Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 16

16 | JADE
ARTICLE #1 | 17
STEVEN L. ROGERS, STUART S. EGAN, & IAN G. STIMPSON
Hans Kastenholz, 2005). As key stakeholders in the sustainability
process, and for the betterment of dissemination of sustainability
issues, geoscientists need to understand how they fit into the
process, how their expertise can be best utilised, and some of the
potential barriers they may face. An example of a barrier between
geoscience and sustainability was given by Mackenzie (2017).
He highlights that some UK wind farms (which he argues pollute
foreign environments via there construction) have been placed on
mineral resources “sterilising” the resource, this will result in further
exploitation of these resources from parts of the world where no
environmental policies are in place, geologists (here, the British
Geological Survey) have had no say in this (with the UK government).
It could be argued that with geological input, the local exploitation
of needed resources would be more sustainable (less polluting
etc.) than the shift of this exploitation to areas of the world with
poor environmental regulations. Many of these points have been
neglected by non-geoscientists, and the wind farms blindly regarded
as “green” and therefore “a good thing”. With enhanced knowledge
of the SDG’s geoscientists should be better equipped to negotiate
with non-specialists in these situations.
It should be noted that it is most certainly not solely geoscientists and
Earth Scientists in Higher Education settings that have been called
out on this issue, Lozano et al. (2013) highlighted that although many
universities had become engaged with sustainable development,
most had fallen behind companies in creating an environment which
nurtures a sustainable culture.
This paper investigates the links to sustainability concepts (in the
guise of Sustainable Development Goals, as defined by the UN,
see Sustainability Concepts in the Keele Geology Courses, below)
within the undergraduate Geology and Geoscience courses taught
at Keele University (UK). The aim of this work is to consolidate our
current position in terms of sustainability science engagement and
commitment, and to identify areas where we can improve this; be
that with new modules or the better embedding and dissemination
of current teaching practice.
Sustainability Concepts in the Keele Geology Courses
The tracking of sustainable development has become an important
objective for many policy makers in many sectors (e.g. Ramachandran,
2000; Azapagic, 2004; Krajnc and Glavic, 2005; Singh et al., 2009
etc.). Indicators for tracking, and the methodologies applied vary
between sectors, Singh et al. (2009) provides an overview of
these concepts, which highlights the complexity of identifying
indicators which are meaningful to a particular industry or sector.
TRACKING SUSTAINABILITY CONCEPTS IN GEOLOGY AND
EARTH SCIENCE TEACHING AND LEARNING, KEELE UNIVERSITY, UK
Some previous studies examining the embedding of sustainability
concepts across university courses have used the “triple bottom
line” approach (Saeudy, 2014 and 2015), this involves classifying
sustainability development into three main categories: economic,
social and environmental. Whilst these three categories are
intrinsically linked to sustainability, we have used what we believe
is a more comprehensive and integrated approach based on the
UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, similar to the method of Gill
(2016). Gill (2016) used a visual matrix to explore the links between
the UN’s 17 SDGs (Fig. 1 and Table 1) and 11 aspects of geology which
he deemed key. A similar visual matrix is used here. However, in place
of key geological aspects, modules which are run and coordinated
by members of the geology teaching team (at Keele Uni.) are listed;
these modules are briefly described; in subsequent columns links
between these modules and the SDGs are given (represented by
numbers corresponding to the SDGs (Fig. 1 and Table 1) as either
Explicit, Moderate or Vague. Explicit links are those that are obvious
or explicit within a module’s themes or teaching, Moderate links are
those that provide knowledge and experience that can be clearly
linked to the SDGs, but might not be immediately recognisable.
Vague links are those which take some additional application to
reach.
The visual matrix used here is much less streamlined than that of
Gill (2016), however the number of aspects considered (in this case
modules) is far higher. Of course, not all modules or teaching within
modules are going to correspond to any of the SDGs, and that is to
be expected. It should also be highlighted that the association of
part of a module with an SDG, and the level to which it links, are likely
to be transitory. In some cases, the association will also be debatable;
we feel that our judgement in this matter has been fair, and that
the introduction of a scale of linkage (Explicit, Moderate and Vague)
reduces the potential for contentious matters. This methodology is
less complex than most used within other sectors (Singh et al., 2009).
For example, we don’t need to go into the economic complexities
that most industries need to take into account (supply, demand,
transport of goods etc.). We have modified this visual matrix as a
way of tracking sustainability as a set of individual goals, which will
allow us to summarise our overall sustainable development through
these individual links; both in terms of the relationship between
goals and how goals relate through the levels of our teaching. This
development tracking is similar to how Warhurst (2002) considered
the measurement of sustainability development.