This is a draft of the presentation that will be given at the HEA Social Sciences annual conference - Teaching forward: the future of the Social Sciences. For further details of the conference: http://bit.ly/1cRDx0p Bookings open until 14 May 2014 http://bit.ly/1hzCMLR or external.events@heacademy.ac.uk ABSTRACT This paper explores the experience of integrating sustainability and enterprise as apparently conflicting value systems in social sciences as tools to develop individual capacity for future thinking: creating pathways to transformation, tools for individual empowerment. It concludes that whist the domains and languages of articulation differ, the skills and attributes they seek to develop show very similar attributes, and that whilst different discourses will attract students / disciplines to engage with future thinking, the skills being developed and techniques used to explore those skills are show considerable similarities. This provides opportunities for cross fertilisation between these discourses, enabling students to move beyond seeking enterprise and sustainability as conflicting domains, but rather as different ways of articulating future thinking / change. The session will be of interest to those engaged with developing future thinking, and in particular those interested in the discourses of sustainability and enterprise as ways into future thinking.

1. Pathways to transformation:
enterprise and sustainability tools for
future thinking
1
09 May 2014
Chris Willmore, Academic Director of Undergraduate Studies
Esd-team@bristol.ac.uk, Google: ESD at Bristol

2. Results of HEA-funded workshop
20 Universities, 1 day
• Enterprise Education
• Sustainability Education
• Opportunities for
collaboration
• Student Voices
Themes:
1) Flexible Pedagogies
2) Skills & Attributes
3) Language
4) Joint Institutional
Approaches: partnership
building
5) Distinctions
6) Ethics
All presentations slides, videos of presentations, event report and other resources:
google ESD+at+Bristol or tinyurl.com/SUSTPRISE

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09 May 2014
Enterprise Education
Caricatures

4. • QAA draft guidance on ESD 2014
• QAA guidance on enterprise and
entrepreneurship education 2012
• Domains of knowledge or skills ?
4
09 May 2014Parallels?

5. • Enterprise is defined as ‘the application of creative ideas and
innovations to practical situations.’
• ‘It combines creativity, ideas development and problem solving
with expression, communication and practical action. This
definition is distinct from the generic use of the word in reference
to a project or business venture.’
• Enterprise Education ‘aims to produce graduates with the
mindset and skills to come up with original ideas in response to
identified needs and shortfalls, and the ability to act on them.’
QAA guide to enterprise and entrepreneurship 2012
5
09 May 2014Enterprise Education

6. • Enterprise education is defined as the process of
equipping students (or graduates) with an enhanced
• … capacity to generate ideas and the skills to make
them happen….
• Entrepreneurship education equips students with
the additional knowledge, attributes and capabilities
required to
• … apply these abilities in the context of setting up a
new venture or business…
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7. Language
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09 May 2014

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9. 9
09 May 2014
Enterprise
knowledge
+
language
Sustainability
knowledge
+
language
Skills
+
New
pedagogies
+
Language
translation

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09 May 2014
• Learner empowerment students as co
creators of learning
• Future-facing education refocussing
learning towards future thinking
• Decolonising education
• Transformative capabilities moving beyond
knowledge an understanding towards
agency and competence, using engaged,
whole person pedagogies
• Crossing boundaries integrative and
systemic approach, interdisciplinary and
collaborative learning
• Social learning – harnessing the
emancipatory power of spaces outside the
formal curriculum
Pedagogies

11. • Future thinking
• Adaptive capacity
• evidence based thinking
• Ability to handle risk, uncertainty and move beyond
predictable
• Holistic /integrative thinking
• Personal ethical code
• Vision, motivation and resourcefulness
11
09 May 2014Attributes for the future

12. Enterprise or Sustainability Education?
• Adaptive capacity
• Taking the initiative
• Intuitive decision-making
• Making things happen
• Networking
• Innovating
• Future thinking
• Interdisciplinary skills
• Personal ethical code
• Identifying opportunities
• Creative problem-solving
• Strategic thinking
• Personal effectiveness
• Holistic thinking
• Resource management
• Living with uncertainty
• Handling risk

13. • Resilient
• Optimistic
• Tenacious
• Committed
• Passionate
• Patient
• Emotionally intelligent
• Assertive
• Persuasive
• Empathetic
• Authentic
• Ethical
• Self-Aware
• Competent
• Curious
13
09 May 2014Change Agent Skills
ACPA , Towards a Sustainable Future ( 2008)

14. trying to develop a new kind of student
Bristol Student Green Fund
• Future narratives
• Future thinking
• Interdisciplinary engagement
• Critical thinking
• Social / collaborative thinkers
• Making a difference
• Creative solutions
• Innovation
• empowerment, efficacy, self belief
• experiential learning
• Partnership
• Interdisciplinarity
• Empathy
• Self efficacy
• Adaptive capacity
 evidence based thinking
 Ability to handle risk, uncertainty and
move beyond predictable
• Holistic /integrative thinking
• Personal ethical code
• Vision, motivation and resourcefulness
Skills common ground
Enablers not prescribers: personal
reconciliations

15. Encouraging existing operations to ‘ go green’
Innovation to meet green consumer demands
Social entrepreneurs
Sustainability entrepreneurs/eco-preneurs
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09 May 2014
Who are sustainability entrepreneurs?
Evolutionary models
Parrish (2008)

16. • Rejection of opportunistic business v altruistic charity
models
• Model of co production of multiple benefits
• Financial, social, economic and environmental benefits not
juxtaposed: win win is possible
• Holistic thinking as key skill
• Integrative thinking - include rather than excluding data
Parrish (2008)
16
09 May 2014Characteristics of
sustainability entrepreneurs/
ecopreneurs

17. 17
09 May 2014Languages

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09 May 2014

19. Language
Enterprise and sustainability education
use different language:
• Loaded words
• Different vocabularies
• Shared vocabularies
• Language as barrier AND opportunity
Both are THEMATIC – trying to break
through disciplinary silo barriers.
The language means they can get
through different doors….
Sustainability
Corporate
Social
Responsibility
Ethics
Enterprise or
Entrepreneur

20. Different doors in
Different journeys
Different outcomes
Map your own journey
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21. Joint Institutional Approaches: partnership building
Developing on twin tracks within the same institution?
Opportunities to:
• cross skill
• share techniques and approaches
• ensure that if one approach secures an entry into a
discipline the breadth of future thinking themes is explored
Can enterprise educators get through doors (staff and student)
sustainability educators can’t?

22. 22
09 May 2014Holistic Experience
Skills for
Lived lives

23.  Using student creativity
 Harnessing the natural enterprise of students
 Retaining their holistic view
 Reflective action to help identification of THEIR view
• Student action often instinctively combines sustainability and enterprise
? Are OUR silos the problem
? Can we “Unteach” ourselves
? Do we give space to personal reflection in learning
? How do we value radical creativity?
Challenges:
• Framing the problem
• Catching the vision
• Figuring out a strategy
Gatekeepers?

24. • Work together
• Create joint opportunities
• Share resources
• Lead by example
• Celebrate good practice
• Explain win:win enterprise
• Show by example holistic thinking is possible
• Create sustainability that will work
• Trust students rather than creating silos
• ….. Help students see they CAN create the
world they want
Challenge:
We arrive
creative – are we
more or less
creative by the
end of year 1?
Year 2 social science student
How can we create the future?