Sustainability Literacy for the Biosciences

Description

We believe that all students should have access to the wider educational agenda around Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) beyond their subject specialism. The University of Leicester’s new Learning and Teaching strategy (2011-15) aspires to offer all students such access to sustainability literacy. The project in this proposal addresses this issue in the context of bioscience students. The project will develop a module on sustainable development targeted towards providing sustainability literacy for students in Biological sciences and in the College of Science and Engineering. The proposed module builds on a successful option for Interdisciplinary Science students by broadening the scope to include sociological, ethical and economic issues beyond the usual conservation biology option. The special feature of these units is that they are specifically written to address sustainability literacy for the target audience and are not simply specialist modules in sustainability drawn from single subject disciplines. They therefore have the potential to appeal to, or to be developed for a wider audience both in the University of Leicester and across the HE sector.