On Interconnectness and Circularity
When it comes to sustainable practices, ideas on mindshifts in education could also be of great use for local business and industry. A Green Edge conversation with the London Interdisciplinary School.
Ever since its inception in 2017, we have followed closely the building of the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS). Having worked briefly with LIS’s Director of Teaching & Learning, Professor Carl Gombrich, during the latter part of his directorship of UCL’s Arts and Sciences programme, we found much common ground with Carl’s thinking on polymathy, interdisciplinarity and transformational learning for individuals and society in general. We were intrigued to see how he would shape LIS’s curriculum on its ambitious path to becoming the first institution since the 1960s to start from scratch with full UK degree awarding powers.
LIS is now in its first full teaching year, with the first cohort of 65 students going through its new Bachelor of Arts and Science (BASc) programme in Interdisciplinary Problems and Methods. With a trendy new campus near Brick Lane, we find ourselves wishing this kind of thing had been around when we went to Uni (though of course, in those days we called it ‘University’).
The Green Edge took the opportunity recently to talk with two of LIS’s leaders, Jasper Joyce (director of new products) and Dr Ash Brockwell (problem-based learning lead). We were keen to get an update on LIS in general and, more specifically, to hear about Ash’s BASc module titled ‘How can we cultivate the mindshifts that are needed to tackle planetary emergencies’.
About LIS
LIS was founded on the belief that the world’s problems are complex and people who can truly tackle them head-on need competencies that span beyond the siloed nature of our current higher education system. “All of our programmes have a baked-in emphasis on the future of work and the future of the economy, so they’re all trying to deliver knowledge, skills and attributes that will help our students to be successful in the contemporary and future work environment”, says Jasper. Ash goes on to describe LIS’s two working principles, which are firstly, to think in terms of networks and relationships, and secondly, to seek multiple perspectives. He says, “one thing that I'd really love to see all our students leaving LIS with is a sense of belonging to a network. Everything we do in the problems modules is, however subtly, working towards that goal, as well as skilling them up as individuals”.
Jasper describes LIS’s three main areas of delivery: the flagship BASc programme; a new masters’ MASc programme which is planned to open in autumn 2022 and will focus on similar themes as the undergraduate programme but for a more senior audience; and a range of professional development programmes, delivered as open online courses as well as in custom formats. Clients for the custom programmes include organisations like the NHS Leadership Academy. While the priorities remain very much the BASc and MASc, Jasper says, “we learn a great deal from [the professional development] work because we get more evidence of how our thinking and ideas are being applied in practice”.
Cultivating mindshifts to tackle planetary emergencies
Problem-based learning (PBL) is at the heart of the LIS approach. Ash explains how the sustainability mindshift problem module works. Within the headline problem statement, groups of students work on specific problems for a group of client organisations. While the problems are real - and the solutions are designed, through a series of checkpoints, to be implementable - each problem is examined through two lenses: interconnectedness and the circular economy. We ask how this works for the clients. Ash again: ‘Most of the clients seem quite happy. [The checkpoints provide] an opportunity for each client to give some sort of substantive feedback and say, yes, this bit I really like, this bit I can see is not going to work because of constraints X and Y which you haven't taken into account. And then the students will go away and hopefully incorporate that feedback and modify their ideas a bit and come up with a report which is meaningful to the client and is actionable”.
The clients are drawn from the LIS Network: many are sustainability-engaged businesses like Sipsmith and Warp Snacks, some are charities, some are international networks like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. “The companies that we recommend are more committed to the kind of B Corp sustainability agenda than to the circular economy as such, so the students are making the bridge with the - I don't want to say academic, but the more conceptual stuff on the circular economy itself”, says Ash.
Going deeper, we ask about why the headline problem is framed around examining sustainability mindshifts rather than simply teaching green skills. We already know that a big part of the LIS ethos is to frame the problem correctly - as Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”.
Ash quotes Einstein right back: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.
He continues: “The traditional sort of UN discourse around education for sustainable development, as they still persist in calling it with all its problematic [economic] baggage around the word ‘development’, brings with it this implication of individual acquisition and accumulation. The language they use to talk about education for sustainable development is so entangled with the assumptions of capitalism that it almost doesn't make sense to separate it.
“UNESCO guidelines expand the discourse to cross-cutting key competencies. But the guidelines focus on individual acquisition of competencies. You accumulate them and you hoard them and you sort of sit on them like a dragon sits on its gold, and then it's supposed to magically change the world somehow”.
For Ash, the fundamental shift in the focus of formal education at all levels is from individual acquisition of competencies to collective mobilisations of capacities. Drawing on his own research and consultancy work, and incorporating the work of thinkers like Tyson Yunkaporta, Ash proposes five key mindshifts: from separation to interconnectedness; from monoculture to diversity; from rigid to flexible; from linear to circular; and from individual to collective. The two mindshifts he focuses on in the problems module are interconnectedness and circular economy. The first emphasises a shift for local ecosystems to be preserved and/or restored by interconnected multi-level, multi-sector stakeholder networks, with the global ecosystem supported by a network of networks. The second replaces ‘take-make-waste’ with sector-level circular economies that return, reuse, recycle, upcycle, repair and repurpose materials, underpinned by transitions to renewable energy.
He concludes: “I'm not saying that we shouldn't talk about competencies at all. What I'm saying is, don't only talk about competencies and don't exclusively focus on the individual level”.
Networking the Circle
It’s easy to envisage how the process of upskilling an engineer or technician for the green economy might begin with the ‘hard’ competencies required to design, make and fit solar PV and heat pumps, and then add an understanding of climate science to explain the ‘why’ to potential customers. The ‘soft’ skills like collaboration and negotiation have their place here too. Skill sets like these can all become part of the playbook for a single person.
But what about the harder problems, like how to roll out circular economy practices to all the SME’s in a city region? Here, in Green Edge’s opinion, is where a mindshift to interconnectedness along the lines described by Ash makes much sense. At small or even micro levels of business, the sheer need to focus on the job at hand may mask unmobilised interests and capacities. The person responsible for fulfilment and shipping, for instance, may have good ideas about reducing packaging that is not only useful within their own company, but to other companies as well.
The key constraint, of course, is bandwidth, both at personal and organisational levels. But within each diligently brought-together local network, the inherent interdisciplinarity of its members can be leveraged. Some will bring knowledge. Some will bring enthusiasm, interest and energy. Some will bring resources like spaces to meet, tools to use and systems to deploy. Or - as we described in our recent article on Portsmouth International Port - combinations of all three.
And what might these networks be focused on? A consideration of the local relevance of UKRI CE-HUB’s Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres might be a good place to start.
Ash’s problem module at LIS is focusing on shifting mindsets in education, adding a skill-sharing orientation to the traditional fixation on building individual competencies. In Green Edge’s opinion the opportunities - indeed the sustainability imperatives - for mobilising pooled capacities in business and industry at both intra- and inter-company levels are even greater. And the ability to mobilise capabilities and build networks for the good of the planet is a green skill in itself.
Our thanks to Jasper Joyce and Dr Ash Brockwell for their time in talking to us for this Green Edge article. Opinions given in the final section are entirely The Green Edge’s and may not coincide with Jasper and Ash’s own opinions.
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