Education for Sustainable Development

So how could I include ESD?

Sustainability is a major component of many bioscience subjects, for example:

• bio-control of pest species
• genetic modification of crops for disease resistance or salt tolerance
• impact of pollutants on cellular processes
• species adaptation to environmental change

In many cases including relevant aspects of sustainability in teaching may simply involve extending the coverage of a topic area or slightly altering the content. For example in pharmacology considering the breakdown products produced following the metabolism of a drug by the body and how these could be detrimental to the environment. Or considering the loss of plant species in terms of how this could impact on the discovery of new plant-based drugs.

There may be opportunities to introduce cross disciplinary or multidisciplinary modules, for example “Approaches to sustainable development” or “Bioscience, environment and sustainability”

Tutorials and small-group teaching could provide an ideal forum for discussion around sustainability topics and assignments, and bioethics could also be considered in the context of sustainable development, considering both the environmental and ethical implications behind, for example the genetic engineering of crop plants.

ESD resources for use in bioscience teaching:

1. A project at the University of Bradford by Nigel Lindsey and Peter Hopkinson considered how ESD could be integrated into three life science curricula – Pharmacy, Optometry and Biomedical Sciences
2. Using online databases and predictive modelling to develop student understanding of human population growth and global food demand, taken from the Centre for Bioscience Learning and Teaching Guide; Effective use of IT: Guidance on Practice in the Biosciences
3. Distant access to an ecological field experiment – this ongoing project aims to identify the effects of grazing and woodland management on the biodiversity of regenerating and mature broadleaf woodland by using large scale manipulative, experimental treatments. Full access to experimental details and all results,
4. Greener by degrees: exploring sustainability through higher education curricula
5. Developing longitudinal data sets for student use, a presentation by Jennifer Sneddon at the North-West regional Forum on generating data sets on a variety of pollution indicators for student use.
6. Sowing Seeds; how to make your modules a bit more sustainability orientated, from the Centre for Sustainable Futures aims to support the embedding of sustainability into the curriculum.
7. ESD issue of Planet from GEES (Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences Subject Centre) has a number of examples of ESD in Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences curricula, some of which are applicable within the biosciences
8. Hefce link to a number of sustainability and ESD resources

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