Teaching Sustainable Development with real-world assignments

Transcript

Hello everyone. I'm Martin Poulter from the Economics Network and this is a video case study for the Economics Network ideas bank. I'm joined today by Nazia from the University of Cambridge. Nazia, could you introduce yourself?

Hi, thank you Martin for the invitation. I'm a professor here at University of Cambridge and I'm also the founder and head of a research centre called Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development. I am holding a faculty position between the university's Social Science school and Engineering school. I think I'll come back to this over and over as we get on more into the details of economics and its evolution that I think we should be taking forward or thinking through.

Thanks so much. So we're going to be talking about modules you've developed for sustainable development. Could you tell us about the context of that? What institutions and where are the students and how many are taking the course?

So I'll give you an example of one particular one as we get deeper into it. What we did with the New York State University in the US where we helped set up the Sustainable Development module. This now has gone from a minor to a major which is basically a course in and of itself where students learn much more broadly and widely about sustainable development.

Okay. So this has been developed at State University of New York and you're also doing this in Cambridge and other institutions and advising other institutions about this?

Yes, that's correct. So as I said my central premise is to develop research-informed teaching and learning. Therefore, it isn't predicated on one approach to a level of a degree program because undergraduates tend to have a very different expectation what the students are going to learn versus what post-graduate students will learn. But I'm more excited about bringing my own research in resilience and sustainable development, informing teaching modules that are about informing the students how to best use their knowledge. And I think where I see the global engagements that I have, it's actually almost akin to the train-the-trainer model where I train economists and policy scholars around the world, informing them how to apply systems approach thinking in the economics discipline, or social science discipline, and how they can apply that thinking to develop modules or training applications for students which are not book-based. What I mean by book-based is just codified disciplinary knowledge that students typically encounter through textbooks, lectures, and peer-reviewed materials.

The form of knowledge that I believe is essential for sustainable development or sustainability-related challenges are complex, contested, and also very context-dependent. I mean these are all very important. Complexity you can only understand if you experience it. Experiential learning therefore is a very big part of my own research. I do action research which is about not only developing fundamental knowledge about an important question but also getting involved with the action of getting the insight from the research to be applied in the real world with the real decision maker. That's an action-based research approach and that then gets contrasted against basic research and applied research.

Now I'm going to tell you what is basic research which is basically you have "why the world is round": very important basic questions, but the answer is very deep and grounded in evidence, far beyond many people's interest sometimes. So basic questions are driven by scientific inquiry: not necessarily useful all the time, but they become useful later down the road, as we know what innovations we have done after we learned that the world is not flat.

The other part of the applied research is context-dependent where we do a lot of applied research and do temporal studies. We do geometric study, many different kinds. We apply the theory and and try to create a context-specific understanding. And in my view with the sustainability teaching or sustainable development teaching that economists do, it's not good enough just to let the student understand the big book knowledge that comes from basic research, or applied knowledge that comes from case studies. They need to be involved in experiencing some of what gets in the way of developing sustainable solutions. For future generations, knowledge about complexity will be the critical skill that they can apply to coexist with the complexity and the AI and all the other different kind of innovations that the world is putting forward.

So this is how I approach my teaching. And this is my contribution to actually trying to make the research come alive, also from our research centre as we involve other economists and policy makers to get to the classroom and actually offer this experience to them as well.

So the action research you've been describing: that actually involves running events with decision makers, with policy makers, national leaders in different contexts? I know you've been to big international conferences like COP.

Yeah, sure. Action research basically means that you conduct fundamental research with applied research element and then you take the next step to actually execute that, together with the individuals who have to make a decision based on the research insights that come up. So it's actually very hard to do action research because you need to actually have a fundamental question that is out there that needs to be answered for the benefit of the people. Action research is also quite suitable and it is not new actually; engineers, medical science, any element of the physical sciences that engages with human society does quite a lot of action research. It is, unfortunately, relatively new for the social sciences when we are the ones actually at the forefront of human problems. So (without going into the debate of why we are not advanced in action research in social science) the point of action research is that the core of the research at this point in our generation and in this century needs to develop useful knowledge, especially if we are working on the intersection of climate change, sustainability, and sustainable development. This cannot be theoretical knowledge anymore.

And therefore my urge to economists and my colleagues around the world is to actually take the extra effort of doing the actual research by knowing the critical stakeholders who are the one who need to make a decision but unfortunately they are not making the decisions they need to. Therefore, ask them the question why: what evidence are they missing? And once you ask that question, the next question is, "How can you help us create the evidence that you need?" So now we enter into co-creation.

So the event that you mentioned is absolutely right because we have to co-create the evidence. When you co-create the evidence, you do it in an event or workshop-style because it just makes it much more palatable and easier for non-academics to swallow some of the, you know, hard knuckle-bound questions that we want to ask. And we also know from social psychology, human beings when put together with other human beings, regardless of their differences of opinion, they do try to find a common ground, especially when the topics are complex, contested, and credibility struggling when it comes to the evidence. So the events come later in the journey but it is part of the design from the beginning when you're designing an action research.

Thanks so much. So, this action research approach you've developed informs your teaching. Could you say more about what practically you get students to do in the context of your modules?

Let's go back to the three variables that I mentioned which are unique to the sustainability, sustainable development and climate-change-related topics that we are training our students in. They're complex, they're contested and they are context dependent. So for students from the very beginning, I encourage my colleagues to actually introduce them to the complexity right away, before the context dependency. I think when you get them to understand the complexity, the context dependency makes much better sense when they're looking at climate change impact in Bangladesh versus climate change impact in the US, or human rights abuse context in some of the countries around the world versus the ones that do not have the human rights challenges, or corruption is a very important context-specific and contested topic. So complexity in my mind comes first and this is how the teaching needs to learn, by bringing systems-approach thinking upfront with the principles of economics.

Even with the principles of economics, they are becoming less and less a principle, more of a framework because supply and demand are no longer just judged by the efficiency. There are many other ways one has to look at when the production system is flowing the goods and services from the producer to the user. And I think the more we think about this, less as a principle and more we teach economics as more of a reality of living human life, I think you start to let the student appreciate the diversity. That's when the contested topics — whether it's climate change; whether it's human rights; whether it's political contested ideology — there is much more openness in the psychology of the student who are the future generation who is going to make those systems operational.

So this is where the first part of the learning approach should come from. Then the second part is that the book knowledge versus experiential knowledge. Of course, there is a huge amount of benefit from book knowledge, no doubt. And no one is debating that. However, this should not be the end journey of those students who are learning economics. They need to actually develop not just also case-study-based, you know, analysis which is also a very dominant approach of letting them debate different approaches. They actually need to go into the field.

One of the things we did with the New York State University in New Paltz where I worked directly with the chair of the economics department to develop a module where the student had to actually go out in their community and identify a topic which they can operationalize by working with the problem owner. So not just going out and doing an interview and come back, learn about a very good research methodology, and write a paper about that, which is a classical way of doing a lot of our Sustainable Development course. They actually had to embed themselves with the institution and actually find a topic that they can operationalize and actually work together to develop the outcome.

And can I ask what kind of institutions? When you say "reaching out to the community" to work with someone on a problem, what kind of institutions are they talking to?

Yes. So for this particular course, the students were very concerned about agriculture policy in upstate New York and they were also very concerned about the food crisis that the community has, especially for the refugees and the lowest-income population living around the New Paltz area. So they decided to break out into groups and go out to local restaurants, local farms, and also the local judicial system and identify where they could actually take advantage of the all-of-the-system approach: all of the system that was around New Paltz on how to address food insecurity.

One interesting group came out with a project where they went and spoke with the judge of the local court and discussed whether they could take some of the lower-grade prisoners out with a couple of police constables and go to the local farm. Because, as we know from book knowledge, the labour shortage is a big challenge when it comes to productivity of the farm. It has nothing to do with supply and demand: just not having enough human resource. So they worked together with the judicial system to take some of the juvenile and lower-grade prisoners out to the local farm where they got the local farm to also take in that, you know, offer from the judicial system with constables to actually produce some of the produce that they wanted to bring to market. That project actually won an award and that was an iconic experience for my colleagues in the New Paltz economics department: how do you bring book knowledge to experiential knowledge by engaging students with the decision makers up front. Once you ask for help, society does help.

So you've got students to contact different institutions. You're taking them out of the classroom. How did you find incentivizing students to get almost literally "out of their comfort zone" and to approach these farms — like you say, courts even? Were there any particular things you had to do to motivate the students to do that?

Yes. So as I said this has gone through the complexity, to context specific, to contested topic and this was a contested topic in local upstate New York and I was working with the chairwoman of the economics department. So from the beginning in the design of the course, right now a majority of the universities do not engage systematically: with the university as an organization that is a social system with the other system that is around the system. So part of the project was — you're right — to actually unlock those relationships upfront by setting up the expectation to the judicial system, or the local farm, or the restaurants. Once the student decided that's what they want to do, you need a willing professor who wants to go out of their way to actually make those calls, send those letters and say, "This is what we're trying to do. This is what our students are trying to do. Would you help?"

And I think this is a very important differentiating effect when it comes to experiential learning. The professor, the academic has to be just as active as the students and the energy flows between the two. This is not just a one-way street. So if the professor is proactive and energetic, you automatically see the students are engaged. And then there has to be a little bit of funding; that is true. But not, you know, outrageous funding. It is very much about just covering the basic cost of travel and some subsidiary costs associated.

And the other thing: we got these students to actually look into their own network where they have the connections because students learn how to apply their network skills to know who they can depend on. Students are the ones who then also came up with the judge's name who the university then contacted and just, you know, noted the relationship but it was primarily driven by students. That was the most important thing to make sure this this was a trusted relationship and not an imposed relationship. That's when the experience comes for students to also have the confidence to actually tackle a contested topic starting and snowballing from where they have the best use cases. Even international students in the course actually managed to get so much more engagement from the community that also broke down the, you know, that foreigner and local, and the poor and the rich, and the middle class and the traveling: all of the social clusters that we do not often see in classrooms unless you introduce them. That was very powerful.

So the students are working in groups. Have you found an ideal group size?

Yeah. So from the science around social psychology, they do say between 5 to 7 is often the good number and also a majority of the places where I have introduced this kind of training approach, their classroom sizes are not too big. They tend to be between 30 to 45. So by that size of a class you can create, you know, quite a nice set of groups.

And you've mentioned the groups being diverse in many ways: many dimensions of diversity. Are there any particular techniques or things you found useful to get groups with diversity? Maybe breaking up friend groups or national groups and mixing, getting those groups working productively?

So in the projects that I have done in, you know, developing experiential learning, it is always very healthy; because the action research experiential learning comes towards the end of the module, the group starts to conform themselves around the complex and contested topic that we start to introduce to them. And you will see that people as human beings, we do have an affiliation to topics that we think most closely about. So the ideal position of starting a group is actually not to set up an artificial group in day one. Actually let the group naturally evolve and then actually see where you have the gravitational pool by getting the groups in their own original formation. Then you will always find some groups are too much, some groups have too little, a few students do not find their place. Then you have to actively engage and actually try to mediate some of those elements and then just make it as balanced as possible.

Ultimately this is their learning opportunity. This is their time to actually experience a controlled environment with these difficulties within which challenges erupt and get out of control in real world. So we do stay as a guardrail but not too much intervention when it comes to the group's engagement exploring what we teach them at the beginning of the course.

What's the output of a group? Do they write a report? Do they do a group presentation or there multiple things? What are they assessed on?

Yeah. So they do three critical thinking items. One is obviously the presentation: very classic. The other is writing that up as a coherent analysis as to what they think should be the pathway to impact. And the third thing is actually engaging with the community, whichever aspect of the system — because they actually take a piece of the system, right? — and actually working with the actual decision maker to get them to understand or unlock something that will demonstrate that the students' projects have actually contributed toward a positive outcome.

Even if the person does not do anything, but as long as there is a hook from the organization who has engaged with them in an intellectual space, that is an impact. Because those ideas don't leave the brain, even though they do not do it right away and they actually participate in the final presentation. So they take away more than what they have seen in their particular systems-level analysis. They see the all of the systems outcomes as each party talks about different parts of the system. Like the one that I mentioned: the judge was only addressing the labour shortage in the labour market. We had students who were looking at the hospitality policy of taking leftover food to refugee houses or, you know, the homeless shelters. So each of them is a different part of the solution pack.

What kind of feedback have you had from these external organizations that you're encouraging students to advise? You've mentioned the importance of setting expectations on both sides. Have there been pleasant surprises when these organizations have benefited from the student input?

Yes, good that you asked that question. The immediate memory that came up and I did this project about five, six, almost seven years ago now because it was right before COVID. So, in many of our communities whether in Eastern/Western: these kind of social projects will have board members who are retired individuals who are committed to an NGO or a local project. So I remember on the final day when the students presented this topic, there were two women who were board members in this local food policy centre or institute and they just started crying! And they were retired, you know, older professional women living in the New Paltz community and they have never seen such an elegant way students came to understand, not only a problem but they were able also to contribute to solutions that they were trying to break through for a really long time. It did not cost them any money. All it cost was some time and attention to the students when they were asking those questions and trying to brainstorm together what are the alternatives when some pathway was blocked for whatever reason; what other pathway could open up.

So I think that is a very powerful feedback. When it comes to institutional feedback, that way of thinking and training has now become the fundamental design for a minor for Sustainable Development in New Paltz New York State University. I believe the conversation is quite firm of going into a major which is, you know, the US system is a very different one. We have also similarly set up a program at the University of Business Technology in Kosovo. Similarly, how to introduce experiential learning: we have now several universities where we're doing similar kinds of module development. As I said, it's more of a train-the-trainer module and demonstrating it by doing it ourselves rather than myself actually just doing one course in Cambridge University. I believe that the world needs more of smart thinking than just coming from one entity in and of itself.

That's amazing impact. Is there feedback you've had from students which has shaped how you've done or how the other academics participate? Or put another way, if you were starting this again, is there anything you'd do differently based on your experience?

No, I think what I am doing now is I'm deepening my understanding of the way students are learning and will have to actually learn now with the AI expansion. So instead of doing things differently, I think what I have started to develop (and one information I have not yet shared) is that I actually started this journey of experiential learning at Cambridge University when I joined as a lecturer as a founding member for the MPhil in public policy. So the MPhil in public policy in Cambridge University: now we have a full school for that. But my TOR to was to develop a course so that our students understand how difficult it is to make decision on sustainable development at the United Nations. At that time I just came out of the United Nations and I just finished my sustainability science stint at Harvard University. So with the two together, I realized that was an amazing opportunity for me to actually set up a full course at Cambridge. Doing that gave me the confidence and the validation that I could do that for others because I realized the need is much greater than the sum of the need that we can solve in Cambridge.

So I wouldn't do it widely differently. I am still learning and I'm still doing and I am still hoping that more academics will join me and find funding to support this kind of innovation and experiential learning in their classrooms and not just be complacent, doing things differently because the future we looking at today is very, very different than even than seven years ago.