Contented Communities

Rarely these days in the world of learning and development does a speaker get to the first sip of water before the word ’sustainability’ spills out. But what does it mean? And how do you learn to implement it?

An unenlightened tycoon may tell you sustainability means profit, while a college head might first think of passing on skills, and an eco-warrior will probably jump to the defence of the planet.  When we ran a workshop for managers who have been planning and building schools for the future, even they couldn’t agree – and construction was already part complete.

Earlier this year, Contented was invited to Yorkshire to help a dozen schools and builders develop learning programmes to make their communities more sustainable. But when our facilitator Lorraine asked participants what they thought the word meant, she was struck by their replies: “Some people still only think of the rainforest or CO₂ emissions. Only one person even mentioned relationships.”

Lorraine used a series of images to start a conversation. Facilitators often use them to draw out delegates’ different points of view on a topic to help a group embrace more ways of thinking. In fact, the entrepreneur, principal and environmentalist each see different parts of the same picture. London’s mayor (well, his advisors) describe sustainability simply as “quality of life for everyone now and in the future”. The important thing is that we need all dimensions simultaneously.

A few years ago, WWF and the UK’s then Department for Education and Skills developed the concept of eight ‘doorways’ into sustainability. (At our preparatory workshop in Wolverhampton, Angela used the word ‘lenses’): food & drink, energy & water, travel & traffic, purchasing & waste, buildings & grounds, inclusion & participation, local well-being, global perspective. These now form the basis of the Sustainable Schools Self evaluation framework (or s3 for short). Because everything is inter-related, the argument goes, it doesn’t actually matter where you start.

Constructing the future

I was speaking yesterday with an advisor at one of the London borough’s departments of Skills, Learning & Employment who is supporting the 17 new sector-based qualifications, the Diplomas. With hands-on experience developing projects delivering learning for the construction and land-based industries, he said he had been interested in talking to me about sustainability because we had both used the same accreditation frameworks. When we spoke, he said, he realised that I saw sustainability far more broadly – yet he felt it would be difficult to weave sustainability into other disciplines because the specific learning outcomes had already been stipulated by the business sectors themselves.

I see where he’s coming from but would argue that sustainability is as much an attitude, a way of thinking; more process, rather than content. Lycia describes it as a philosophy, while Paul B. talks of ‘working for me, for you, and for the system’ . In fact, only last month Andrew and I presented to the manager of another local authority the idea of film-making as a learning technique. She counselled us: “Schools are so focused on pre-determined outcomes. Many heads struggle with the concept that people learn through process. You might find you just have to work with managers who already ‘get it’.”

Thinking across borders

In our society, there’s clearly a tendency among many adults to think that aspiring employees of one industry, say leisure and tourism, shouldn’t learn about social science, health, creativity, finance or enterprise. Yet the whole point of sustainability is to join-up everyone’s thinking. For example, businesses sell to society and must think and communicate creatively to differentiate complex products from their competitors’. It’s called marketing and innovation.

In the South West, Martyn and I are trying to facilitate a relationship between a creative & media Diploma consortium and a company developing a renewable energy scheme. To support what’s known in education jargon as ‘learner voice’, the approach will be left to the young people and employers. But, for starters, what about making a documentary film as part of a conversation with customers?

Purists may argue this is not ‘authentic’ sustainability but I find it interesting because it brings together very different people, ideas and processes in the context of a technology focused on improving quality of life for future generations. This process of cross-pollination and long-term thinking challenges me to see things from other perspectives. It may well be part of the answer to the question: how can we facilitate people to new ways of behaviour?

Where next with our learning?

In the language of action research then, as our collective enquiry of diverse specialists begins another cycle, we design a new experiment for our next workshop with policymakers and practitioners. Here, we’d like to think (differently) about how we might embed in people a broader understanding of sustainability, so that they can apply it in their work – in the same way, for example that they think about health & safety. Whether working in a hair salon, garage or architect’s practice, as employees reach for the ‘tool for the job’, how might they be ‘retrained’ to think differently? Is it merely a job for the purchasing manager to ensure that the hairdryer, spanner or computer are the most efficient – where efficiency is defined to include the planet, community and economy? Or is there a skill that everyone needs to sustain them in a life of quality, now and for the future? We’re thinking that the answer has a lot to do with systems thinking.

With colleagues, Peter Senge, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote a seminal book 20 years ago called the Fifth Discipline, out of which came a special edition for communities, Schools that Learn. His five disciplines are team learning, personal mastery, shared visioning and mental models, glued together through the fifth, systems thinking. Another useful perspective is offered by Barry Oshry, also from Boston, who uses simulations and theatre to teach us how our success satisfaction and effectiveness depends on the way we manage our ‘condition’  of being top, middle, bottom or customer in the system. Back in 2006, I was asked by a large bank to run a workshop for several London Business & Enterprise Colleges to explore business ethics. As the teachers were quick to point out, one might ask what we can learn from a bank about ethics (someone mentioned we should educate young people not to steal from the stationery cupboard). Working with Michelle, we approached it from the perspective of learning for sustainability and incorporated activities based on some of Stephen Sterling’s ideas on Linking Thinking.

For many years, systems thinking has been a core skill for engineers but (they tell me) their systems are usually tightly bounded. For example, an engineer might see a road system as consisting of a series of concrete structures. (S)he might even include cars and lorries in that system. But would (s)he include the people who drive those vehicles? More sustainably, perhaps, we need to learn ‘whole systems thinking’, the difference being where one draws the boundaries.

How you might help

So what might whole systems learning look like? The authors just mentioned suggest a series of stories & games designed to help understand the interrelatedness of systems in which we live, from Japanese folk tales to Dr Seuss for children and activities for older children and professionals such as role-playing trawler operators.

And how might we help learning providers fit systems thinking into a cluttered curriculum? Coming back to the Diplomas, a possible starting point for those seeking ways to embed learning for sustainability seems to lie with the Personal, Learning and Thinking (PLT) Skills, the framework developed by the former QCA and embedded right across the current programme of educational reform. Under the definitions within this framework, marrying film-making and renewable energy R&D may admittedly be less about learning for sustainability than about creative thinking, “connecting their own and others’ ideas and experiences in inventive ways”.

But, given that learning providers are getting the message that PLT skills are crucial, could we use systems thinking to help them deliver this framework while making their communities more sustainable? Our experiment in the English Potteries this summer showed promise but it also identified a major barrier for many learners: literacy. Sure, the highly creative interventions listed in our portfolio, from Dave’s soundscapes and Angela’s cartoons, to Naomi’s peak oil games, Sofia’s U-process and David’s scenario-planning, are engaging ways to embed sustainability along with the PLT skills. Yet we’re advised we need to exercise caution when facilitating such creative workshops with learners from traditional sectors such as builders, engineers or business managers, who are easily taken too far out of their comfort zone  for effective learning.

To be sure, the level of interest is growing in embedding sustainability in learning – not just employers trying to innovate for survival, but schools, colleges and universities focused on employer engagement and citizens generally excluded from learning. You can help us by sharing what you are learning from your own activities linking work to learning for sustainability. Given the opportunity to work with policy makers and practitioners, following on perhaps from Lorraine’s series of images, how might you proceed? Drop us a line if you think you’d like to help out.