Zoe Robinson
Keele University, Earth Sciences and Geography, Department Member
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This paper explores the ideological and the practical relationship between neoliberalism and New Public Management (NPM) and the sustainable development agenda of western higher education. Using the United Kingdom and specifically English... more
This paper explores the ideological and the practical relationship between neoliberalism and New Public Management (NPM) and the sustainable development agenda of western higher education. Using the United Kingdom and specifically English universities as an example, it investigates the contradictions and the synergies between neoliberal and NPM ideologies and the pursuit and practice of the sustainability agenda, focusing in particular on education for sustainable development (ESD) and ESD research. This paper reveals a range of challenges and opportunities in respect of advancing sustainability in higher education, within the prevailing neoliberal context. It illustrates using examples how neoliberal and managerialist control mechanisms, which govern institutional, departmental and individual academic, as well as student behaviour, are working conversely to both drive and limit the sustainability education agenda. The case is made for further exploration of how ‘nudging’ and ‘steering’ mechanisms within English HE might provide further leverage for ESD developments in the near future, and the implications of this for sustainability educators.
Research Interests: Sociology, Environmental Education, Higher Education, Sustainability in Higher Education, Sustainable Development, and 11 moreIdeology, Neoliberalism, Sustainability Education, New Public Management and Governance, GE, Curriculum and Pedagogy, LC, Education for Sustainable Development, Lb, Sustainability, and ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT
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ABSTRACT
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In Bangladesh, energy poverty in small and remote coastal communities inhibits development and exacerbates livelihood and migration pressures, social changes, and gender disparities. Climate change threatens low lying coastal areas,... more
In Bangladesh, energy poverty in small and remote coastal communities inhibits development and exacerbates livelihood and migration pressures, social changes, and gender disparities. Climate change threatens low lying coastal areas, bringing sea level rise and increasing salinity. Cyclones and flash floods are having increasing impacts on coastal terrains, habitats, and associated livelihoods. Such challenges are faced by similar communities globally and represent significant barriers to addressing multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - in particular across Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Small-scale renewables potentially offer clean and secure energy solutions that also address the broader climate change mitigation context. Yet existing efforts to address energy challenges with small-scale renewables typically perform poorly. We argue that solutions need to be tailored to specific socioeconomic contexts and use durable established technologies in economically an...
ABSTRACT Little is known about the ecological implications of high-magnitude, low frequency jökulhlaup events in proglacial systems. This study highlights how kettle lakes produced by jökulhlaups in proglacial areas create short-lived... more
ABSTRACT Little is known about the ecological implications of high-magnitude, low frequency jökulhlaup events in proglacial systems. This study highlights how kettle lakes produced by jökulhlaups in proglacial areas create short-lived ecosystems and increase biodiversity. This research also demonstrates that as ice-margins retreat, creating new proglacial lakes and aquatic habitats, these sites may be increasingly important as sites of biogeochemical cycling and carbon fixing. Using diatoms from the base of former kettle hole lakes formed during the November 1996 jökulhlaup on Skeiðarársandur, south-east Iceland, we investigate the record of changing conditions of these lakes over their short (∼15 year) life span. Diatom assemblages were investigated in sediment sections up to 0.36m deep from the base of two kettle holes, and across a profile of surface sediments in one kettle hole. The diatom assemblages across all kettle holes are dominated by small benthic species (e.g. Achnanthes, Navicula, Nitzschia and Fragilaria spp.), with planktonic species (Cyclostephanos, Stephanodiscus spp.) present in only one kettle hole. The diatom assemblages are characterized by species with high nutrient and alkalinity optima. The variation in the diatom assemblages between different sedimentary units in the kettle holes’ basal stratigraphy reflect changes in the proportion of available habitat type (e.g. benthic, planktonic and littoral) resulting from changes in water levels, and changes in water chemistry relating to variations in sediment input (e.g. aeolian accumulation, slumping and re-working) and source of water (e.g. precipitation, ground water, snow melt). A conceptual model for typical kettle lake development in proglacial environments is also presented.
The impacts of climate change are already being felt on human and environmental systems, with the brunt of the impacts being felt by communities in the Global South, particularly small-holder farmers due to their poverty levels and... more
The impacts of climate change are already being felt on human and environmental systems, with the brunt of the impacts being felt by communities in the Global South, particularly small-holder farmers due to their poverty levels and greater direct dependency on natural resources for their livelihoods. Hence, there is a need to understand how to build small-holder farmers’ resilience to climate change. Climate change adaptation strategies need to build livelihood resilience in the face of climate change as well as address the factors that contribute to farmers’ vulnerability. This chapter draws from a mixed-method study conducted in three villages each in a different agro-ecological zone in the Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania, to explore how to build farmers’ livelihood resilience through addressing factors that increase livelihood vulnerability to climate change. These farmers’ livelihoods are vulnerable because of both the impacts of climate variability on the farmers’ livelihood asset...
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The impacts of climate change are already being felt on human and environmental systems, with the brunt of the impacts being felt by communities in the Global South, particularly small-holder farmers due to their poverty levels and... more
The impacts of climate change are already being felt on human and environmental systems, with the brunt of the impacts being felt by communities in the Global South, particularly small-holder farmers due to their poverty levels and greater direct dependency on natural resources for their livelihoods. Hence, there is a need to understand how to build small-holder farmers’ resilience to climate change. Climate change adaptation strategies need to build livelihood resilience in the face of climate change as well as address the factors that contribute to farmers’ vulnerability. This chapter draws from a mixed-method study conducted in three villages each in a different agro-ecological zone in the Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania, to explore how to build farmers’ livelihood resilience through addressing factors that increase livelihood vulnerability to climate change. These farmers’ livelihoods are vulnerable because of both the impacts of climate variability on the farmers’ livelihood asset...
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Sustainability degrees have seen a significant rise in number over the past decade at the same time as ‘Sustainability Science’ has been seen as an emerging discipline (O’Byrne et al., 2015). Both emphasise the importance of... more
Sustainability degrees have seen a significant rise in number over the past decade at the same time as ‘Sustainability Science’ has been seen as an emerging discipline (O’Byrne et al., 2015). Both emphasise the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to address sustainability issues (Clark, 2007), contrasting the mono-disciplinary structures of our current educational systems. The role of education in working towards a more sustainable society is essential, and higher education is seen as particularly important because this is where most of the world’s leaders are trained (Sibbel, 2008). Education for Sustainable Development can take many forms in Universities from compulsory or optional integration into traditional discipline-focussed programmes, to co-curriculum activities, to the role of the university estate as an educational tool, to entire sustainability-focussed undergraduate degree programmes. Some have questioned whether such a new academic field, as Sustainability Scien...
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Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is increasingly embedded in higher education (HE) due to the current emphasis on tackling the environmental crisis. Similarly, Civic Society Organisations are expanding their mobilization and... more
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is increasingly embedded in higher education (HE) due to the current emphasis on tackling the environmental crisis. Similarly, Civic Society Organisations are expanding their mobilization and practical action in communities. These approaches can reach almost all people on the planet and open avenues for effective global action around sustainable development. It is important to connect both learners and develop agents of change in society. In this paper, we focus on how digital resources can support democratization of knowledge production and improve equitable citizen participation in ESD and practical action at the local and global levels. The paper investigates structures, processes and components that support transnational collaboration in digital spaces, particularly, around the enhancement of sustainable environmental attitudes. We use Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) as a basis to develop EcoCOIL as a versatile model...
HighlightsUniversity living lab success relies on careful navigation of complex relationships between different actors. Maximising change through living labs requires educational objectives and learning processes embedded in governance.
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Universities have an important role in moving society towards a more sustainable future. However, this will require us to repurpose universities, reorienting and refocusing the different university domains (education, research, campus,... more
Universities have an important role in moving society towards a more sustainable future. However, this will require us to repurpose universities, reorienting and refocusing the different university domains (education, research, campus, and outreach) towards sustainability. The governance structures and processes used to embed sustainability into the activities and operations of the institution are critical to achieving the required transformation. Our current university systems which are seen as contributing to socio-ecological system unsustainability are resilient to change due to slow variables such as organisational and sector-wide prevailing paradigms and culture. Therefore, to repurpose a university requires us to destabilise our prevailing system, crossing a threshold into a new stable system of a ‘sustainable university' across all its domains. This paper utilises an adaptation of Biggs et al. (2012) resilience principles for the governance of social-ecological systems to...
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In an increasingly mobile world, transience is becoming the norm. Sustainable community food initiatives, therefore, must organise to withstand high turnover of volunteers. Using a case study of the United Kingdom’s National Union of... more
In an increasingly mobile world, transience is becoming the norm. Sustainable community food initiatives, therefore, must organise to withstand high turnover of volunteers. Using a case study of the United Kingdom’s National Union of Students’ food growing scheme in universities, this paper aims to map the causes and effects of short-term, irregular, and low participation using a causal loop diagram to understand how to mitigate their negative impacts and improve participation. Data was gathered through interviews, workshops, photovoice, a fishbowl discussion, and a reflective diary. We found three amplifying feedback loops increasing short-term, irregular and low participation, their causes, and their impacts. These feedback loops were precariously buffered by a continuous in-flow of new potential participants each academic year. We also found that the stakeholders of these gardens conceptualised time akin to both temporary and permanent organisations, and these differing conceptua...
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ABSTRACT Community gardens (CGs) in university settings are faced with challenges associated with a transient and inexperienced population of student gardeners, but they also have the potential to have a lasting impact on the food... more
ABSTRACT Community gardens (CGs) in university settings are faced with challenges associated with a transient and inexperienced population of student gardeners, but they also have the potential to have a lasting impact on the food behaviours of many young people. This paper undertakes a systematic critical review of literature about University Community Gardens for Sustainability (UCGS) in order to suggest directions of future research in the emerging field research about CGs within and outside of universities. The literature shows that UCGS have similar benefits to those identified in urban CG literature; but with greater emphasis on both the educational and environmental sustainability benefits, suggesting an under-used potential of CGs in these areas. We argue that a better understanding of the particular challenges and benefits of UCGS could improve outcomes of CGs in all settings. Therefore we recommend that future should explore: (1) participant transience in CGs, thereby helping sustainability projects with large volunteer bases learn to cope with challenges this poses in order to maximise the garden’s impacts; (2) whether/how participating in CGs can contribute to changes in attitudes/behaviours with regards to sustainability and be used as a tool for Education for Sustainability in and outside of university settings and (3) failed cases of CGs to genuinely understand factors that contribute to success. By addressing these areas we can improve our understanding of how community gardening can contribute to our communities, universities and environment, and can begin to make these potential contributions a reality.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss a novel life cycle approach to education for sustainable development (ESD) where the students become “design thinkers”. Design/methodology/approach A case study on the creation, development... more
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss a novel life cycle approach to education for sustainable development (ESD) where the students become “design thinkers”. Design/methodology/approach A case study on the creation, development and utilisation of educational games by university students is presented. The paper discusses the case study in the context of Kolb’s experiential learning and dynamic matching model, Perry’s stages of intellectual development and Beech and Macintosh’s processual learning model. The data used were from questionnaire feedback from the pupils who played the games and students who designed the games. Further qualitative feedback was collected from local schools involved in playing the games created by the students. Findings Overall, the students responded positively to the assessment and would like to see more of this type of assessment. They enjoyed the creativity involved and the process of developing the games. For the majority of the skill sets mea...
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss a novel life cycle approach to education for sustainable development (ESD) where the students become “design thinkers”. Design/methodology/approach A case study on the creation, development... more
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss a novel life cycle approach to education for sustainable development (ESD) where the students become “design thinkers”. Design/methodology/approach A case study on the creation, development and utilisation of educational games by university students is presented. The paper discusses the case study in the context of Kolb’s experiential learning and dynamic matching model, Perry’s stages of intellectual development and Beech and Macintosh’s processual learning model. The data used were from questionnaire feedback from the pupils who played the games and students who designed the games. Further qualitative feedback was collected from local schools involved in playing the games created by the students. Findings Overall, the students responded positively to the assessment and would like to see more of this type of assessment. They enjoyed the creativity involved and the process of developing the games. For the majority of the skill sets mea...
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Climate change and climate science are a core component of environment-related degree programmes, but there are many programmes, for example business studies, that have clear linkages to climate change and sustainability issues which... more
Climate change and climate science are a core component of environment-related degree programmes, but there are many programmes, for example business studies, that have clear linkages to climate change and sustainability issues which often have no or limited coverage of the subject. Although an in-depth coverage of climate science is not directly applicable to all programmes of study, the subject
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Groundwater represents a key component of the complex hydrological processes of glaciated basins, where models project significant changes in glacial extent and mass balance. Exchange fluxes between groundwater and surface water can... more
Groundwater represents a key component of the complex hydrological processes of glaciated basins, where models project significant changes in glacial extent and mass balance. Exchange fluxes between groundwater and surface water can significantly impact discharge and stream level dynamics, biogeochemical cycling and aquifer and river habitat conditions. Understanding the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of groundwater - surface water exchange fluxes is important for effective water resources management, especially considering the increasing pressures on groundwater and surface water systems resulting from environmental changes. This study investigates the shallow groundwater systems at two proglacial locations in SE Iceland. Impacted by the interaction between volcanic activity and glaciers, Skeiðarársandur is the world's largest active proglacial outwash plain (sandur). Skeiðarársandur contains an extensive unconfined aquifer whose thickness varies between 100-250m. Skaft...
ABSTRACT Groundwater represents a key component of the complex hydrological processes of glaciated basins, where models project significant changes in glacial extent and mass balance. Exchange fluxes between groundwater and surface water... more
ABSTRACT Groundwater represents a key component of the complex hydrological processes of glaciated basins, where models project significant changes in glacial extent and mass balance. Exchange fluxes between groundwater and surface water can significantly impact discharge and stream level dynamics, biogeochemical cycling and aquifer and river habitat conditions. Understanding the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of groundwater - surface water exchange fluxes is important for effective water resources management, especially considering the increasing pressures on groundwater and surface water systems resulting from environmental changes. This study investigates the shallow groundwater systems at two proglacial locations in SE Iceland. Impacted by the interaction between volcanic activity and glaciers, Skeiðarársandur is the world's largest active proglacial outwash plain (sandur). Skeiðarársandur contains an extensive unconfined aquifer whose thickness varies between 100-250m. Skaftafellsjökull, the second site of investigation, is a temperate valley glacier. This site is dominated by moraines and confined channels. Vegetation cover is higher than on the sandur. Groundwater seepage at both sites have potential impacts on eco-hydrological habitat conditions. Automated groundwater monitoring took place between July - mid August 2011. Preliminary results suggest strong coupling between rivers and the aquifer. This was illustrated by an increase in groundwater level following high, episodic increases in the discharge of the river Súla, western Skeiðarársandur. Results from the Skaftafellsjökull margin also suggest high river-aquifer coupling. A strong diurnal signal was detected in a well located between a large groundwater-fed lake and the glacial-fed river Skaftafellsà. Fluctuations in groundwater level, temperature and EC suggest strong response of the aquifer to changes in river level. This was illustrated during a flood event, in which an increase in groundwater level was coupled with a strong reduction in temperature and EC, which suggests an infiltration of river water into the aquifer. Therefore, dynamic exchange patterns between rivers and the aquifer were detected at both sites. In order to increase the understanding of proglacial groundwater-surface water exchange patterns, further monitoring is planned for the summer of 2012. These experimentally-gained results will provide new improved mechanistic process understanding of hydrogeological responses to glacial retreat. Furthermore, these results will be used to parameterise the aquifer-river boundary conditions in a coupled numerical groundwater-surface water model for quantification of the impact of changes in catchment glaciation on river-aquifer exchange dynamics and in-stream habitat conditions.
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Abstract There are increasing pressures on higher education institutions to ensure that graduates are ‘employment-ready’ when they leave university. The successful achievement of this meets with many challenges, including growing pressure... more
Abstract There are increasing pressures on higher education institutions to ensure that graduates are ‘employment-ready’ when they leave university. The successful achievement of this meets with many challenges, including growing pressure on staff resources and ensuring that students appreciate the ‘employability relevance’ of the skills and content covered during their course. Increasing the ‘employability context’ of a course can be efficiently achieved by focussing on assessment design, which also provides additional benefits. This article outlines and evaluates a number of strategies for embedding employability context through assessment design. By adopting similar assessment strategies into existing course material, employment expectations of graduates and employers can be met without the need for major revisions. In addition, as assessment is often the major focus of students’ activities, a focus on assessment design ensures that the ‘real worldness’ of the exercises, content and/or skills of a course is appreciated by all students.
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This book's strengths include its potential to be used as an upto-date reference source that provides detailed but accessible syntheses of current research. Views are clearly expressed and debates and uncertainties lucidly... more
This book's strengths include its potential to be used as an upto-date reference source that provides detailed but accessible syntheses of current research. Views are clearly expressed and debates and uncertainties lucidly articulated. At times the text reads almost as a ...
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Sediment production at a terrestrial section of the ice-sheet margin in West Greenland is dominated by debris released through the basal ice layer. The debris flux through the basal ice at the margin is estimated to be 12–45 m3 m−1 a−1.... more
Sediment production at a terrestrial section of the ice-sheet margin in West Greenland is dominated by debris released through the basal ice layer. The debris flux through the basal ice at the margin is estimated to be 12–45 m3 m−1 a−1. This is three orders of magnitude higher than that previously reported for East Antarctica, an order of magnitude higher than sites reported from in Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, but an order of magnitude lower than values previously reported from tidewater glaciers in Alaska and other high-rate environments such as surging glaciers. At our site, only negligible amounts of debris are released through englacial, supraglacial or subglacial sediment transfer. Glaciofluvial sediment production is highly localized, and long sections of the ice-sheet margin receive no sediment from glaciofluvial sources. These findings differ from those of studies at more temperate glacial settings where glaciofluvial routes are dominant and basal ice contributes only a...
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The ice-sheet margin at Russell Glacier, West Greenland, advanced ∼7 m a−1between 1968 and 1999. As the ice advanced over moraine ridges, small changes in position caused major changes in the routing of proglacial water and sediment.... more
The ice-sheet margin at Russell Glacier, West Greenland, advanced ∼7 m a−1between 1968 and 1999. As the ice advanced over moraine ridges, small changes in position caused major changes in the routing of proglacial water and sediment. These included changes in the distribution of ice-marginal lakes, in the periodic drainage of ice-dammed lakes, in the routing and sediment content of meltwater draining into the proglacial zone, and in the release of sediment from the moraines by erosion and mass movements. Proglacial hydrology and sediment flux appear to be controlled not simply by glacier mass balance, but by evolving ice-marginal geomorphology, which must be accounted for in palaeoenvironmental interpretation of proglacial sediments.
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Page 1. HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES Hydrol. Process. 23, 2212–2224 (2009) Published online 17 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/hyp.7368 The sulphur isotope and hydrochemical characteristics of ...
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Research Interests: Geology, Geomorphology, Hydrogeology, Depression, Groundwater, and 15 moreGroundwater recharge, Landscape Evolution, Discharge, Landscapes, Case Study, Ground Water, Conceptual Model, Hydraulic conductivity, Grain size, Aquifers, Glaciers, Grain size distribution, Fluctuations, Glacier, and ground water recharge
Page 1. CHANGES IN ICE-MARGIN PROCESSES AND SEDIMENT ROUTING DURING ICE-SHEET ADVANCE ACROSS A © The authors 2007 Journal compilation © 2007 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 203 CHANGES IN ICE-MARGIN PROCESSES AND ...
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Purpose This paper aims to explore a single-institution case study of partnership working between students, the University and Students’ Union, through four student-led sustainability projects. The paper analyses the role and value of... more
Purpose This paper aims to explore a single-institution case study of partnership working between students, the University and Students’ Union, through four student-led sustainability projects. The paper analyses the role and value of these partnerships and provides advice for other institutions on effective partnership working between these stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach A single case study of partnership working with multiple embedded units of analysis (four projects) is presented based on reflections of practitioners involved in the projects who have different roles within the University and Students’ Union. Findings The longevity and effectiveness of student-led projects, and disciplinary-breadth of students engaged, can be enhanced by greater collaboration with, and integration into, University and Students’ Union systems. Partnership working between different stakeholders is key to overcoming challenges and the success of student-led projects, helped by key staff “e...
