Sustainable Development Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course invites students to work with problems of sustainable development and how it is understood in order to shape governance structures and policy initiatives. The course explores ‘mainstream’ notions of sustainable development together with some of the key strategies that have been devised to promote sustainability. Students are encouraged to critically assess the core challenges and opportunities that surround the promotion of sustainable policies. The course also tries to push beyond the impasse around the sustainable agenda, partly complicated by resistance and, partly, by the variety of governance level and sectoral specific sustainability frameworks in existence within different contexts. Students will be given the opportunity to address practical issues of sustainability by modelling and testing the relative power of data analytical tools, such as social value accounting; preference rank sustainable actions and in this way, acquire a set of applied quantitative and qualitative skills which will directly correlate to the growing labour markets in sustainable development.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies.

The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures and/or seminars, workshops

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group

OR

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150 hours

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessments are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE.

Summative Assessments

The assessments will require students to apply the concepts and theories of sustainable development to the analysis of real-world policy initiatives and institutional structures and dynamics at domestic, regional and global levels and through the deployment of tools for modelling, forecasting, testing, and evaluating outcomes:

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Adams, W.M. (2009) Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in a Developing World. Third Edition. Routledge, Oxon.
• Sachs, J.D. (2015) The Age of Sustainable Development. Columbia University Press, New York
• Hughes, J.D. (2009) An Environmental History of the World: Humankind’s Changing Role in the Community of Life. Second Edition. Oxon, UK and New York, Routledge.

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Types of sustainable development
• Mainstream and critical theories of sustainable development
• Smart action
• Case studies and data analysis in environmental sustainability