TEACHING EXCELLENCE DATABASE

As educators and researchers teaching business-related subjects in higher education, we acknowledge our responsibility that what we teach and how we teach influence our students as citizens, consumers, and future decision-makers. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to assist them in adopting sustainability-sensitive attitudes and practices. In this endeavour, we turn to non-formal educational methods – namely transformative learning - to design spaces where students are encouraged to challenge the basic premises (e.g., unlimited growth through competition) of contemporary economics and managerial ethos. Degrowth Economy is designed to familiarize the problem of sustainability to students within economic higher education. Our basic assumption is that due to its complexity, sustainability education needs to exceed the mere intellectual dimension (e.g., knowledge about how economic production destroys ecosystems). It should also affect students’ attitudes and later have a spill-over effect on society as a whole. The Degrowth Economy course follows the logic of a real-life Citizens’ Jury. Students deliberate on the role of economic growth in times of ecological crises, dealing with ecological and social problems, practice active citizenship, discuss sustainability issues, and take part in participatory group learning processes. In our opinion, one reason why all “developed” and many “undeveloped” socio-economic regimes are on unsustainable trajectories is the shallow level of interventions regarding the respective system. To take a sustainable trajectory, basic (deep) concepts of what and why we produce/consume have to be questioned. Just like other systems, we argue, higher education and more specifically management programs relating to sustainability issues, rarely reach the deep, foundational levels, where currently prevailing values, worldviews, power structures and rules could be challenged and transformed. In higher education, sustainability generally appears as one subject, one fragment of the whole, a rather materialistic-oriented knowledge-mosaic. Inspired by the ‘head, heart and hands’ holistic educational approach, we intentionally designed our course to encourage changes in mindsets. The course runs in cooperation with the National Council for Sustainable Development in Hungary as the initiator of the Citizens’ Jury and the client making use of the final recommendations of students makes the process more realistic and sincere.

Methodology

Degrowth Economy is an elective course open to all Master’s degree programs. Its scientific content is based on ecological economics. Its format is a so-called ‘intensive course’ as the course lasts for three intensive days (4x90 minutes per day). Blended learning, online reading materials and instructions are shared before the course and can be used by students at any time during the course. After the three-day intense work, students prepare a reflection paper contemplating the overall process individually and receive individual feedback from teachers in writing on the online platform. The organization of the course aligns itself as much to the methodology of the Citizens’ Jury as possible. The method of Citizens’ Jury is built on Habermas’ concept of ideal speech situation: fairness, competence and transparency are among the important principles of participatory decision-making processes. The course lasts for three days and experts from the field of degrowth and ecological economics are invited. The whole framing of the course is established as a Citizens' Jury, the communication of the teachers as well (they call the students ‘citizens’ from the beginning). In the Citizens’ Jury, participants do not need to have extensive knowledge on the matter at hand as they receive balanced information from experts regarding the pros and cons of the issue discussed. The transdisciplinarity of the issue also comes across better to students as experts from different fields provide their insights to them. The experts are invited from various sectors: CSO, academia and business. Students discuss the experts’ statements and afterwards deliberate on it with their peers. On the third day of the process, they prepare a recommendation for the decision-maker on the topic. The outcome of the course is a document written by all participants based on their consensus. The course runs in cooperation with the National Council for Sustainable Development in Hungary (NCSDH) as the real decision-maker in sustainability issues in Hungary. The role of teachers in that process are twofold: one of them is a so-called ‘permanent expert’ participating throughout the whole three-day process but behaving like an expert, giving short introductions to topics but intervening only when addressed by the participants. The other teacher is the facilitator behaving as a non-expert and facilitating the discussions and conducting the 3-day meeting according to a pre-published schedule. A university course has a lot to do to create a safe and democratic environment for students to meet the criteria for an ideal speech situation. The number of participants must be low (up to 25 in our case). The power relationship between teacher and student must be equal. Democracy in education can be realized on the basis of this notion that the role of the teacher is a facilitator and the knowledge holders come from different fields: experts, citizens, teachers and students. We believe that the Degrowth economy course illustrates well transformative learning. It is based on its main characteristics: it is built on critical reflection and the role of teachers are facilitators and provocateurs. The methodology of the course is a real-life deliberative process that can induce changes in the frame of reference, new habits of mind, autonomous thinking and validating contested beliefs through discourses. In this course, students are free to express their reservations, feelings and concerns while at the same time need to aim at reaching some form of consensus on the matter. As they deliberate the matter at hand among themselves rather than given ready-made thoughts, paradigms and solutions by lecturers, reflexive processes are more likely to occur. The suggestions they make at the end of the process is fed into a real decision-making process. This way the methodology assists critical reflection both on the topic of degrowth and on mainstream economic paradigms. Through this methodology, it is intended not just to inform students on the concepts of degrowth but also to experience what active citizenship would mean.

Tools, equipment, technology used

The design of the course is based on meaningful interpersonal dialogues. Therefore, we put a lot of emphasis on creating safe and encouraging deliberative spaces where both the facilitation and the methodologies used to encourage the self-expression of even the most introverted personalities. However, Covid-19 transferred also this course to the digital sphere and we quickly adapted to the new circumstances. The course was held in MS Teams where we use the breakout room function for smaller group discussions. Besides the online consultations with experts, we offered students podcasts to listen to or videos to watch in order to be able to convey different opinions and approaches. We were using Kahoot! for a quiz that revolved around framing the problem, i.e., current sustainability issues. When deliberating on the topics at hand, we used Whiteboard as well as Xmind to draw up together mind maps and common understandings. For the evaluation of the class, we were using Google forms. While the online sphere is deemed to provide a less comforting environment for deep deliberations due to the loss of metacommunications, we noticed how the tools we used supported the discourses and no loss of student experience occurred.

Outcomes and outputs, main results

The tangible result of the course is a report written by the students each time. It makes recommendations to the NCSDH on how the Hungarian economy could move in a more sustainable direction. The course runs in cooperation with the National Council for Sustainable Development in Hungary (NCSDH), as the real decision-maker in sustainability issues in Hungary. In this particular course, the Secretary of the Council was invited to ask the students a real-life question at the beginning of the process. The NCSDH is also open to considering the results. Even though they have no obligation to follow the suggestions made by the Citizens’ Jury word by word, the advantages of this cooperation are clear for both sides. For the decision-maker, it provides a clearer picture of how citizens react to an issue and the consensual solutions that may arise. This cooperation makes the course more realistic and provides sincerity to the process. The other tangible result is the reflection paper written by the students, in which they also explain the learning points and theoretical reflections of the process. Through these papers, it is visible what changes have resulted in their thinking. Based on the analysis of the reflections, we see that his learning process is suitable not only for transferring knowledge and changing the frame of reference of participants but is also expected to contribute to real social change. These results reinforce the way that the Degrowth Economy course illustrates transformative learning. This is based on its main characteristics: built on critical reflection and the role of teachers as facilitators and provocateurs. The methodology of the course is a real-life deliberative process that can induce changes in the frame of reference, new habits of mind, autonomous thinking and the validation of contested beliefs through discourses. Students are free to express their reservations, feelings and concerns in this course, and at the same time, they need to aim for some form of consensus on the matter. As they deliberate the matter at hand among themselves rather than being given ready-made thoughts, paradigms and solutions by lecturers, reflexive processes are more likely to occur. The suggestions they make at the end of the process is fed into a real decision-making process. In this way, the methodology assists critical reflection on both the topic of regrowth and on mainstream economic paradigms. This methodology is intended not just to inform students about the concepts of degrowth but also to experience what active citizenship would mean. Transformative learning is not about storing knowledge, but about initiating longer-lasting changes in attitudes, mental representations and the connotations created in meaning-making. At the same time, there can be social learning “side-effects’’ of participatory decision-making techniques. Moreover, it was also important in the design of an ecological economics course to promote active citizenship, which is considered vital in inducing social transformations. The real result of the course is happening at a personal level in every student’s ‘head, heart and hands’ and making changes in their habits of mind, however, these changes may not be clearly visible to the teachers themselves. The results of the institutional student evaluation form show that students are engaged in this course. Some quotes from student feedback: “In my opinion, the output is much more worthwhile. We discussed, talked, evaluated and came to a common point together, so that really everyone came from around the world, growing up and experiencing things around the country.” “The great advantage of the method was that it helped my creativity, and the opinions of others were very inspiring to me.”

Lessons learnt

There were some contradictory experiences for teachers, in addition to the enjoyable process. In contrast with the frontal teaching method the topics that were discussed were not always in line with ecological economics or strong sustainability. As is clear in transformative learning, the freedom of expressing feelings and thoughts through discourse leads to unpredictable outcomes. The teacher does not have a direct effect on learners’ individual changes in their frame of reference. The autonomous thinking of students and the facilitator role of teachers mean that the conclusions of debates can contrast with the intentions of the teachers or experts or can lead to solutions that are off the desired track. It needs to be accepted that discourse alone cannot ensure that our decisions will support the protection of natural values. Despite these shortcomings, deliberative democracy and participatory decision-making are considered important tools in advancing sustainability.

Adaptability and sustainability of the best practice (for other institutions)

The methodology of the course can be applied to basically any complex problem or topic. In this course, the degrowth concept is the focus, however, the course can be organized for other issues as well. It can be applied in the same way by involving other stakeholders. The experts and decision-makers we involve in the course can, of course, come from other fields. Participatory decision-making and education for active citizenship can also work on other topics. The 3-day structure of the course is based on the citizens' jury guides available in the literature, making it easily accessible to other institutions as well. For the instructors, facilitator experience and readiness are required.

Promotion of best practice

The dissemination of the methodology and results of the course has taken place both in the Hungarian professional community and on international scientific platforms in recent years. We organized a special session on the issues of transformative learning and teaching ecological economics at the 2019 annual conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics with the participation of European researchers and academics (content available in supplementary materials). Here, we introduced the methodology to the international scientific community and discussed its advantages and disadvantages along with other similar practices. We analyzed the results of the experience of the course and the methodology of transformative learning in a scientific paper. The article was published in the Hungarian journal (Vezetéstudomány - Budapest Management Review) in English. With this paper, we promoted the methodology and we also wanted to share the results with the Hungarian HEI community. In the course we work closely with the lecturers of the University of Szeged, they regularly participate as experts. We also took part in a Hungarian-language podcast discussion (Zöld egyenlőség) about transformative learning and sustainability education, with which we can reach a wider audience. In this podcast, we talked about this course, among other things.

Scope and impact

• Course/department level
• Faculty level
• Institutional level
• Cross-institutional level
• National level
• EU/EHEA/International level

Through publication and dissemination activities, we also support international and national collaborations. By inviting stakeholders and collaborating with NCSDH, the impact of the course goes beyond university circles. However, the biggest impact is considered to be the change in student behavior and its side-effects.

6.1 Digitalization

• Digital skills development and assessment both general and profession-related, embedded in course design, in teaching and assessment
• Data security and responsible digital presence embedded in learning outcomes

Reasoning: The digitalisation of the course as a response to the Covid-19 situation led to no loss in student experience due to the innovative combination of available tools for shared online work (Teams, Xmind, Whiteboard, Kahoot!, Google form, podcast channels). The topics of the course include the role of technology sustainability transition and hence students discuss with invited experts what the opportunities and threats digitalisation mean for the environment and society.

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6.2 Internationalization

• Courses offered to international multicultural students both online and offline

Reasoning: The course is offered to both Hungarian and international students and is available both in English and in Hungarian online and offline. There is cooperation with the Degrowth Support Group (the international Degrowth network) and the European Society for Ecological Economics. Through this cooperation, international guests can appear in the course and wide-ranging international research results are being discussed in podcasts run by one of the tutors both in Hungarian ) and in English.

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6.3 Inclusion and diversity, universal design

• Senzitivizing students to consider special needs when practicing their profession
• Course includes hints on how the services/products of the profession could be universally designed/inclusive

Reasoning: One of the aims of the course is to sensitize students towards social justice and equality. The invited experts symbolize diversity, with themes focused on inclusion. Overall, public participation is also about inclusion, which is the foundation of the course. An important message for this course is how to be inclusive as a business decision-maker. The class creates a diverse student community where different opinions are reflected.

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6.4 Sustainability

• Sustainability goals are addressed in the course(s)
• Teaching material contains profession related sustainability aspects
• Environmental attitude, skill development and assessment either general or profession-related
• Sustainability aspects are considered in all phases of the learning practice - "hidden curriculum"

Reasoning: Our course is designed to affect how students frame and problematise sustainability issues and serve as a space for change. Normally courses in economic higher education relating to sustainability issues rarely reach the deep, foundational levels, where currently prevailing values and worldviews could be challenged and transformed. We intentionally design our course to change sustainability-related mindsets and therefore sustainability aspects are considered all along with the learning practice.

3.3 Public contact datas

Name	Email address	Website
Gabriella Kiss	gabriella.kiss@uni-corvinus.hu