncertain and provisional in nature; and where conflicting views are heard, both within academia and beyond. So many of the major environmental 'issues' of our age display some or all of these characteristics: for example, ozone depletion and global warming; the controversy and uncertainty surrounding organo-phosphates and oestrogenic chemicals; and, of course, BSE and genetic modification. Hence we developed a form of 'critical thinking', which could assist students in the evaluation of knowledge claims emanating from all of the disciplines represented in our environmental studies programme.
The TALESSI project aims, then, to enhance three related aspects of students' environmental learning. These are:
Engagement with each of these educational aims clearly calls for an active, questioning, approach to knowledge -and, hence, for an active approach to learning and teaching. We examine these arguments more closely in the following sections.
Financial support from the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE) Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL) has enabled to us promote these educational aims more widely. FDTL was established 'to support projects aimed at stimulating developments in teaching and learning, and to encourage the dissemination of good practice across the [higher education] sector' (HEFCE, 1997, p. 1). The TALESSI project currently involves around 40 higher education providers of (variously) environmental studies, environmental science and geography, as it is evident that our concerns about integration of divergent perspectives arise for geographers also, albeit at the intra-disciplinary level. We henceforth refer to these areas of provision collectively as 'environmental higher education' [2].
Currently, our main objectives are:
It is too early to comment on TALESSI's success in achieving its aims and objectives, since the major TLR piloting and 'outreach' phase is currently under way (see Appendix 1). However, at the time of writing, we can report that 46 TLRs are complete (see Appendices 2 and 3); and that the project has run five workshops and hosted one conference. Indeed all of the papers in this Symposium were originally presented at a TALESSI project conference, in April 1998.
In this opening contribution, we principally seek to develop the case for interdisciplinarity, values awareness and critical thinking -along with related arguments in favour of active learning- by exploring their educational value and the connections between them, and by examining the current limits to their attainment.
It is, of course, commonplace to advocate an interdisciplinary approach to the study of multi-faceted environmental questions. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE, 1995a, p. 3), for example, credits such an approach with fostering 'the distinctive, integrative skills deemed so important for environmental research and employment'; whilst Ali Khan (1996, p. 36) argues that interdisciplinarity 'ensure[s] learners arc able to understand the nature and status of scientific evidence and critically analyse its social implications'.
We are not oblivious to those barriers and qualifications which attend the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach in environmental higher education; indeed, many such complexities are examined in the following papers by John Foster and John Bradbeer, along with our own further contribution (co-authored with Clare Palmer). We would also readily acknowledge the distinctive and valuable contribution of individual disciplines to environmental higher education, provided that their strengths and limitations are recognised; again, Ruby Hammer's paper in this collection -on the development of courses in environmental law- develops and illustrates our point.
We none the less broadly concur with (amongst others) Toyne (1993) and HEFCE (1995a, 1995b) in lamenting the current dearth of interdisciplinarity in British environmental higher education. For example, HEFCE's 'subject overview' report of the 1994-95 teaching quality assessments in environmental studies comments that, in spite of widespread claims to the contrary, 'many providers actually run multidisciplinary courses which lack the coherence ... of true interdisciplinarity' (1995a, p. 1). The equivalent ('subject overview') report for geography paints a similar picture:
Most institutions provide some opportunities to study elements of both human and physical geography, but programmes that claim to integrate them are rare and even fewer actually match that claim. (HEFCE, 1995b, p. 6)
At the risk of over-simplification, then, we equate 'interdisciplinarity' with the integration of disciplines or sub-disciplines; and 'multidisciplinarity' with their juxtaposition, but not their integration. (For a much fuller discussion of these points, see Huber, 1992.) In our view, multidisciplinarity may be an unsatisfactory educational outcome, particularly if students are thereby confronted with unconnected 'pockets' of knowledge. In so far as the diverse disciplinary perspectives which contribute to environmental higher education are epistemologically incommensurable, however, we would consider the realisation of interdisciplinarity itself to be educationally problematic. We examine this argument further in the following sections.
'Value' judgements explicitly or implicitly express a view of the legitimacy or worth of, for example, a political or other philosophy; an individual action; a corporate policy proposal and its intended outcomes; a higher education curriculum and its intended aims and outcomes; or even an academic discipline, along with its chosen objects of study, methods of enquiry, insights and applications. Conferment of approval (or disapproval) on any of the above, then, constitutes an act of value judgement -but this is, of course, more routinely acknowledged in some cases (for example, environmental philosophies) than others (for instance, scientific disciplines).
Value judgements are widely recognised to enter environmental higher education via the sub-disciplines of environmental philosophy and ethics, which deal explicitly with questions of value(s) in nature. But we wish to argue that they also enter-albeit, often, with little or no acknowledgement-via the supposedly 'value free' natural and social sciences; and, more generally, via the aggregate 'learning context' of environmental higher education. This 'learning context' includes the resources that students use, tutors and students themselves, the immediate institutional context, and the wider context of stakeholders and 'claims-makers'. It also includes the formal curriculum and the 'knowledge -or epistemic- communities' (especially academic disciplines and sub- disciplines) with which environmental higher education is associated, including those bodies of axiomatic and other taken-for-granted 'knowledge' which are characteristically shared by the members of any such community. Indeed, higher education itself is far from being an ivory tower, insulated from the wider world in its thinking: professional, commercial and political (as well as academic) actors all contribute to the 'stream' of competing knowledge claims which constitute the knowledge base of HE programmes, especially in 'applied' fields of study such as environmental higher education. (These themes are developed in our further contribution to this Symposium collection, co-authored with Clare Palmer.)
Environmental higher education clearly embraces a number of partly overlapping 'knowledge communities', most of which are themselves characterised by 'epistemic plurality': that is, the perspectives of the social sciences and humanities frequently coexist with those of the natural sciences, albeit uneasily and unequally. We do not have the space (or, indeed, the detailed knowledge) to examine these permutations systematically. However, it appears to us that, while natural science perspectives (along with their positivist counterparts in the social sciences) enjoy some measure of 'epistemological hegemony' in environmental science, their position is somewhat weaker in environmental studies -and weakest of all in geography.
According to one archetypal definition, critical 'thinking' (or 'reasoning', or 'analysis'):
... is centrally concerned with giving reasons for one's beliefs and actions, analysing and evaluating one's own and other people's reasoning, devising and constructing better reasoning. Common to these activities are certain distinct skills, for example, recognizing reasons and conclusions, recognizing unstated assumptions, drawing conclusions, appraising evidence and evaluating statements, judging whether conclusions are warranted. (Thomson, 1996, p. 2)
Whilst the value of critical thinking is now widely acknowledged across higher education (see, for example, National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education, 1997 ('The Dearing Report'), p. 16), we would suggest that these qualities may be both more important and more difficult to foster in environmental higher education, compared with many other subject areas. Why should this be so? As we have argued, environmental knowledge claims are advanced from within an epistemologically divergent range of disciplinary perspectives, by academics and non-academic stakeholders; their claims typically reflect the provisionality and uncertainty of environmental knowledge, and the highly charged public and political atmosphere of environmental debate. It seems particularly important, then, that environmental higher education students should learn to think critically about the types of argument and evidence they are dealing with; about the values and interests of claims-makers; and about how much authority and credibility attaches to particular claims.
Proponents of critical thinking, such as Thomson, clearly advocate a sceptical approach to knowledge; and seek to assist students in evaluating claims, for the soundness of their argument and evidence. Fundamentally, however, their approach is premised on an 'unproblematised' view of knowledge-wherein the evaluation of claims can be undertaken using primarily 'objective' criteria pertaining to logical soundness and sufficiency of evidence. In particular, this approach is premised on three key assumptions:
Hence this approach largely eschews questions of stakeholder 'interests'; of the values held by individual tutors and students; and, in general, of values (including those associated with different 'knowledge communities') which cannot obviously be evaluated for their 'truth' content. It thereby fails to deal adequately with most of the issues we have so far been addressing! By contrast, our approach to critical thinking seeks to assist students in developing a 'problematised' view of knowledge; and, particularly, in examining knowledge claims for their underlying values and interests, in addition to the validity and sufficiency of reasons given in support of conclusions.
Let us consider these arguments in relation to current debates about higher education in general. We would argue that TALESSI is addressing many of those 'cognitive' and 'learning to learn' skills that are widely recognised as important to the 'learning society' (see again, for example, National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education, 1997 ('The Dearing Report')). For most participants in this debate, however, the chief problem seems to one of putting students in contact with the information sources required for effective resource-based learning: for example through more effective IT training, and through the development of new resource-based learning materials. For us, by contrast, the challenge is to equip students with the skills to understand what kinds of knowledge they are dealing with in this brave new world of higher education. In other words, ours is a 'knowledge' rather than an 'information' agenda; and knowledge is more problematic than information. To illustrate the point simply, we want students to surf the net, and to use electronic sources to supplement our institutions' increasingly inadequate print- based materials. But we also want students to select and use those sources critically -with questions of uncertainty and value judgement, authority and credibility, in mind. We do not want any more essays based on Encarta-type sources- which, in the environmental field, at least, seemingly portray the world as being knowable through the undisputed 'facts', and through the 'facts' alone!
Militating against such an approach to learning, however, is the persistence of higher education's strong 'didactic' tradition, wherein teaching is viewed as an essentially unproblematic exercise in information transmission, from expert to initiate. Caricatures notwithstanding, there is reason to believe that this tradition is particularly strong in those scientifically oriented fields in which knowledge itself is most commonly considered by its practitioners to approach objectivity, certainty and truth. To the extent that at least some areas of environmental higher education are heavily influenced by these same attitudes, we would see the didactic tradition as an impediment to the development of those critical thinking skills we espouse.
One group of authors (Handal et al., 1990, p. 325) has pointed to an association between the didactic tradition in teaching, and the wider practice of 'instrumentalist' thinking and action. Drawing an analogy between education and medicine, they write:
To act instrumentally does not work in the same way when 'motivating' a patient for strenuous physical rehabilitation as it does in the operating theatre with a sedated patient. It is possible to force the patient to act as prescribed so long as control can be exerted. When left on his own, the patient will act on his own terms.
We suspect that the idea of the 'sedated student', passively assimilating our educational life-blood transfusions, is one to which many readers can relate. One implication of this view is that students willingly accept the passive educational role which didacticism ascribes to them. Becher and Huber (1990, p. 237) view student-teacher relationship -and, indeed, student-discipline relationships- as the outcome of an acculturation process: 'not ... involving the explicit transmission of rules or learning of roles, but rather as a tacit understanding gained by participating in the practices of a particular field'. This largely unconscious process of acculturation may be unhelpful to the development of critical thinking. It would seem to be multiply problematic in circumstances where students are expected to grapple with, and indeed integrate, several disciplines with differing perspectives on knowledge and the learning process.
The TALESSI project is developing teaching and learning resources (TLRs) to assist students and their teachers in exploring questions of this kind. However, the activity of 'claims making' is not confined to academics, along with non-academic stakeholders. Our students are also, in effect, making knowledge claims on their own behalf when they produce their essays, dissertations and examination answers -whether those claims be advanced principally on the basis of secondary source materials or of primary research findings. In assisting students to think critically about others' knowledge claims, therefore, we can (and should!) simultaneously assist them to think critically about their own claims -and thereby, to make their own academic writing more critically aware and authoritative.
The approach to environmental higher education that we advocate, then, involves delivering the 'traditional' curriculum in a more integrated, values-aware and critically informed way. In particular, however, it involves 'problematising' the traditional curriculum, based on insights from sociology and philosophy of knowledge. This approach can assist students in achieving a convergence between the problematic nature of their subject-based knowledge and the 'study skills' perspective of critical thinking. In exploring with our students the provisional, uncertain and contested knowledge claims surrounding genetic modification, or global warming, or oestrogenic chemicals, therefore, we can simultaneously equip them for a more rigorous and systematic approach to their own knowledge claims. This is the central idea behind the TALESSI project; and this, we believe, is what can make environmental higher education an immensely rich and rewarding experience.
The authors to acknowledge the invaluable early contribution, both to the thinking behind this paper and to the TALESSI project in general, made by our former colleague Dr Clare Palmer (now Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Stirling, Scotland). They also wish to acknowledge the financial support provided for this project by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), under Phase One of its Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL).
Correspondence: Peter C. Jones & J. Quentin Merritt, School of Humanities, University of Greenwich, Woolwich Campus, London SE 18 6PF, UK. Tel: + 44 (0) 181-3319559. Fax: +44 (0) 181-331 8805. Email: p.c.jones@greenwich.ac.uk; j.q.merritt@greenwich.ac.uk
NOTES
[1] Information about the TALESSI project, including teaching and learning resources [TLRs], can be found at the following website: http://www.gre.ac.uk/~bj6l/talessi. Readers who are interested in participating in the TALESSI project (e.g. by piloting draft TLRs, or by attending a workshop) are invited to contact the authors, as follows: School of Humanities, University of Greenwich, Woolwich Campus, London SE18 6PF, UK. Email: fdtl38@greenwich.ac.uk
[2] By 'environmental higher education' we mean, broadly, any higher education provision which addresses in some way the ecologically and ethically problematic relationship of humanity with animate and inanimate nature. This applies most obviously to programmes in environmental studies and environmental science, but also to (significant parts of) most geography curricula and (in lesser measure) to several other areas of higher education provision such as the biosciences and humanities.
REFERENCES
Teaching and Learning at the Environment-Science-Society Interface
PILOTING AND 'OUTREACH' PROGRAMME
The TALESSI project has now entered its principal piloting and 'Outreach' phase. We hope that you will be interested in participating in one or more of the following activities, most of which will be continuing throughout the present academic year:
For your participation in any activity which benefits the wider Environmental Higher Education (EHE) community, you can apply to us for financial support from the TALESSI budget. For example, we will pay £100 for each TLR that (with our prior agreement) you pilot and evaluate. For other forms of participation, we can pay both for your time and for expenses incurred. More generally, for all aspects of your participation in the Piloting and Outreach Programme, we will provide advice and other forms of support -e.g. by telephone, email, departmental presentation or informal visit. In particular at this stage, we are seeking to confirm TLR piloting and evaluation. Please note that most of the TLRs currently available can be downloaded from the project website: http://www.gre.ac.uk/~bj61/talessi. Alternatively, TLRs can be sent by email or provided as hard copy. Please do not hesitate to contact us, to discuss your proposed participation, or if you require further information. The TALESSI project is also compiling an archive of environmental higher education (especially environmental science/studies and geography) course material. If you have not already contributed relevant documents for your institution, we would still be extremely pleased to receive them!
(1) Title
Bibliographic Citation for Authoritative Academic Writing
(2) Keywords
Study skills, research projects, bibliographic citation, writing with authority, critical thinking.
(3) Introduction
Many undergraduate induction programmes, along with published guides to study skills and research projects, include bibliographic citation on their list of essential academic skills (see, for example, Northedge, 1990; Bell, 1993; Parker, 1994; Sharp & Howard, 1996; Northedge et al., 1997). Techniques for 'in text' and 'end of text' citation, based on Harvard or some other recognised academic referencing system, are typically described, and reasons why bibliographic citation is important in academic writing are routinely given, notably:
This last point is rarely addressed in detail, or stated in the terms used here. Most guides to bibliographic citation implicitly accord equal authority to all published texts, which thereby become potential citation 'substitutes' one for another. Rejection of this last proposition provides a point of departure for the present exercise.
(4) Aim
This exercise provides a structured opportunity for students to explore questions of authority associated with the sources that they may consider citing in connection with their academic writing (essays etc), and the associated question of how to make that writing as authoritative as possible. It permits the examination of some more challenging questions than are characteristically addressed in the teaching of bibliographic citation skills, such as 'when is it necessary, and when is it unnecessary, to provide a citation?'; and 'how do we decide which "classes" of material (e.g. textbooks, journal articles, newspapers) might appropriately be used as a reference source in given situations?.
(5) Learning Outcomes
Students who have engaged successfully with this exercise will have enhanced:
(6) Prerequisites
It is assumed that students are familiar with elementary aspects of bibliographic citation, including the reasons commonly given for citing sources in the context of academic writing.
Some prior exposure to ideas of authority and credibility, associated with academic knowledge claims, is not essential, but would enable students to engage with this exercise in a more sophisticated way (see 'Links with other TLRs', below).
(7) How to use TLR
The exercise is designed to operate interactively, and will probably lose efficacy with SSRs in excess of around 15:1. Where students have limited relevant experience on which to draw, team teaching could assist in stimulating debate. Conversely, more experienced students could initially work in small groups (perhaps of four or five), with limited supervision; a concluding 'plenary' session might then be arranged to allow each grouping to lead the discussion of one major point. Depending on the students' level of experience, between 60 and 90 minutes could profitably be devoted to the class-based exercise (i.e. excluding the private study element). The list of 13 'classes' of source material given in 'Instructions to students (below) could be reduced, where appropriate, by amalgamation and/or exclusion.
The activity is designed to be open-ended, in the sense that it may well provoke questions (e.g. about the 'independence' of scientific knowledge produced under various conditions) that cannot be answered satisfactorily in the time -or with the knowledge- available. It should, however, encourage participants to reflect further on the issues raised, and to apply the resultant learning to their future academic reading and writing. Some of these questions could usefully be explored further via the medium of other TLRs (see 'Links with other TLRs', below).
(8) Instructions to Students
(A) Which of the following statements should be supported by a citation, when used or referred to in a piece of academic writing?
(i) Knowledge of an undisputed nature,
which is very widely held.
[Example: The European Union currently has fifteen member states.]
(ii) Knowledge of an undisputed nature,
which is quite widely held at the level of detail or precision offered.
[Example: The EU's agricultural labour force is in long-term decline.]
(iii) Knowledge of an undisputed nature,
which is not widely held at the level of detail or precision offered.
[Example: Agriculture currently occupies around 43 per cent of the
EU's total land area.]
(iv) Quite widely acknowledged, but
nonetheless debatable, points.
[Example: The EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has had an over-
whelmingly destructive impact on Europe's environment.]
(v) Little-known and contentious points.
[Example: Persuasive evidence is now emerging that organo-phosphate
agricultural pesticides pose a potentially serious human health risk.]
(vi) Claims of a conjectural nature, for
which there is no widespread support.
[Example: Public concern about the safety of food produced using
synthetic chemicals could ultimately undermine the EU's 'affordable food'
objective.]
(vii) Propositions which bear directly on
differences of expert opinion.
[Example: Academic environmental scientists and those employed by
NGOs tend to give more credence to the supposed human health risks
associated with organo-phosphate pesticides than do scientists working for
government departments or 'industry' research organisations.]
(B) Which of the following 'classes' of published or unpublished material might be appropriately used for reference purposes in each of the above cases (for which a citation is considered necessary)? Note: In some cases you might consider that a citation could legitimately be drawn from more than one 'class' of material, depending perhaps on availability; in other cases you may feel that two or more sources should be cited, conceivably drawn from different classes' of material.
(i) Academic textbook (e.g. on environmental science) based almost entirely on secondary sources, and whose coverage extends far beyond the scope of the subject being considered.
(ii) Academic book or refereed journal article (e.g. on Europe's changing economy and environment in the twentieth century) based mainly on secondary sources, and whose coverage extends somewhat beyond the scope of the subject being considered.
(iii) Academic book or refereed journal article (e.g. on the Common Agricultural Policy and its environmental effects) based mainly on the author's own research, and whose coverage corresponds closely to the subject being considered.
(iv) Report of 'in-house' research, or secondary 'literature review' paper, produced by government researchers.
(v) Report of 'in-house' research, or secondary 'literature review' paper, produced by industry-based researchers.
(vi) Report of 'in-house' research, or secondary 'literature review' paper, produced by environmental NGO researchers.
(vii) Report of 'in-house' research, or secondary 'literature review' paper, produced by academic researchers working under contract for a government department, or industrial organisation, or environmental NGO.
(viii) Article in a 'quality' newspaper or weekly current affairs magazine (e.g. The New Scientist) by a journalist noted for his/her specialist knowledge of the subject being considered.
(ix) Television or radio documentary by a journalist noted for his/her specialist knowledge of the subject being considered.
(x) Words spoken by a soap opera character.
(xi) Notes taken from a university lecture.
(xii) Statistical/reference source published by a reputable author or organisation.
(xiii) 'Encyclopaedic' source provided in a printed or electronic medium, where no author is given.
(9) Stimulus Material
The class-based activity is self-contained, and no additional materials are required. For the follow-up (private study) exercise, students will need an example of their own academic writing.
(10) Degree Stage
Degree stage per se is less important than some relevant prerequisite experience (see above). But given that the activity is designed to facilitate acquisition of important academic study skills, it would be most appropriately introduced as early as possible in a student's undergraduate career (timed perhaps to coincide with the production of an early essay or other piece of academic writing).
(11) Resource Requirements
There are no special resource requirements, other than access to the instructions provided above. The accommodation used should be appropriate for interactive learning.
(12) Preparation
No specific preparation required.
(13) Links with other TLRs
'Classifying Knowledge Claims' and 'Evaluating the Credibility of Knowledge Claims' would provide useful preparation and/or reinforcement for this TLR. 'Producing Credible Knowledge Claims' would facilitate further development and application of the learning which this TLR, along with those mentioned above, seeks to promote.
(14) Follow-up Activities
In addition to the use of related TLRs (see above, 'Links with other TLRs') students might attempt the following activity:
Re-examine a current or recent piece of your own academic writing (e.g. an essay), either in part or in its entirety, and perhaps in discussion with a partner. Annotate it carefully throughout, using the numbering system adopted in the above 'Class-Based Discussion Questions', to indicate each of the following:
The kinds of statements offered
[Example: I (v) for a little known and contentious point]
The classes of source material you cited
and the classes of source material you now consider most appropriate
[Example: 2 (xii) for a statistical/reference source published by a
reputable author or organisation]
(15) Recommended Reading
Given that most published guides to study skills and research projects give scant regard to the issues raised in this TLR, the following sources are few in number and are recommended with some qualifications:
REFERENCES
