'The lived experience of climate change': creating

1 downloads 0 Views 198KB Size Report
Professor of Environment and Development at the Open University (UK). ... Dina Abbott is a University Reader in Development Geography at the ..... Roy, R., Potter, S. and Yarrow, K. (2008) 'Designing low carbon higher education systems.
Int. J. Technology Enhanced Learning, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2011

‘The lived experience of climate change’: creating open educational resources and virtual mobility for an innovative, integrative and competence-based track at Masters level Gordon Wilson* Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author

Dina Abbott Geographical, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby DE22 1GB, UK E-mail: [email protected]

Joop de Kraker and Paquita Salgado Pérez School of Science, Open Universiteit Nederland, P.O. Box 2960, 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

Catharien Terwisscha van Scheltinga Earth System Science – Climate Change Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands E-mail: [email protected]

Patrick Willems Department of Civil Engineering – Hydraulics Section, and Leuven Sustainable Earth (LSUE) Research Center, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 40, BE-3001 Leuven, Belgium E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

111

112

G. Wilson et al. Abstract: This paper explores a new integrative approach to climate change education at Masters level. Drawing on the authors’ involvement in a European Union Erasmus project, it is argued that the diversity of knowledge(s) on climate change are a source of active/social learning. The wide variety of disciplinary, sectoral and lived experiential (both individual and collective) knowledge(s) are all considered legitimate in this exercise, the aim of which is to construct new interdisciplinary knowledge from their boundary interfaces. We further argue for a corresponding pedagogy based on developing transboundary competences – the ability to engage in social learning and action through communicative engagement across knowledge boundaries. We acknowledge that the challenges for enacting transboundary competence are considerable when it requires mobility across epistemological, even ontological, boundaries. The challenges are further compounded when the communicative engagement across space and time requires virtual mobility which is ICT-enabled. Nevertheless, meeting them is a normative goal, not only for this expanded, integrative approach to climate change education, but also for a global resolution of climate change itself. Keywords: climate change; interdisciplinary; lived experience; communicative engagement; transboundary competence; intervention competence; virtual mobility; open educational resources. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Wilson, G., Abbott, D., de Kraker, J., Salgado Pérez, P., van Scheltinga, C.T. and Willems, P. (2011) ‘‘The lived experience of climate change’: creating open educational resources and virtual mobility for an innovative, integrative and competence-based track at Masters level’, Int. J. Technology Enhanced Learning, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.111–123. Biographical notes: Gordon Wilson is the LECHe Project Coordinator and Professor of Environment and Development at the Open University (UK). Previously, he was the Director of curriculum in Environment, Development and International Studies and he has chaired several open university undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the area. His research concerns stakeholder roles in collective knowledge construction in development practice, especially where there is an environmental dimension. He has undertaken research in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Algeria. He has published extensively. Most recently, he was the Senior Editor of Environment, Development and Sustainability: Perspectives and Cases From Around the World and co-author of Learning for Development. Dina Abbott is a University Reader in Development Geography at the University of Derby, UK with responsibility for teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate Geography and Development Studies Programmes. She is also the Co-Head of the Physical and Human Environments Research Group, an Associate Lecturer for modules on the MSc in Development Management Programme for the Open University, UK, for whom she has acted as a Consultant and a Moderator on several occasions for distance and virtual learning activities. She has also authored several journal and book articles on research methodology, fieldwork, urban and gendered poverty in an African and Indian context. Joop de Kraker holds an MSc in Applied Ecology (1989) and a PhD in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (1996) from Wageningen University. He has worked on a range of educational and research projects in sustainable agriculture in Africa, Asia and Europe. Since 2001, he has been at the School of Science, the Open University of the Netherlands, currently as a Research

‘The lived experience of climate change’

113

Coordinator and an Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences. His research interests focus on the interface between science, policy and society in sustainability issues, particularly the role of learning and potential of ICT to support collective learning processes and competence development. Paquita Salgado Pérez is a Professor and Dean of the School of Science of the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL) in the Netherlands. She is responsible for education and research in the faculty. She holds a professorship in distance learning in natural and environmental sciences. She has ten years experience in quality assurance of innovative learning in natural sciences and sustainable development. Currently, she is specialising in the environmental impact of educational systems. She is the Vice-Chairman of the National Committee for Environmental Sciences of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands. Focus: external quality assurance and curriculum development. Catharien Terwisscha van Scheltinga works as a Researcher and a Lecturer on water management, adaptation to climate change and capacity development. She is involved in projects worldwide, among others in the HighNoon Project in India and an initiative for capacity development for adaptation to climate change in Eastern Africa. She has developed teaching materials on adaptive water management. Patrick Willems is an Associate Professor at Water Engineering at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Department of Civil Engineering, and Leuven Sustainable Earth Research Center). He is the author of more than 200 publications, about 45 in peer-reviewed international journals. He is co-promoter of 12 PhD researchers, many of them focusing on climate change impact estimates on hydrological extremes (floods, droughts and extreme surface water pollution levels, in and outside Europe). He has extensive experience in Masters, PhD and post-academic training on the same topic. He is currently the Chairman of the International Working Group on Urban Rainfall of the International Water Association.

1

Introduction

Climate change is strongly contested. Such contestation does not apply only to well-publicised debates between climate scientists who contend that the world is warming because of anthropogenic activity and those who are sceptical. It also applies within the former group over the extent and rate of change, and over its ecological and socio-economic impacts. We can of course also witness convergence among scientists, albeit at a general level. The sceptics are in the minority as most climate scientists do agree that anthropogenic-induced climate change is happening and most social scientists agree that adverse socio-economic impacts will be felt among poorer groups in poorer parts of the world. Such convergence tends to be within disciplines – within climate science or within economics, for example – with little cross-over between them. When deciding what to do about climate change, however, the knowledge required is of a different order in the world of policy and action, contestation is amplified because it does not only take place solely within disciplines, but also between disciplines, between academics and practitioners, and between interest-based knowledge systems. The danger

114

G. Wilson et al.

is that a high level of contestation equates with uncertainty which in turn can easily result in inaction. The argument of this paper, however, is the opposite – that we should celebrate such a melting pot of knowledges. Following Hulme (2009), we see difference and contestation as a crucial resource for learning and ‘better’ knowledge and hence ‘better’ action. What does our argument mean for climate change education? The paper authors are currently addressing the question through a European Union (EU) Erasmus project, ‘The lived experience of climate change: e-learning and virtual mobility’ (LECHe), which brings together eight universities across six EU countries to support Masters study in the area. The project is creating curriculum resources (which will eventually become open educational resources), technology-supported learning communities and a platform for virtual mobility of students (see Box 1). The title, ‘The lived experience…’, is chosen deliberately because: a

it recognises the legitimacy of knowledge gained through personal, social and local experience alongside scientific knowledges in climate change debates

b

it is not constrained by disciplinary boundaries.

Three imperatives drive the project: firstly, as educators, it is our duty to expose students to the range of perspectives and knowledges about climate change, including those which are experiential. Secondly it is particularly important to expose them to knowledge of the sectors on which climate change impacts directly. These are the natural resource sectors where water as the source of life is paramount. Thirdly, we should equip students with the means of working across and learning through the range of knowledges to which they are exposed, by developing competences for communicative engagement. These imperatives form respectively Sections 2, 3 and 4 below. Within Section 4 we also note the breadth of knowledge(s) that information and communications technologies (ICTs) facilitate, and the possibilities they have for increasing communicative engagement through virtual mobility across distance between people possessing sometimes radically different lived experiences. A critical appraisal of the challenges of fulfilling the potential of ICTs to be used in this manner is also addressed in the concluding Section 5.

2

Expanding the knowledge base of climate change education

Climate change and its consequences for the functioning of human societies represent a defining challenge in the 21st century. For this we must thank in significant degree the natural scientists who have achieved a consensus about the scale of the challenge, in particular through their contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization. As Blackmore (2009) notes: “The IPCC is an extraordinary example of international and interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and other academics across the world. Their efforts have advanced significantly our understanding of how the earth’s physical and biological systems, its atmosphere, oceans, land, ice and the living world including ourselves, interact and influence each other.”

‘The lived experience of climate change’

115

Box 1 The lived experience of climate change: e-learning and virtual mobility (LECHe) This project creates postgraduate curriculum and virtual learning communities in relation to climate change. It aims to: a contribute to an informed, active European citizenry and the United Nations Decade on Education for Sustainable Development; b inform EU policy. The project focuses on the lived experiences of climate change – how individuals, communities and organisations conceive and respond to its perceived local impacts (e.g., extreme weather, biodiversity changes). It involves collaboration between eight universities plus the umbrella European Association of Distance Teaching Universities. The educational level of the project is postgraduate Masters. A key feature is that it complements existing and proposed Masters programmes in the area, rather than attempts to create a parallel programme. Consortium members, and indeed any University anywhere in the world once it becomes open educational resource at the project end, are free to use or adapt the content within their own programmes, through their normal accreditation processes. The teaching modules which are created can also be used flexibly by students: as available educational resources without assessment or accreditation to enhance their studies, or as conventional modules with assessment and accreditation. Based on a virtual learning space, the main phases of the project are: 1

Development of the overall design of the curriculum, the virtual learning communities and virtual mobility for students. This phase has recently been completed.

2

Collaborative creation of the curriculum and associated virtual learning communities among the partner Universities. This phase is now underway and involves development of: a Three teaching modules: 1 an introduction to climate change in the context of sustainable development 2 comparing the lived experiences of climate change in the global South and North 3 interdisciplinary research methods for investigating the lived experience of climate change. b A Masters dissertation package based on the virtual learning space which contains: 1 a repository of suggested dissertation topics 2 hyperlinks to existing local, national and regional projects on climate change and their databases, and to lectures and other resources 3 a repository of Masters dissertations in the area. c

3

4

A virtual mobility package which supports two kinds of learning community: 1 For students and tutors/supervisors on any of the modules described above and on student dissertation topics. 2 A moderated virtual café which expands access to citizens and organisations who might be the subject of dissertation projects, allowing for a dialogue on climate change between citizens and academia.

Pilot delivery where students from the participating universities enrol in the virtual learning space and benefit from the educational resources, learning communities and virtual mobility offered. They are guided by institutional staff who also act as learning community moderators. At the end of this 15-month phase, the student experience will be fully evaluated and the teaching modules adapted accordingly before becoming available as open educational resources. Ongoing phases throughout the project involve quality assurance and enhancement (through peer review processes and external assessors), dissemination and long-term exploitation/sustainability.

116

G. Wilson et al.

More recently other sciences have addressed the theme of climate change, such as political science with respect to governance issues (Breitmeier, 2008) and economics with respect to the costs and livelihood impacts associated with the challenge. The latter is exemplified by the ‘Stern Review: the economics of climate change’ (2006) commissioned by the UK Government, and which has attained international influence. Just as research on climate change has been dominated by the natural sciences, with later entrants from social science disciplines, so too has university teaching. While the reproduction of disciplinary specialists through university teaching is both inevitable and also in many respects commendable in order to gain in-depth insights into particular aspects of climate change, the question arises as to what is then left out of the equation. To answer this question we need to start with the subject – climate change – rather than particular disciplinary approaches. Climate change is a real-world, global challenge, and such challenges rarely fall neatly within the epistemological boundaries established by academic disciplines. Brewer (1999) put this bluntly when he stated: ‘The world has problems while Universities have departments’. This observation remains the most compelling reason for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of real-world problems (Mohan and Wilson, 2005) such as climate change, where exploration at the boundary interfaces of academic disciplines represents opportunities for gaining insights which would otherwise remain hidden. Note, however, that this approach does not seek to challenge the importance of individual disciplines – interdisciplinary should not be equated with anti-disciplinary – but build on their interfaces to construct new knowledge. The ‘Lived experience of climate change’ project does not only involve several institutions and countries, but also cuts across natural science, engineering and social science disciplines. It intends to create an interdisciplinary curriculum for Masters students on climate change using a lived experience perspective. As implied by the title, however, it seeks to expand the notion of interdisciplinarity to recognise the validity of, and introduce into the mix, non-academic knowledges of professional practitioners and ordinary citizens1. Such knowledges interact with and are influenced by received disciplinary knowledges, but they are primarily tacit, being based on personal and collective experiences and shaped by a host of socio-economic factors and life events. In an important sense lived experiences are epistemological opposites of disciplinary knowledges. Incorporating lived experience into curriculum alongside academic disciplinary knowledges and exploring the interfaces is a challenge. Even more of a challenge concerns how we as academics, and students themselves as they undertake Masters dissertations, might represent lived experience. This is because, while at an abstract level we each have individual lived experiences of climate change which we are able to share easily with those of similar mindsets to ourselves (Johnson and Wilson, 2009), grasping and representing knowledge articulated by differing mindsets inevitably takes us beyond our epistemological and ontological assumptions. In this vein, different mindsets might centre on social and cultural difference, professional difference, academic difference (e.g., natural and social scientists), and so on. In teaching, and academic deliberation generally, the challenge raises the question of how to conceptualise ‘lived experience’ and how to overcome the differences in mindsets. As a starting point we can postulate that it is knowledge shaped by the temporal dimension of personal and collective histories gathered over generations, the broader political and economic influences which shape our lives both in the North and South of

‘The lived experience of climate change’

117

the globe, our engagements with other knowledges and our perceptions of direct biophysical impacts associated with climate change that challenge our lives and livelihoods either of poverty or of affluence. Such knowledge is further filtered through individual standpoints and power positions in local and wider society (e.g., arising from gender and race). The dynamics of how these factors interact to generate, perpetuate and evolve ‘lived experience’ have not been explored in depth, nor has the concept been interrogated alongside other knowledge claims made by academics and professional practitioners. Thus even at the starting point of deconstructing the concept of lived experience, there is an enormous potential to expand and develop our knowledge of climate change. Equally, the complexity embedded in methodological issues of building a research design, hypothesis and investigation of ‘lived experiences’ offers a further potential to move from known and ‘safe’ disciplinary boundaries that students may be familiar with, to cross-disciplinary, unfamiliar ones and adopt multi-method rather than singular approaches. Students also begin to realise that research does not just stop at the empirical or writing stage and that knowledge continues to be created through action, sometimes action that generates policy. As an example, scientific data can be complemented by participatory action research (PAR) which is often adapted to investigate poverty related issues and is particularly relevant given the predicted negative impacts of climate change on poor people. PAR includes a range of stakeholders throughout the research process to capture direct knowledge arising from ‘the voices of the poor’, in turn generating the potential to build action around and feed into policy on mitigation and adaptation. Alongside are questions on how to build methodological rigour, generate data and interpretation to converge towards a better understanding of events in the field. Underlying all are the ethical and moral questions related to fieldwork, particularly that led by relatively affluent academics and students investigating lived experiences of women, marginalised groups and people in poverty in both Europe and developing countries (Abbott, 2006, 2009). Of course such investigations are necessary because they bring to wider attention groups who otherwise tend to be forgotten, but reflection of this kind inevitably leads to a wider understanding of climate change. We do not, however, have to build the above conceptual and methodological understandings anew. They are at least latent in the natural resource sectors on which climate change impacts directly, to which we now turn.

3

Incorporating sectoral natural resource expertise: the case of water

There are particular reasons for including sectoral natural resource expertise in curriculum focusing on the lived experience of climate change. Firstly, our basic human needs are fundamentally dependent on access to natural resources, such access being critically affected by climate change. Secondly, natural resource expertise is invariably directly concerned with real-world problem solving to enable continuing access. Following on and thirdly, the expertise is inherently multi-disciplinary, leading to the possibility of interdisciplinary solutions. In the LECHe project we are focusing primarily on expertise associated with the water sector as water is arguably the most fundamental of natural resources, being the source of food and life. Thus, many experts warn that, in the future, water crises might

118

G. Wilson et al.

become much more important than energy crises or other types of societal problems. At a general level, moreover, sectoral expertise in water incorporates social, economic, environmental, health, political, institutional, technological, and other aspects, hence its multidisciplinary nature. More specifically, this sectoral expertise contributes to climate change curriculum and our understanding of its lived experience in the LECHe project through combining: •

Earth system sciences and the impact of climate change on rainfall, its spatial patterns, frequency and severity. For example, Kenya currently faces its most severe drought in decades2. Crops and livestock are being destroyed, and millions of people urgently need food. While these and other populations suffer from water scarcity, other (and/or the same) regions have been affected in recent history by severe flood events. European examples of the latter include the North Sea storm surge in The Netherlands in 1953; the Scheldt river flood close to Antwerp in Belgium in 1976; the Elbe river flood in Germany in 2002. Knowledge of meteorology and climate science is also crucial for making projections into the future and assessments about risk.



Technology, where environmental authorities and engineers play an important role in the enhanced control of water systems which are necessary for successful climate change adaptation. This involves more efficient use and/or regulation of the available storage volumes by current or new advanced technologies.



Management, but a particular kind of decentralised water management based on multiple-stakeholder cooperation which is able to adapt flexibly to the uncertainties brought upon by climate change. It has also to be recognised that such management is inherently political, having potential conflicts of interest among stakeholders, who include local communities, politicians of different hues, non-governmental organisations, the private sector and professional experts of various kinds. Such potential conflicts can be both between stakeholder groups and within them.

Water (or any other natural resource) management which is decentralised and based on cooperation between a range of stakeholders is often seen in practice as involving compromise, where there is a danger that basic issues are avoided in order to gain agreement. A different conceptualisation, however, recognises the potential of multi-stakeholder cooperation for creativity and innovation through active ‘learning alliances’ (Ashley et al., 2008). Active learning [also called ‘social learning’ (Pahl-Wostl, 2008)] at different levels, for example within citizen user groups, or between these groups and scientists and policy makers, aspires to a shared understanding of the water system and the challenges to this system in order to deal with issues such as complexity and uncertainty. It can develop the capacity by different stakeholder groups to accept different interests and points of view on risk and performance along our water systems, and also to be able to utilise different types of response and at different times of implementation. Consequently it might lead to the collective management of our water resources in a sustainable way. The concept of active/ social learning is particularly appropriate to the LECHe project where the envisaged learning communities and exchanges through virtual mobility may be seen as directly experiencing social (or active) learning ‘by doing’.

‘The lived experience of climate change’

4

119

Virtual mobility and open access in a competence-based approach

The educational approach of the LECHe project is based on the learning goals with respect to the focus of the curriculum, the lived experience of climate change. Given the scale and complexity of climate change, many uncertainties surround the issue, whereas its lived experience is largely contextually determined. As a consequence, there is a valid diversity in perspectives on the issue. As indicated above, Masters students in this field of study should 1

become aware of the diversity of perspectives on the issue of climate change

2

learn to understand that the lived experience of climate change is strongly determined by physical and socio-cultural contexts

3

learn to study the lived experience of climate change as a multi-dimensional concept in an interdisciplinary manner, integrating approaches from both natural and social science disciplines

4

learn to appreciate the value of contextual knowledge gained through personal, social and local experience alongside scientific knowledge on climate change.

Thus, students should be exposed to a range of perspectives on climate change and its impacts, arising from the diversity of contexts, experiences and disciplinary approaches. Moreover, to use this diversity as a source of inspiration and better solutions instead of conflict and political paralysis, the students should learn to think, communicate, collaborate and learn across the boundaries of the different perspectives and types of knowledge. We refer to this ability as ‘transboundary competence’ (De Kraker et al., 2007b), which constitutes the basis for social learning and intervention in professional practice. These goals set a number of challenges for the educational approach, in terms of both its didactic framework and learning environment. Given the emphasis on development of transboundary competence, a competence-based learning approach appears most appropriate as a didactic framework. According to this approach, learning should focus on the integrative competences which are required in professional life, and not on the acquisition of isolated skills and pieces of knowledge. Learning environments that stimulate active, contextual construction of knowledge and active acquisition of competences are favoured. The best way to acquire these competences appears to be in a learning environment that combines actual practice and explicit reflection on what and how to learn from that practice (Könings et al., 2005). In the case of the LECHe project, this means that we need a learning environment that enables the students to communicate, collaborate and reflect with other students, with teachers and supervisors and with those with experiential knowledge of climate change from a broad diversity of backgrounds. This diversity concerns both physical and socio-cultural contexts, scientific disciplines and specialisations and societal positions. In our view, the design of such a learning environment should build on the principles of virtual mobility and open access to educational resources. Virtual mobility is defined as “using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to obtain the same benefits as one would have with physical mobility, but without the need to travel” (eLearningEuropa.info). It allows, with the use of modern ICTs in a web-based integrated virtual learning environment, the formation of ‘learning communities’ (De Kraker et al.,

120

G. Wilson et al.

2007a). In these communities, students and educational staff from a variety of universities and Masters programmes across Europe meet, study, discuss and compare ‘lived experiences of climate change’ and scientific analyses thereof. In addition, we envisage ‘open’ learning communities at the science-society-policy interface. In these learning communities, students, teachers and researchers can engage in discussions with non-academics about learning materials, research plans, ongoing research and research outcomes (dissertations), with the aim of mutual learning. These materials will be made publicly available in the open part of the virtual learning environment as ‘open educational resources’. Not only in the exploitation phase, but also in the curriculum development phase, virtual mobility is a major principle in our project. The multi-disciplinary LECHe project consortium boasts expertise in sustainable development, governance, ecology, development practice, green chemistry, development geography, environmental engineering, environmental science, water/natural resource management and so on. This expertise, moreover, is based on different research traditions and knowledge-basedmethods. Virtual web-based means of communication allow the consortium members from across Europe to collaborate in the creation of novel, interdisciplinary modules. In view of the topic of the curriculum, climate change, a major added advantage is the reduction in carbon footprint that is achieved with online development and exploitation of the modules. This reduction may amount to as much as a factor 8 to 20 (Roy et al., 2008; Pérez Salgado, 2008), if virtual mobility is used in the educational design instead of completely face-to-face courses. The environmental impact (in terms of energy use and CO2-emissions) of internationalisation in higher education has scarcely been investigated, and its effect seems to be underestimated (or disregarded). Thus, in our educational approach, virtual mobility is not only the medium but also (part of) the message.

5

Conclusions

Implied, but never quite explicitly stated, in Sections 2, 3 and 4 is that the lived experience of climate change is dynamic. This is because the myriad of influences on it change over time, but also because people are active agents in shaping their experiences through their ongoing actions, reflections and, especially communicative engagements with others (and their knowledges). In the LECHe project, engagement is both: •

An object of study in the curriculum, being an important aspect of both cooperative approaches to natural resource management and of lived experience in its broadest sense. ‘Engagement’ will thus be studied in the teaching modules, and is key to the argument in Sections 2 and 3, being the means which turns contestation between knowledges into resources for social learning, new knowledge and action.



The subject of study, being the foundation of the transboundary competence approach to learning and constructing an integrative knowledge base around climate change, which is described in Section 4.

We are adopting a broadly analytical approach to communicative engagement as an object of study within our curriculum resources, there being in the related participation literature a wealth of both promotional writing (Chambers, 1997) and critical studies

‘The lived experience of climate change’

121

(Hickey and Mohan, 2004). Much of the latter concerns the knowledge/power nexus elaborated by Foucault (Gordon, 1980), and in particular the power relations between the engaging stakeholders, put simply in the form of the question: ‘Whose knowledge counts?’ As subject, however, we adopt a more normative stance – we are actively promoting, as the basis of our pedagogy, ideas of knowledge construction through learning communities and virtual mobility. The critique applied to the object also applies, however, to the subject and within the design of the project one has to be constantly aware of the knowledge/power nexus not only operating between lecturers and students (and the wider community in our project) but also within lecturer groups and within student groups where attempts are made through claims to authority to establish dominant knowledge (Mohan and Wilson, 2005). These challenges are present in face-to-face academic engagements, but the mediation of engagement by ICTs adds a further layer. The key exponent of communicative engagement, Habermas, has noted the background consensus (the common ‘language’) that lies behind all narrative exchange (Fischer, 2003), but how is this established when dependent on technology to communicate across time and distance between people of different epistemological and ontological standpoints? While many lecturers have disappointing stories to tell of lack of deep engagement among students in electronic forums (and that is in circumstances where epistemological and ontological assumptions are largely shared), others have also developed explicit and sometimes innovative ways to meet these challenges. Thus, the ICT-tools of a virtual learning environment not only support collaborative learning activities independent of time and place at low cost, but can also provide better opportunities for the required structured group discussions and reflection processes (Barth, 2007b). Certain tools, such as a Wiki space, foster a constructivist approach to knowledge and support dealing with complex concepts from multiple angles, both of which contribute to the development of ‘transboundary competence’(Barth, 2007a; Burandt and Barth, 2010). In the end, however, the challenge of ICT-mediated engagement is more than what is commonly called the digital divide – the unequal access to digital technologies and infrastructure – although this remains of paramount importance for much of the world’s poorer people, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also an issue of, even with appropriate access, our capabilities for engagement through ICTs that go beyond the superficial. Unless this challenge is met, the lack of such capability will soon turn difference into a further divide. These challenges go well beyond the sphere of higher education. The capability to which we refer ultimately goes to the heart of whether or not we can, as one world, rise collectively to the challenge of global issues such as climate change. This is the ultimate, normative, aim of the LECHe project – to explore and develop ways of building the necessary cross-ontological capabilities.

References Abbott, D. (2006) ‘Disrupting the ‘whiteness’ of fieldwork in geography’, The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 27, November, pp.326–341. Abbott, D. (2009) ‘Field geographies (philosophy)’, in R. Kitchin, C. Philo and T. Thrift (Eds.): The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, pp.106–111, Elsevier.

122

G. Wilson et al.

Ashley, R.M., Newman, R., Molyneux-Hodgson, S. and Blanksby, J. (2008) ‘Active learning: building the capacity to adapt urban drainage to climate change’, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, 31 August–5 September 2008, Edinburgh, Scotland, p.10 Barth, M. (2007a) ‘From e-learning to the acquirement of competencies: Wiki-based knowledge management and complex problem solving’, in I. Bø and A. Szücs (Eds.): New Learning 2.0? Emerging Digital Territories – Developing Continuities – New Divides, Proceedings of the Seventh EDEN Conference, Naples, Italy. Barth, M. (2007b) Gestaltungskompetenz durch neue medien? Die rolle des lernens mit neuen medien in der bildung für eine nachhaltige entwicklung, BWV Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin. Blackmore, R. (2009) ‘Climate change: causes and consequences’, in G. Wilson, P. Furniss and P. Kimbowa (Eds.): Environment, Development and Sustainability: Perspectives and Cases From Around the World, p.103, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Breitmeier, H. (2008) The Legitimacy of International Regimes, Ashgate, Aldershot. Brewer, G. (1999) ‘The challenge of interdisciplinarity’, Policy Sciences, Vol. 32, pp.327–337. Burandt, S. and Barth, M. (2010) ‘Learning settings to face climate change’, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 18, pp.659–665. Chambers, R. (1997) Whose Reality Counts? Putting the Last First, Intermediate Technology Publications, London. De Kraker, J., Cörvers, R., Ivens, W., Lansu, A. and Van Dam-Mieras, R. (2007a) ‘Crossing boundaries – competence-based learning for sustainable development in a virtual mobility setting’, paper presented at the 4th World Environmental Education Congress, Durban, South Africa, available at http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/2375. De Kraker, J., Lansu, A. and Van Dam-Mieras, M.C. (2007b) ‘Competences and competence-based learning for sustainable development’, in J. de Kraker, A. Lansu and M.C. van Dam-Mieras (Eds.): Crossing Boundaries. Innovative Learning for Sustainable Development in Higher Education, pp.103–114, Verlag für Akademische Schriften, Frankfurt am Main, available at http://dspace.ou.nl/handle/1820/2409. Fischer, F. (2003) Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices, p.199, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Gordon, C. (Ed.) (1980) Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, The Harvester Press, Pearson Education Ltd. London. Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. (Eds.) (2004) Participation. From Tyranny to Transformation?, Zed Books, London. Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Johnson, H. and Wilson, G. (2009) Learning for Development, pp.65–86, Zed Books, London. Könings, K.D., Brand-Gruwel, S. and Van Merriënboer, J.J.G. (2005) ‘Towards more powerful learning environments through combining the perspectives of designers, teachers and students’, British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 75, pp.645–660. Mohan, G. and Wilson, G. (2005) ‘The antagonistic relevance of development studies’, Progress in Development Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.261–278. Pahl-Wostl, C. (2008) ‘Requirements for adaptive water management’, in Adaptive and Integrated Water Management. Coping with Complexity and Uncertainty, pp.1–22 Springer, ISBN 978-3-540-75940-9. Pérez Salgado, F. (2008) ‘Online onderwijs en duurzaamheid: een groene inktvlek’, School of Science, Open Universiteit Nederland. Roy, R., Potter, S. and Yarrow, K. (2008) ‘Designing low carbon higher education systems. Environmental impacts of campus and distance learning systems’, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 9, No. 2, April, pp.116–130. Stern Review (2006) The Economics of Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

‘The lived experience of climate change’

123

Notes 1

2

This broad approach might also be described as transdisciplinary as it appears to be ‘beyond the disciplines’. There is a danger, however, of entering a sterile debate over labels such as inter- or trans-disciplinary where there is no clear dividing line. For the purposes of this paper we need not enter such debates. We use the term ‘interdisciplinary’. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/17/kenya-drought-cattle-deaths, and other news sites.