'Evidence Centres' and a UK Chief Social Scientist

As this article from  Penny Sarchet describes the UK Cabinet Office is about to create six new 'What Works Centres' to assess whether ideas for new policies can work.  I do not know whether to be excited or appalled!  My inclination based on this article (and thus limited background appreciation) is the latter.  Why?  Well for a start these centres seem to be based on a particular paradigm of  what works and how what works might be assessed. And underpinning this a particular view of policy development and deployment suggests itself. I hope I am wrong. I also hope that one centre has systems thinking in practice capability and methodological skills.

Whilst I am all for strengthening the role that social science research plays it is a very broad church with myriad epistemological pitfalls - I wonder how the post will be described and the person chosen? And how will they practice in rleation to social science and other sciences? Might there be an opportunity to cultivate a reflexive, community of practice of chief scientists?

"Cabinet Office plans ‘evidence’ centres
 As government prepares to announce chief social scientist

 by Penny Sarchet

13 Feb 13
The Cabinet Office is finalising plans to establish a series of research centres that will assess whether ideas for new policies can work.

Around six institutes are being planned, which the government is calling What Works centres. The centres’ assessments will be used to inform decision-making in government departments. More details are expected by the end of February.

Research Fortnight has learned that the centres are to be modelled on the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. NICE assesses evidence on the effectiveness of medical treatments and provides guidance to the National Health Service on whether these treatments should be purchased.

The Cabinet Office, which also houses the government’s Behavioural Insights team, is known to favour a NICE-type approach in other areas of government policy. 

In 2011, the Cabinet Office announced in a white paper that the government would consult on how to establish credible accreditation bodies that would mirror the work of NICE in other areas of public services. It said that public services require “robust accreditation of what works”.

Leading social scientists have welcomed the news. David Hand, professor of statistics at Imperial College London, says: “It’s about time we put more effort into evidence-based social policy.”
Keiron Flanagan, lecturer in science and technology policy at the University of Manchester, adds that NICE-like bodies could be important for pointing out what he calls “dodgy” claims made by ministers about policies that are not supported by evidence. But the centres, which will not be directly testing new policies, would need good evidence to work with. “In many policy areas, there is not good evidence available,” he says.

Similarly, Mariana Mazzucato, professor at the University of Sussex’s Science and Technology Policy Unit SPRU, warns that external advice cannot substitute for a lack of expertise within government, something that she says the US is better at. “The Department of Energy is run by a Nobel [laureate],” she says. “Just as important as thinking about external ‘advice’ is the need to reinvigorate the status of government, so that it attracts the brightest young minds, and hence sector-specific expertise and talent.” 

“Instead, what we have been witnessing in the UK is the downgrading of what government is seen to be able to do, and its budget to do it,” she adds.

Hand, in contrast, says: “Having external and independent opinions is very important—not only to ensure that the right things are done, untarnished by ideology, but also so that people can see that the right things are being done.”

In a related development, a long-awaited decision on the appointment of a government chief social scientist is thought to be imminent. The naming of such an adviser is expected to be among the first announcements that Mark Walport will make after becoming government chief scientific adviser in April.

“This is something that’s been talked about since [former Home Office chief scientific adviser] Paul Wiles retired,” comments Hand. “Clearly it’s a good idea. It seems odd to me that there isn’t one, [as] you could describe a lot of our economic and social problems as problems of social science. We live in a society, we function in an economy—those are all social science areas. I’m surprised, to be honest, that there isn’t more government emphasis on the social sciences and the solutions provided by the social sciences,” he says.

Flanagan, however, says he has conflicting feelings about the possibility of a chief social scientist. “I would be reluctant to see social science separated out from natural and physical science, and I imagine that a chief social scientist would not have the clout of the chief scientific adviser. However, I don’t believe for a moment that the UK science lobby, who see the CSA not just as an adviser but as a champion for science in government, would ever accept a social scientist as government CSA.” "

Mooching around MOOCs

What are we to make of the phenomenon of MOOCs?   I doubt anyone involved in Higher Education does not have a view.  There are the enthusiasts and the sceptics as a plethora of recent articles reveal e.g. The Crisis in Higher Education, by Nicholas Carr.  An example of the sceptic perspective is:

"The promoters of MOOCs have a “fairly naïve perception of what the analy­sis of large data sets allows,” says Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore College. He contends that distance education has historically fallen short of expectations not for technical reasons but, rather, because of “deep philosophical problems” with the model. He grants that online education may provide efficient training in computer programming and other fields characterized by well-established procedures that can be codified in software. But he argues that the essence of a college education lies in the subtle interplay between students and teachers that cannot be simulated by machines, no matter how sophisticated the programming."

It certainly seems true that most of the courses that have been presented to date do not involve what educators call epistemic learning.  In many ways the contestation is between learning and instruction, a point taken up rather elegantly by Nicholas Negroponte.

What neither article does is refer to the 40+ year history of The Open University (UK) in developing very effective pedagogic models to underpin large scale supported open learning courses.  Having now announced that it will take a leading role in a UK consortium (called FutureLearn Ltd) to deliver MOOCs I hope the experience of the OU will take the debate into new territory that has as its essence a pedagogy of personal and social transformation. After all that is what the world needs...and at scale. Or are we seeing a playing-out of the corporatisation of universities and with it the commodification of instruction (as I would not care to call it learning)? 

Thus far, as Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic notes:

'Research universities, which have little previous experience of online teaching, dominate the MOOCs offerings and this is evident in the outdated behaviourist pedagogy most in evidence. Most MOOCs are little more than OER with test material added.'

The illusion of certainty

Another good article by Ross Gittins appeared in The Age last week. In relation to the Australian Reserve Bank and its critics Gittins, in an article entitled ' Reserve Bank bursts bubble of certainty', observes:

"The other reason the Reserve has yet to get things badly wrong is that no one understands better than it how fallible its forecasts are - all forecasts, for that matter. And it's never afraid to admit its fallibility to the world."

He goes on to say:

"But if economic forecasts are so universally inaccurate, how come we hear so little about confidence intervals? It's partly because economists don't like advertising the considerable limitations of their art. They don't even like reminding themselves of their own fallibility."

Lumpers and splitters

It is generally widely known that botanists fall into one of two camps - lumpers or splitters.  In a sense these are boundary judgments that systemists appreciate.  The lumpers see traits in common that warrant a wider boundary; splitters see differences that to them warrant demarcation and distinction.  Unfortunatly the actions of botanists leaves the likes of tourists or journalists or novelists out of sympathy with their actions for their's is an all or none systematic (not systemic) choice.  Take the acacia for example - species that are symbolically and culturally significant in  much of Africa and Australia. No longer can I legitimately (in botanical terms) refer to the thorny acacia of Africa (as I did in my last post). Instead by rights I should have referred to the spiny vachellia, or perhaps senegalia!

According to Wikipedia:

"The genus Acacia previously contained roughly 1300 species, about 960 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Europe, Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas. However, in 2005 the genus was divided into five separate genera under the tribe "Acacieae." The genus Acacia was retained for the majority of the Australian species and a few in tropical Asia, Madagascar and Pacific Islands. Most of the species outside Australia, and a small number of Australian species, were reclassified into Vachellia and Senegalia. The two final genera, Acaciella and Mariosousa, each contain about a dozen species from the Americas."

Kenya Post Card 2

On my last night in Nairobi I went with friends to see a local movie 'Nairobi Half Life' which was excellent.  The movie itself, as well as the venue, seemed to me to hold all the contrasts that characterise Kenya today - elegance, poverty, violence, solidarity.

On our last morning at Lake Nakuru National Park we were alerted to a predator by the impala; scanning the vicinity I spotted a leopard jumping over a fallen tree. Later it wondered across the road in front of us in search of an impala kid.  In all we saw about 18 different species of mammal and countless birds. The lake is very full as my photos below show; not many of the flamingo for which the park is famous were present. My colleagues and I, though not experts, could not help but feel that the biology of the park was out of kilter.  We surmised that the absence of elephant was having negative effects on thorny acacia recruitment and, instead, favouring excess weedy species invasion as undergrowth.  This may have been exacerbated by a very heavy stocking rate of Cape Buffalo. 

The park is also touted in most of the promotional literature as the site of some of the main Euphorbia forests in Kenya.  What these same web-sites do not mention is that almost none of this unique forest remains. I am still to find an explanation for the forest's disappearance.  Perhaps over grazing by black rhino, one of my Sth African colleagues suggested? 

The research that took me to Kenya concerned how social and biophysical scientists were working together to address issues of food security and poverty alleviation. Historically these two groups of researchers have not always worked well together.  I now know much more about African Swine Fever - one of the projects of concern. I left impressed with the efforts being made.

2013 ASC Conference in UK

The ASC conference this year will be in Bolton UK from 28 July to 3 or 4 August, including pre and post conferences. Bolton is where Mass Observation originated. 

Theme:   Acting—Learning—Understanding
Dates:  Main conference 30 July to 2 August; pre conference 28 and 29
July; post conference 3 and 4 August.
Location: Institute of Educational Cybernetics, Bolton University, Lancashire, UK.

Bolton is an old industrial town on the northern fringe of Manchester, UK, home of the Industrial Revolution and also of early British computing. It is near some of the most beautiful scenery and coast in the UK including the North Welsh coast and Anglesea Island, the Pennine mountains and the Lake District. The Scottish border is about an hour or so’s drive. It is wonderfully located for a holiday. Manchester is the real revival city in the UK and its international airport has good international connections including with the US. London is a 2 hour 10 minute train journey away.

Kenya Post Card 1

I have been in Nairobi now for  almost a week, secluded in the very comfortable ILRI campus for most of that time. This is my first visit to Kenya.   In many ways the experience, at least environmentally, is not new - it is has all the familiar and enjoyable elements of the highland tropics. Much of the vegetation is very familiar with kikuyu grass and Australian tree species widespread.  Of course socially and politically it is far more complex and, thus far, beyond experience - see this TED talk for example.  That said, electioneering has begun in earnest for the Presidential and associated elections due in March. This is a significant moment for Kenya as a new constitution is being enacted with a new regional level of elected governance.

I have been impressed by the interest Kenyan's take in their politics - a contrast I feel to much of the apathy exhibited in say Australia or the UK.  Although highly disillusioned with their politicians they do not seem to have switched off. In contrast my first impressions, from an admittedly limited number of conversations, is that many are actively interested and engaged with developed views of how to make things better.

Our visit to Nairobi National Park early last Sunday was rewarding - we saw 17 species of mammal and many different birds including ostrich, two types of bustard, cranes etc. It was a rather surreal experience viewing these animals in an 'old natural habitat' with the burgeoning Nairobi skyline in the background - an example of the new 'natural'!

News from Institute for 21st Century Agoras.

Ken Bausch has made contact to advise that their  'Global Agoras' website was down for a few days while they repaired it from a Russian hacker attack; it is now operational again he said - but unforunately my attempts to create links have failed, so I can only assume the website is still down.   Included in Ken's email was reference to:

Good New Videos

'Jeff Diedrich has produced the best short explanation of our dialogue process ever'  claims Ken. 

I note that the process used is similar to what might be used as part of a social learning approach to governance - something our research has focussed on for over a decade or more.  It is a very uplifting clip but also raises some questions such as (i) how did participants come to participate?; (ii) what was done with the outlcomes/learning that happened?  (iii) was the process, or could the process, be situated in a conducive, systemic governance process and set of institutions?  (iv) Did the process design have the wrong starting point? Does it assume a desire for co-existance, or the presence of governance processes and institutions that make a trajectory towards coexistance possible?

  

Ken goes on:

Yiannis Laouris has created two videos around an international youth colaboratory in Cypress. In the first, Yianniis explains the power of the colaboratories with youth participation.  In the second, young people describe the experience. 

  

IFSA Wrap-up - Great cartoons

Post-symposia greetings from the IFSA 2012 Local Organizing Committee

"Dear collegaues.
The local organizing committee wish to thank you all for a very rewarding and satisfying symposia. It was a great joy and inspiration for us to be with you during the four days of the symposia in Aarhus. We hope that you all got back home without any trouble. Even though that we are very enthusiastic about how IFSA 2012 went along, there might be things that could have improved your experience at the conference - there might also be things which actually worked well and was worth considering on another occastion. If you have any comments on our organization of the symposia, we would very much appreciate your perspective on what we should learn from the symposia. Please send us an email at ifsa2012@agrsci.dk with your comments.

At the closing session, the Danish cartoonist Niels Roland presented his drawings inspired by the issues discussed at IFSA 2012. You can now see Rolands closing session drawings on Youtube. We hope that you once again will enjoy Roland's satirical exploration of prominent issues discussed within the IFSA community. We are also working on supplying you with images from the symposia. We have of course been taking a lot of pictures, which will be uploaded shortly, but we will very much appreciate if you would share some of your own photos from the symposia - do not hesitate to send us copies of photos which you think should be shared among the other participants."

Water issues and food production systems

Recently in The Age  there was this stark warning:

' LEADING water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages'

The claims are from a report by Malin Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute.  Meawhile in the US, water issues are confronting many in light of the major drought. Work at the New England Complex Systems Institute claims that:

'Recent droughts in the midwestern United States threaten to cause global catastrophe driven by a speculator amplified food price bubble.'

For most Australian's the responses canvassed in the New York Times article are not new and much has been learnt in Australia about how to respond.  However, memories tend to be short; governments backtrack in the mistaken belief that it is possible to return to a 'past normality'.  Despite over 10 years of intense drought there is, in our Australian practices and institutional arrangements, still much room for improvement both now and into the future. In California half of summer domestic water use if for lawns water on lawns; Californians cannot imagine doing without them.  In Santa Fe lawns are prohibited.  In preparing for the future places like Melbourne would be better conceptualised as a semi-arid city and green, temperate grass lawns abandoned as well.

This issue, like any systemic issue has many facets.  I for one can no longer condone ruminant animal production practices (i.e., mainly cattle) that create biological inefficiencies of the sort associated with feeding concentrates and other human edible food to animals.  In San Francisco recently it was good to see many restaurants advertising on their menus that animal products were grass fed (which is what ruminants evolved to do - convert grass).   Australia should abandon all feedlot operations that have come to be developed around the spurious notion that rumen biological efficieny is the driving factor in production system development. As The Age article notes:
 
'Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in a climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One-third of the world's arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals.'  

Strict vegetarianism is probably not for everyone; an intermediate step could involve all, or some, of the following:

1. reduce animal production that is dependent either directly or indirectly on irrigated production systems;
2. reduce embodied-in-global-trade water exports in terms of crops used to feed animals - as is  typical of much of European agriculture - this could return more water to enviromental flows and protect areas in Brasil and Argentina from over exploitation and biodiversity loss;

Writing a Viewpoint in the latest edition of the Farmers Club Journal, Liz Earle, a co-founder of Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare, a comapny with over 500 staff and a multi-million pound turnover in over 100 countries says:

'I believe the best options for our health as well as our planet are red meats and dairy products from mainly grass and forage-led ruminat animals such as cows and sheep'.

Andrew Campbell in a series of articles points to the potential for systemic failure arising from Australia not continuing to invest in irrigation research for food production. I support fully his claims that:

'... the proposal that we simply shift our irrigated agriculture north “to where the water is” does not stand up to even a cursory analysis. Similarly, the suggestion we can cost-effectively pipe or pump or ship the water south “to where the people are” ignores basic physics and economics.'

However, I was not sure that he made the point strongly enough that water must be used for maximum biological as well as social efficiency - so no more irrigated dairy pastures or forage for feedlots and more opportunistic annual cropping please.

Not ethically defensible

Australia's policy position in relation to Sri Lanka has not been tenable for many years; in public policy terms it is a classic systemic failure.  More recently it has become a farce.   I am in agreement with Bruce Haigh: it's just not cricket playing with oppressive Sri Lanka writing in the most recent edition of Crikey when he says:

"Who would have thought that in the space of 17 years, Australia could have gone from being a leading champion in the worldwide fight to end the racial discrimination of apartheid to siding with the corrupt and venal government of Sri Lanka in the genocide of Tamils.

Australia has former prime minister John Howard to thank, with the raw racism and political expediency embodied in "we will decide who comes here", the policy of turning back the boats, mandatory detention and temporary protection visas -- all directed against asylum seekers. Unfortunately Labor prime ministers Rudd and Gillard embraced at first the essence, and now the substance of his policies."

The mainstream media and public in general are also lacking, seemingly, in awareness and discernment and thus responsible action.  Australia, and the rest of the world for that matter, should not be engaged in sporting ties of any sort with Sri Lanka; all future cricket matches should be cancelled until such time as responsible and ethical government returns.  

This article by Lyse Doucet Chief International Correspondent, BBC News says  it all:

"Hundreds of thousands of Tamils ended up trapped in a tiny strip of land.  The United Nations failed in its mandate to protect civilians in the last months of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, a leaked draft of a highly critical internal UN report says.

"Events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN to adequately respond to early warnings... during the final stages of conflict," it concludes.

The government and separatist Tamil rebels are accused of war crimes in the conflict, which ended in May 2009.

The war killed at least 100,000 people.

There are still no confirmed figures for civilian deaths in the last months of battle. A UN investigation said it was possible up to 40,000 people were killed in the final five months alone. Others suggest the number of deaths could be even higher. 

Former senior UN official Charles Petrie, who headed the internal review panel, told the BBC the "penultimate" draft the BBC has seen "very much reflects the findings of the panel". He is now in New York to present the report to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
 
Sources say an executive summary, which sets out the panel's conclusions in stark terms, has been removed in a final report which will number about 30 pages.

There was no immediate response from the UN, which does not comment on leaked reports. But senior UN sources say the secretary general plans to publish the hard hitting review, and act on its wide-ranging recommendations in order to "learn lessons" and respond more effectively to major new crises such as Syria now confronting the international community. 

'Systemic failure'

The UN's investigation into its own conduct during the last months of the conflict says the organisation should in future "be able to meet a much higher standard in fulfilling its protection and humanitarian responsibilities".

It identifies "systemic failure" in a number of areas, and describes the internal UN crisis-management structure as "incoherent".

The panel questions decisions such as the withdrawal of UN staff from the war zone in September 2008 after the Sri Lankan government warned it could no longer guarantee their safety. 

Benjamin Dix, who was part of the UN team that left, says he disagreed with the pullout.

"I believe we should have gone further north, not evacuate south, and basically abandon the civilian population with no protection or witness," Mr Dix told the BBC.

Hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians remained in the war zone, exploited by both sides: forcibly recruited by Tamil Tigers or used as human shields; or under indiscriminate government fire, or at risk of arrest.
"We begged them, we pleaded with them not to leave the area. They did not listen to us," said a Tamil school teacher now seeking asylum in Britain, who did not want to be named. "If they had stayed there, and listened to us, many more people would be alive today." 

Despite a "catastrophic" situation on the ground, this report bluntly explains that in the capital Colombo "many senior UN staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility - and agency and department heads at UNHQ were not instructing them otherwise".

It says there was "a sustained and institutionalised reluctance" among UN personnel in Sri Lanka "to stand up for the rights of people they were mandated to assist". 

'Culture of trade-offs'

Citing detailed records of meetings and reports, the review highlights how the UN did not publish mounting civilian casualty figures even though they had "been verified to a good standard". Under severe pressure from the Sri Lankan government, it also did not make clear most deaths were caused by government shelling of "no fire zones" designated as havens for civilians.
The government repeatedly denied it shelled civilian areas. 

How did the UN failure happen? The report explores at length how senior staff in Colombo "had insufficient political expertise and experience in armed conflicts and in human rights... to deal with the challenge that Sri Lanka presented", and were not given "sufficient policy and political support" from headquarters. It also points to the Sri Lankan government's "stratagem of intimidation", including "control of visas to sanction staff critical of the state".

The result was a UN system dominated by "a culture of trade-offs" - UN staff chose not to speak out against the government in an effort to try to improve humanitarian access. 

Edward Mortimer, a former senior UN official who now chairs the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, says UN staff left when the population needed them more than ever.

"I fear this report will show the UN has not lived up to the standards we expect of it and has not behaved as the moral conscience of the world," Mr Mortimer said.

"There was a responsibility to protect in Sri Lanka but unfortunately it didn't get publicity like in Libya. The north of Sri Lanka was destroyed field by field, street by street, hospital by hospital but we didn't get that kind of reaction - Sri Lanka doesn't have much oil and isn't situated on the Mediterranean."

There were no UN peacekeepers in Sri Lanka but this report says the UN should have told the world what was happening, and done more to try to stop it. 

In New York, "engagement with member states regarding Sri Lanka was heavily influenced by what it perceived member states wanted to hear, rather than by what member states needed to know if they were to respond".
During the last months of war, there was not a single formal meeting of the UN's top bodies.

The executive summary of the draft report highlights how "the UN struggled to exert influence on the government which, with the effective acquiescence of a post 9/11 world order, was determined to defeat militarily an organisation designated as terrorist". The Tamil Tigers, or LTTE, are a proscribed terrorist organisation in many capitals.
Frances Harrison, who has just written a book "Still Counting the Dead" on the last months of the war, told the BBC "the only way now for Ban Ki-moon to restore the UN's tattered credibility on Sri Lanka is to call an independent international investigation into the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in 2009". 

"What haunts me is the outcome of this dreadful conflict might - just might - have been different if the UN had at the time publicised the independent eyewitness testimony and casualty data its staff meticulously collected that indicated the bulk of killing was the result of government shelling," says the former BBC Sri Lanka correspondent.

Springer Books - Christmas Sale

My contact at Springer says:

'We've just been informed of the following Christmas sales initiative - we've not yet been told if there are any other sales in the pipeline.

Springer are offering a £20-off voucher on any eBook from springer.com from 10-26th December to all visitors. This is on-top of any other existing discount which the user may have (e.g.,. a Springer author 33%  discount).   From the 10^th to 26^th, those using this link will see the voucher applied during your session on the site.

The only stipulation is that the eBook can’t be £20 or less before the voucher is applied.'

In the Drakensbergs

Two days for muscle recovery was a small price to pay for doing the Tugela Gorge walk in the Royal Natal National Park in the central Drakensbergs.  It was also a delightful setting for designing and running an interactive session for about 50 people as part of the recent International Conference on Fresh Water Governance for Sustainable Development: 

Ison, R.L, Pollard, S., Biggs, H. Du Toit, D., Colvin, J.D & Wallis, P. (2012) More Systemic, More Adaptive: The way Forward for Water Governance. Special Workshop Session, International Conference on Fresh Water Governance for Sustainable Development, 7^th November, Central Drakensburg, South Africa.

This session was very well received by those who attended. 

Foucauldian-style resistance

Foucault, that popular French theorist wrote of resistance in 1982:

"I would like to suggest another way to go further toward a new economy of power relations, a way which is more empirical, more directly related to our present situation, and which implies more relations between theory and practice. It consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point. To use another metaphor, it consists of using this resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, and find out their point of application and the methods used."

More recently a journalist in the Scotsman newspaper wrote about her daughter trying to choose the best university to get her degree. In Scotland, she would not be charged fees but in England she would have to pay thousands of pounds in fees and finish with a large debt. However, the daughter thinks it might be better to go for a "top" university and pay the fees as it would get her a better job and there are more "top" universities in England than in Scotland to choose from. My friend and colleague Drennan Watson, in the spirit of resistance, wrote the following letter to the Scotsman paper in response to this issue:

Research no guide to educational standards
Published on Sunday 21 October 2012 19:17

Christine Jardine rightly focuses on the question for her daughter of “which university will provide the best springboard for her future” (Perspective, 17 October). But, mistakenly, she then focuses on the Times Higher Educational World Reputation Rankings as a guide.

This claims to assess universities on teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook by drawing on the assessments by “senior, published academics”. Valid assessors of the quality of training of their graduates are their employers in government and industry and the graduates themselves. According to supporters of the Times’ system, the only graduates assessed are postgraduate students in the universities. Assessing educational performance on this small, non-random sector is statistically laughable.

 As Ms Jardine says: “Universities are judged across the world on their research record.” That is the problem. The idea that research output of a university is a measure of quality education and degree offered by it is bogus. Many a “distinguished” academic whose lectures appear baffling because he is brilliant is simply an incompetent communicator.

 Before gaining a university post in which research is a key activity, a candidate must gain a good, honours first degree then a PhD as a three-year training in research. The appointee is then unleashed to lecture and teach undergraduates with little or no training in education. The results are inevitable.

As an undergraduate, I ranked my lecturers competent if they could be heard beyond about the fourth row and then found intelligible by students when heard. One-third failed.

I taught in a range of universities and institutes of higher education in UK. The problem remains. Accounts from current students strongly indicate matters are worsening. Government, by scoring university performance basically on research output is making matters worse. I co-authored a paper in the prestigious journal Nature. That would merit points. I co-authored a 350-page, well-reviewed textbook for undergraduates, but that would merit none.

Ms Jardine is rightly concerned at the need to properly fund education in universities, particularly in the face of the rise in student numbers. Equally important is to introduce proper training in educational skills among those paid to teach our undergraduates. Government should insist on it as a condition of funding. Research and education are equally difficult and complex activities requiring, to a considerable extent, different skills and personal qualities – frequently not found in the same person, particularly in academics. What other profession would be permitted to exercise such a critically important, skilled, social function without proper training and proof of performance?

We do not trust the education of children in primary and secondary school years to untrained, unassessed staff. Why do we do it to them in vital years of adult education?

R Drennan Watson
Forbes Alford, Aberdeenshire

Vale Frank Fisher

Life certainly has its circularities.  Last week whilst cleaning out my office in the Menzies Building at Monash University (Clayton) I came across notes that I had made when Frank presented a talk at the University of Sydney on the 4th August 1988.  I noted that Frank came from the Graduate School of Environmental Sciences at Monash and that he had formerly been an Electrical Engineer.  My notes are an eclectic array of terms that have littered my own writing and scholarship over most of the intervening time.  Examples include: '3rd generation thinking'; 'epistemology'; 'reductionism'; 'utilitarianism'; 'understanding comes from interaction with others'; 'dialectic'; 'the edge of madness - feeling an indoor plant to see if it is real'.

As outlined in an earlier post Frank died from complications associated with an inoperable brain tumour on 21st August 2012.  Since his death there has been a very moving public memorial service - more a celebration than a mourning - in a packed BMW Edge at Federation Square in Melbourne. Also a launch of the ebook 'Everyday Transcendence: The Influence of Frank Fisher' that was put together and completed (if not published) just before Frank's death.  The book can be downloaded from Frank's legacy website, 'the Understandascope' and there are also video segments from the memorial service and the book launch.  Please explore them and appreciate why Frank was loved by so many and why so many were transformed through knowing Frank.

Frank's obituary appeared in The Age on Monday September 24th, 2012.

Systemic failings in Higher Education

Yet more compelling evidence that forces currently driving the HE sector place it on a trajectory towards systemic failure.

"Focus on innovation is backfiring, Brussels conference hears

by Catie Lichten

28 Nov 12

The pressure on scientists doing basic research to produce innovative results is undermining researchers’ credibility, two prominent scientists told a conference in Brussels last week.

Mathematician Martin Andler, co vice-president of grass-roots scientists’ group Euroscience, said there was tension between the need for researchers to do basic, blue-sky research and the requirement for their work to be innovative and have an impact. He says he is concerned that researchers feel under pressure to claim their work will have a big effect when often it is not possible to know whether that will be the case.

“It’s wrong to force people to lie,” he said, adding that the issue is one of research integrity.
Andler explained that such dishonesty could take two main forms. In one, researchers flesh out funding applications with details of activities they have already completed. In the other, they exaggerate the likely impact of their work to make their research seem more relevant to funders.
Robert Winston, broadcaster, Labour peer and professor of fertility at Imperial College London, described a phenomenon he calls “the science delusion”, where scientists approve of their work being marketed as much more important and influential than is actually the case. As an example, he cited the mapping of the human genome, which has not lived up to expectations that it would, for instance, revolutionise our ability to manage diseases.

“Scientists need to be more modest,” he said, explaining that two worrying consequences of these tendencies are that scientists permit their work to be overhyped and fail to admit that they have emotional biases that can influence their science.

The comments were made in presentations at SciTech Europe, an event held in Brussels on 22 November."

NECSI analysis makes sense

The New England Complex Systems Institute in their project on ethanol use for fuel are producing relevant insights:

New Sustainability Exchange

I am advised by colleague Mark Yoxon that the Sustainability Exchange is a central point and community for colleges, universities and sector service providers, sharing best practice, knowledge and resources on sustainability – all online.

 Extract from their press release:

Education organisations unite to launch pioneering centralised knowledge bank and community on sustainability.

Leading organisations from across the further and higher education sector have joined forces to create the ‘Sustainability Exchange’. Combining resources and experience from 23 of the country’s top sustainable development and education bodies, the Sustainability Exchange will pioneer the UK’s first centralised information portal and online community for the sector, sharing a wealth of information that is available to everyone.

Recent good news: a new research project

With Chris Blackmore and Kevin Collins from the Open Systems Research Group we have had news of success as part of an international research consortium  for a project entitled  “Climate change adaptation and water governance: reconciling food security, renewable energy and the provision of multiple ecosystem services” (CADWAGO).  One of 15 shortlisted proposals to the Europe and Global Challenges Call released by a trio of European Foundations (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Compagnia di San Paolo and VolkwagenStiftung), the project will develop the knowledge base and capacity to adapt to climate change through improved water governance approaches. It builds on several earlier projects including the well-known SLIM project coordinated from the OU in 2000-2004.  A grant of 9.000.000 SEK (equivalent of about 1.000.000 Euro) has been set aside for the project over three years.

There were 76 proposals from international consortia for the call. Fifteen were short listed and invited to proceed with a main proposal and hearing. Only four were selected from the 15, as despite extra funds being available, these were the only ones achieving a consensus from the external panel.

The VolkwagenStiftung  has a record of funding innovative systems-based research having in the past made funding available to the Club of Rome leading to the well known ‘Limits to Growth’ study. Whilst this proposal is focused on the nexus between climate change and water security, it has implications for other global challenges. There is a crucial link between good water governance, food security, renewable energy and the provision of multiple ecosystem services in contexts characterized by controversy and uncertainty. CADWAGO brings together 10 partners from Europe, Australasia and North America who have extensive social science research experience in climate change adaptation and water governance issues, thereby extending the collective global knowledge base through sharing methods and findings.

CADWAGO builds on the lessons from on-going research cases to create a forum and dialogue between researchers and stakeholders at different scales. The lessons from the cases will be synthesized and used in the adaptation of key European policy processes and governance actions that have a global impact. High impact peer reviewed publications and practitioner orientated publications will also be focused on as key project outputs.

Wicked, as in 'great'

Nice post from Roger Jones taking an uber 'technical rationalist' to task.  Also this one from David Hodgson who reports on what seem very positive urban developments in  Adelaide.  If only the current lot in Melbourne (i.e. State Government) could embark on something similar.