Rebecca Payne is the Head of the Food Land and Agribusiness Management Department at Harper Adams University and the School Lead for the School of Sustainable Food and Farming. She is a senior fellow of the HEA. In this reflection she discusses the challenges of teaching sustainability in the context of land-based universities.
As Harper Adams University partners with retail and food service corporations to build their School of Sustainable Food and Farming it is clear to me that sustainability underpins all of the degree routes that fall within my sphere of influence. Whether we are focused upon agribusiness supply chains, food development and nutrition or the management of land and property, our students need a framework within which to build their understanding of their future and its our job to provide just that. In the context of my growing and widely recognised land-based institution this ought to be easy. Surely these principles underpin the very essence of a land-based institution? In fact, its much more complex than it at first appears….
The HE sector at wide has, for the most part, succeeded in developing operational frameworks that consider sustainability –we are confident that we are able to articulate for and develop with our students their ideas around physical/measurable outcomes of operational changes that lead to a ‘more sustainable version’ of our ‘target’; be that a shorter supply chain, a more fuel-efficient harvest, recyclable packaging or nutritious snacks. Yet I observe a lack of consistency within our teaching, an absence of narrative with which we all feel comfortable to underpin our value proposition and define our truth.
So, I make the case that sustainable pedagogy is something we need to address. I believe we need to revisit our terms of reference and consider the how, the why and the where of teaching in the context of sustainability as the who (Generation-Z with their poster girl Greta Thunberg) have very clear ideas and a very different focus to their predecessors the Millennials, and me a Boomer…
As an example; I teach strategy and focus upon competitive advantage and business growth have been the mainstay of my discipline for the last couple of decades. I focus on sustainability in much the same way I focus on finance, quality and marketing as a lens though which a business must be observed to ‘check’ we are on track. However, when I reflect on Yanez et al. (2019) and their assertion that “narratives of progress, competition, and innovation increasingly obscure the urgent ecological, ethical and social justice conditions students confront daily” I believe I need a reset. Its time to unpick how and why I teach what I teach … and build from a different start point “using real-world tools in authentic sociotechnical contexts” (Yanez et al, 2019).
I am increasingly convinced that the only way land-based can discuss sustainable beef production, plant-based nutrition, insect sources of protein, ecological land management, carbon-sequestration, living wage, agile working and viable business models in the same sentence is if we unpack our frameworks and rebuild them in an inclusive, cohesive, non-confrontational form so that instead of zero-sum teaching we end up with a positive-sum curriculum model….
This blog article embodies the reflections of our departmental team which were shared through and away-day in September 2021.
Yanez, G. A. et al. (2019) ‘Pathways to sustainable futures: A “production pedagogy” model for STEM education’, Futures, 108, pp. 27–36. doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2019.02.021.
