Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World [1 ed.] 9781472568274, 9781472568250

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Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World

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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY Successful School Leadership, edited by Petros Pashiardis and Olof Johansson Education in the Balance, by Raphael Wilkins Leading Schools in Challenging Circumstances, by Philip Smith and Les Bell Sustainable School Transformation, edited by David Crossley An Intellectual History of School Leadership, by Helen Gunter

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Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World MIKE BOTTERY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC 1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Mike Bottery, 2016 Mike Bottery has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN :

HB : PB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-4725-6826-7 978-1-4725-6825-0 978-1-4725-6827-4 978-1-4725-6828-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bottery, Mike. Educational leadership for a more sustainable world / Mike Bottery. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4725-6826-7 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4725-6825-0 (pb) 1. Educational leadership. 2. School management and organization. 3. Education—Environmental aspects. 4. Climatic changes. 5. Sustainability. LB 2806.B5995 2016 371.2—dc23 2015021229 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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I. Title.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi Preface vii

PART ONE Describing and Identifying the Problems 1 1 Leading sustainability, sustaining leadership

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2 The meanings of sustainability and the dynamics of its decline 15 3 Tame, wicked and humble leadership

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4 Efficiency, sufficiency and educational leadership

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PART TWO Global Drivers of Unsustainability 5 Cultures of economic growth and consumption 6 Global energy challenges

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7 Climate change and the assessment of evidence

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8 Emerging population patterns: impacts and responses

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PART THREE Towards a Leadership for Sustainability 155 9 Securing educational sustainability in a wicked world 10 The leadership of well-being

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11 The futures of educational leadership

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References 205 Index 219 v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people to thank for helping me plan, write and revise this book. I would like to begin by thanking Julian Stern, Nigel Wright, David Dixon, Paul Adams and Gary Wilkinson for reading drafts of chapters. Particular thanks go to Peter Gilroy, David Oldroyd, Julian Stern (again) and Nigel Wright (again) for reading the whole thing, and being such critical friends. The writing would also have been virtually impossible had not Clare McKinlay organized my academic life so well, and to her I also owe a huge debt of thanks and gratitude. Nor do I want to forget Camilla Erskine, and then Alison Baker and Kasia Figiel at Bloomsbury for making the publishing of the book such a supportive process. Last but not least, I want to thank Christopher and Sarah for being such wonderful and now very-grown-up children, and Oliver for being such an off-the-wall two-year-old grandson.

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PREFACE

I have felt for some time that much talk and writing about leadership is actually talk and writing about management. Despite much vaunted policy moves globally suggesting that in constantly changing and challenging times we need leaders rather than managers, what many nation states are actually attempting to produce are individuals who may be better trained in leading others in predetermined sets of tasks, but who are given little encouragement to look beyond this essentially implementational role to reflect upon the global problems that societies are facing, and to ensure that their institutions can respond to them in a sustainable manner. Certainly, the roles assigned to them, and the training provided (and it is normally training, not education), seldom ask them to contribute to or lead on such agendas. Starr (2015, p.  81) describes their current role as a form of ‘perfunctory middle management’, which largely fails to appreciate the new range of challenges – within and beyond education – which now confront societies and their educational workforces. And if such challenges are not properly recognized or reflected upon, then those who are expected to equip the next generation to deal with these challenges will not be properly prepared, and therefore cannot properly lead on them. But aren’t educators, some will say, essentially civil servants paid to carry out the wishes of the government of the day, and shouldn’t governments be providing these visions, and making these kinds of choices? The problem is, though, that governments, like markets, can be as much producers of these problems as providers of their solutions; which suggests that educators need to see their role as something more than a mixture of compliant state servant and market entrepreneur. These state and market perspectives need to be supplemented by more communal and global viewpoints, not only because the sustainability of their own role is threatened, but because so is the sustainability of local, national and global systems as well – and they all share similar causes. This last statement may seem a surprising claim to some, but a major reason for the similarity between the sustainability of educational leaders and much larger macro-systems is based upon the sheer complexity of many of the challenges currently faced, and most will not be amenable to simple solutions: H. L. Mencken was exactly right when he said, ‘To every complex problem, there exists a solution which is neat, simple and wrong.’ To my mind, this is the best short critique of ideas and policies which fail to enquire vii

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deeply enough into the nature of problems they seek to resolve. When a simplistic frame is chosen, all too often an apparently universal policy solution is created and then passed down to others as not requiring adaptive implementation. Yet applying such policies unthinkingly to highly complex situations, nearly all of which, of necessity, are singular and context-based in nature, leads to all kinds of damaging consequences one might expect from such an inappropriate approach. As Leithwood et al. (1999, p. 4) said, if educational leadership is going to be outstanding, it will need to be ‘exquisitely sensitive to context’. All too often, leadership practice isn’t, or it isn’t encouraged to be. This book therefore argues that if the sustainability of both educational leaders and of larger areas of concern is to be better realized, the role of educational leaders will need to be re-framed. To explain the need for such re-framing, the book will examine not only the challenges to the sustainability of an educational leader’s role, but also four current major global challenges, all of which will increasingly impact on the contexts within which educational leaders work. Such examinations also help to better understand the notion of ‘sustainability’, for the current threats to ‘sustainability’ in many situations arise from complex interactions between at least three different areas: the social, the economic and the environmental. This book argues that events in these areas combine to create many of the challenges to sustainability seen not only in educational leadership, but also in the challenges to global sustainability discussed in this book. Whilst many of the book’s arguments apply to the sustainability of a number of different forms of leadership, the focus of this book is on the role of the educational leader, because it is the form of leadership best positioned to promote different forms of personal, institutional, societal and global sustainability as core objectives. At the same time, the actual definition of such leadership is left deliberately open. It is seen here not just as a form of leadership defined by formal hierarchies or by individual personalities. It is a force that can be exhibited at many levels, and between individuals as much as by just one: leadership for a more sustainable world is then performed when people influence others into accepting that a core part of their role must now include reflection on the nature of current and possible future threats to different levels of sustainability, and their engagement in equipping the next adult generation with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to respond to such challenges. To do this effectively, they will need to reframe their role and, by embracing new values and policies, will also make their own role more sustainable. This is an optimistic book, and it needs to be, for if genuine, long-lasting sustainability is to be created within educational institutions and the world beyond, it will take some time for the approaches suggested to be realized, and a world needs to exist into which such approaches can be applied. As will be seen, some commentators believe that the world is currently on the brink of a catastrophe, and that humanity has only a very few years in

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which to turn things around. Others believe that it is simply too late to do anything. This book subscribes to neither position. It agrees that there exist deeply worrying and world-threatening challenges, and that their effects are already being seen and felt. It also agrees that if nothing is done, humanity is likely to face a very unpleasant future. The book’s optimism lies in the belief that there is still time to turn things around, and that educational institutions and their leaders can make a major contribution to this endeavour. In this scenario, then, educational leaders cease to be assigned some form of perfunctory middle-management role in the delivery of shortterm policies. Instead they become major contributors to societal and global long-term sustainability. Educational leadership thus exemplifies not only a significant case study in the generation of greater sustainability; it also represents a challenging but hugely rewarding role in contributing to global sustainability, which cannot afford to be passed up.

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PART ONE

Describing and Identifying the Problems

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CHAPTER ONE

Leading Sustainability, Sustaining Leadership Introduction: A leadership of pressure and paradox? It is no coincidence that challenges to leadership sustainability are occurring in a world facing sustainability challenges to much larger social, economic and environmental systems. These may seem a long way from the problems that educational leaders face, but there are in fact considerable similarities between problems of leadership sustainability and other larger national and global issues. As this book will show, they not only share similar kinds of stressors, but also some surprisingly similar pathways to unsustainability. So, by understanding the nature of sustainability and un-sustainability in both leadership contexts and in larger systems, it is possible to throw light on the remedies that both need to use, which therefore suggests a new kind of focus for educational leaders to develop, not only in how they should respond to larger system threats, but to the threats to their own role as well. There are also parallels between the use of the term sustainability in educational leadership terms and in wider contexts, as they are both concerned with the preservation of something that is valued – whether that something is the vast expanse of the Amazon jungle, the existence of a just, caring and inclusive society, an economic system that contributes to this kind of society, or to an educational leadership that encourages the development of caring, inquiring and critical students. Of course, there may be some readers who will disagree with the advocacy of some of the kinds of values and positions implicit in these statements. There will be those, for instance, who believe that the primary function of an economic system is that of creating wealth, and that the other roles should be relatively minor. The sustainability of economic systems would then likely be focused upon the maintenance or increase in wealth production. ‘Sustainable’, then, is not 3

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a descriptive word, for advocates can smuggle into it all kinds of meanings and values. It is in fact an example of what Gallie (1956) called an ‘essentially contested concept’, which he described (p. 169) as ‘concepts the proper use of which inevitably involve endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users’. Take for example the best-known definition of the term ‘sustainability’, the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) (the so-called Brundtland Report), which defined sustainability (p. 8) as that which ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. Some who haven’t actually read the report might think that its primary focus was on the sustainability of the natural environment. However, any reading of it makes it clear that it did not believe that this was possible without also addressing issues of sustainability in the human world. In so doing, it made two radical and contentious value calls for greater global fairness. One was for greater intra-generational equity, and thus a plea for a greater equality within and between present societies. The other call was for a greater inter-generational equality – the need for a longer-term vision in considering the needs of future generations. Such arguments for greater global sustainability were ground-breaking at the time as, in arguing for the rights of those still to be born, it ran strongly against – and still does – those societal trends concerned with the satisfaction of short-term interests. Whilst still regarded as a seminal moment in the appreciation of sustainability, it was also, however, a document of compromise, due to an international reluctance to accept a reduction in economic growth in achieving such sustainability. National interests were then accommodated by the recommendation that sustainability could be achieved by and through economic growth – an increasingly disputed assertion, as the desire for growth and consumption are seen by many critics as principal causes of unsustainability (see Daly, 1996; Hamilton, 2004; Jackson, 2009). This brief discussion, continued in later chapters, then makes the valueladen nature of ‘sustainability’ very clear – an awareness that must necessarily be applied to any discussions about leadership sustainability as well. One therefore needs to ask: if someone is writing about problems of leadership sustainability, what threats are selected to explain these problems, and what then is this sustainability seen as being needed for? Now it should be said that there has been literature over some time (e.g. Day et  al., 2000; Gold et  al., 2003; Asquith, 2014) suggesting that problems of leadership sustainability may not be universal. However, there is now a considerable body of literature suggesting that threats to sustainability are sufficiently widespread and urgent to require real attention. There is a fairly long international history suggesting that the threats to leadership sustainability derive not only from individuals failing to apply for the role (leading to a shortfall in recruitment), from many retiring early, and also from those not holding principals’ positions for any length of time. And the evidence on this suggests that the problems aren’t diminishing. One can go back to authors

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such as Fullan (1997) in Canada and the US , Williams (2001) in Canada, Troman and Woods (2000) in the UK , Hodgen and Wylie (2005) in New Zealand, as well as Gronn (2003) and Chapman (2005) for international reviews of these phenomena, and then find that the same issues are occurring today in much the same countries (e.g. Berliner, 2011; Fuller, 2012; Times Educational Supplement, 2013; Doyle and Locke, 2014; Reames, Kochan, and Zhu, 2014). It is also important to note as Fuller (2012) does, that principal sustainability problems also generate institutional and systemic sustainability issues, as, for example, high principal turnover leads to greater teacher turnover, which is correlated with lower student attainment, and of teachers not embracing proposed changes as they simply wait for the next principal to come, but then to leave a little later. The reasons given for such problems, which governments tend to accept, are that prospective leaders are unprepared for the role, and that too much may be asked of them in the role. If these kinds of problems are identified as the principal causes, then much stress and worry might be overcome, and greater sustainability might be created, not only in the leadership role, but in institutions and systems as well, by providing better training for individuals before appointment to the principalship, and greater devolution of responsibility given to senior and middle-management teams (and hence some governments’ moves from championing ‘charismatic’ models of leadership to more ‘distributed’ ones). Whilst this particular framing of the problem does suggest the need for some change, it is an essentially business-as-usual approach, because the objectives of leadership remain the same. This also helps to explain the explosion of state-run leadership centres across the world in the early years of this century (Bush and Jackson, 2002). And indeed, there seems much truth in this explanation of unpreparedness and subsequent overwork. Starr (2015, p. 130) argues that these kinds of pressures are a global phenomenon, and suggests that the increased number and size of leadership tasks has resulted in ‘the intensification and 24/7 nature of educational work, and continual “function creep” in education roles, in order to ensure that a rising number of tasks are met’. Function creep is a highly important phenomenon, because it is usually hidden in the extra hours of work at home, at weekends and on holidays that leaders have to spend in order to attempt to ensure that they run the job, rather than the job running them. All of this can then lead to extra stress, and less sustainability. The British newspaper The Independent (2010) noted that New Labour, during its tenure from 1997 to 2006, imposed 58 new responsibilities on headteachers, and there has been no let-up by the next government. The work of Bottery et  al. (2008) in England and Hong Kong also found that whilst the principals in Hong Kong felt less threatened by demands and inspection than those in England, they nevertheless felt the same pressure from the increase in incoming ‘guidance’, legislation and mandates. The imposition of so many mandates was also a

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central concern of Young and Szachowicz (2014, p. 1), in the United States, who suggested: Principals have always had mandates—federal, state, and district. But never have there been so many mandates being implemented simultaneously . . . Effectively taking on any single mandate is tough. But implementing [many] simultaneously can prove a mighty challenge for even the most seasoned principals. And doing all of this while managing previously existing mandates, from grants to accreditation, can seem overwhelming. The sheer volume of work can then be a real concern. As one principal said to me (Bottery et al., 2008, p. 67), ‘I don’t even have the time to think about the fact that I don’t have the time.’ In such circumstances, it is unsurprising if in many countries the challenge of recruiting and retaining educational leaders has become a serious problem. Yet the causes may stem not only from unpreparedness and overwork, but also from a perceived lack of trust. In a substantial survey of teacher attitudes in the UK , Berliner (2011) reports how 63 per cent of 2,000 teachers responding said they had considered leaving the profession because of ‘excessive government interference’, a feeling strongly underpinned by the fact that they felt neither respected nor trusted. As Cary Cooper, a researcher on workplace stress, reported in the same article: Global evidence is clear – lack of control and autonomy in your job makes you ill. It is stressful to be in an occupation where you feel you have people looking over your shoulder and where you can be named and shamed. All those characteristics were there in teaching 10 years ago, but it is worse now because jobs in the public sector are no longer secure. These are strong reasons for a lack of sustainability, but what if the causes of such unsustainability are even more deeply rooted? What if unsustainability is not just about too little preparation, too much work, or a feeling of not being trusted, but also about too much of the wrong kind of work? What if individuals perceive a particular course of action to be intrinsically desirable, but do not feel capable of pursuing it because of external pressures? This incommensurability of demands and values explains why Hoyle and Wallace (2005) argue that as incompatibilities between different desired ends have increased in educational systems, the life and work of many educational leaders is increasingly suffused by paradox and irony. Starr (2015) also describes a number of such paradoxes which she suggests leaders face on an almost daily basis. She points out what Levin (2001) also noted a decade earlier: that whilst many governments engage in cost-cutting exercises, they also demand improved educational outputs; yet demand for more efficiency is likely to negatively impact not only on productivity but on morale as well

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if individuals are constantly asked to do more with less. Again, whilst governments worldwide claim to be cutting bureaucracy and boosting institutional and leadership autonomy, as Bottery et  al. (2013), Glatter (2012) and Doyle and Locke (2014) point out, in reality many leaders seem to be experiencing an increase in government intervention and control. Bottery et  al. (2013), for example, provide the example of James, a new English headteacher, who felt heavily constrained by his school being located in a poor city area with a declining pupil population, which largely explained the school’s poor financial situation. For him, financial autonomy was an illusion; because his budget was so tight, he theoretically had room for policy manoeuvre, but the reality was very different: ‘You’ve got the freedom of your budget on the one hand, but on the other hand, you haven’t.’ He felt the same lack of autonomy with much current legislation as well: ‘To be honest you just nod and say “well we’re going to have to make the best of it”.’ Doyle and Locke (2014, p. 11) utter similar feelings for the reality of many US principals as being one where ‘principals must meet every more exacting accountability standards . . . and most must often do this with scant autonomy over key decisions’. If this is the case, then threats to sustainability may be based as much on conflicting and differently held value positions as on issues of preparation and overwork; and these may be very difficult to deal with because they begin to fundamentally question the nature of the policies that are producing these pressures. This is a central point made by writers such as Ball (2007), Bangs et al. (2011) and Hammersley-Fletcher (2015). Hammersley-Fletcher, for example, explored the different ethical challenges that English headteachers faced, consequent, she argued (p.  199), upon ‘the tension between meeting external inspections together with those related to the provision of a “good” education’ and concluded (p. 212) that ‘the personal is at risk of becoming subservient to the functional’. Some writers have gone further and suggested that the ultimate causes of the pressures on leadership sustainability are external to the educational system. Levin (2001, 2010), for example, argued over a decade ago that much of the educational legislation causing such tensions has been driven by external economic rationales based on markets and competition, which have increasingly resulted in a general climate of criticism and low trust in professionals in the public sector, the publication of quantitative measures of student achievement as market information for ‘consumers’ of educational services, and the use of punitive inspection regimes to ensure compliance to such market values as policy drivers. Yet in a further review (2010, p. 739), he argued that such policies ‘have often been motivated more by beliefs than by evidence of impact’, and goes on to say: ‘If there is one thing we have learned about educational policy, it is that ordering people to do better without engaging their hearts and minds cannot succeed’ (p.  742). And, in reviewing previous educational policies over a number of countries over the last 50 years, he came to the conclusion that ‘[g]overnments that belittled

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teachers may have reaped short-term political benefits but failed to create the conditions that could produce better outcomes for students’. Whilst there are educators who find the challenges posed by such legislation manageable and even exhilarating, it is perhaps not surprising to find that there are many who don’t. If challenges to the sustainability of educational leaders then come not just from demands on the quantity of the role itself, but also from a lack of respect of professional value conflicts between different stakeholders, and from the importation of practices and values beyond the sector, then the role of the educator, and the educational leader in particular, is going to be a very complex one, even if, as Bore and Wright (2009) argue, there may be many who are strongly tempted to define its concerns as ‘tame’ – as consisting of tasks that can be tightly defined and of solutions that can be easily applied. The desire for such ‘tameness’ is perhaps understandable in many policy makers given the pressures to produce short-term results that fit electoral timetables – a demand that politicians then pass down to practitioners through policy and inspection regimes. In this respect, policy makers can be as much victims of unhelpful pressures as can educational leaders. Furthermore, a distinction needs to be made between two different kinds of complexity. One is an external kind where causation is not linear but complex and systemic in nature, much of which is likely to be difficult to understand, control, or predict. However, there is another kind of complexity, described by Rittel and Webber (1973, p.  155) as an area of ‘wicked problems’, which cannot be understood in terms of some kind of depersonalized logic, but where problems are defined as ‘problems’ in part because of personal dispositions, values and prior beliefs. The lack of studies in yoga or literary critiques of Buffy the Vampire Killer in school or university curricula is not seen as a ‘problem’ unless they are viewed as valuable educational experiences. So personal viewpoints affect not only how a ‘problem’ is viewed, but also whether it is viewed as a problem at all (see, for example, Hulme, 2009; Haidt, 2013; Storr, 2014). Such ‘wicked’ problems are then highly likely to be unique, probably have more than one way of being described, and may ultimately only be surface descriptions of deeper problems. Issues of sustainability then need to be underpinned by both systemic and wicked understandings of complexity. As these are better understood, and as the increasing interconnections between human society and the natural environment are recognized, many issues are thrown up that are regarded as problems (climate change, depletion of fossil fuel energy reserves, the reduction in biodiversity), but are problems the solutions to which may not be amenable to simple, linear or tame solutions. Thus, for example, whilst ‘climate change’ is viewed by many as a problem, there is considerable uncertainty about how much temperatures will rise over the next 50 years, what the rate of ice melt in different areas of the world will be, and therefore the rate and amount of sea-level rise. Again, whilst the prognosis for many

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species of animals in the near future is increasingly seen as gloomy and urgent (see Wilson, 2003; Kolbert, 2014), the effects in the middle future (a hundred years from now) and in the long future (a hundred thousand years from now) are even less clear (Stager, 2011). Most recognize that these are real problems; few would claim to know exactly just how serious they will be in the future. These global problems have much in common with many of the problems that educational leaders have to deal with, as many of their problems also involve complex causations, are unique to contexts, are described in different ways by different parties, and may never be ultimately resolvable in any final sense. Raising standards, enhancing student motivation, furthering greater creativity and developing future citizens are but four examples. Many educational problems also need to be recognized as having systemic rather than linear causations, and as being of a wicked rather than a tame nature. Moreover, if problems are not accurately described, a number of other problems may follow. One is that if wicked problems are incorrectly identified as tame, they are likely to be incorrectly treated, and may result in even more damaging problems, which may lead to the need for rapid ‘crisis’ or ‘fire-fighting’ interventions as situations spiral out of control. Another is that wicked problems are not likely to be amenable to one-shot ‘silver-bullet’ resolutions, but may instead require a variety of ‘silver-buckshot’ or ‘clumsy’ solutions (Rayner, 2006; Grint, 2008), which will never be perfect, even if they are the best that can be done. These kinds of problems may then never be completely resolvable, yet choices and decisions will still need to be made. Simon’s (1956) advice here makes much sense, as he suggested that whilst many alternative solutions may need to be considered, a ‘satisficing’ approach (a combination of ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’) may need to be adopted, where incomplete solutions may be the best achievable. If this is the case, then policy makers, educational leaders, and anyone faced with these kinds of situations need to reflect upon the degree of certainty they can and should place in their decisions, and also the degree to which they should place blame upon those given responsibility for problem resolutions. This would then call for a radical reappraisal of what can be expected of educational leaders. These kinds of issues will be concerns that run right through this book.

Sustainability through the greater recognition of complexity What the above discussion also points to is that a major threat to educational sustainability may lie in a limited awareness of the potential for such complexity in the processes involved in educational leadership, which can lead to unrecognized – and unrecognizable – outcomes, which then can

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generate unexpected problems and threats. And if the role of the educational leader is so suffused by complexity, how much more so will be the complexity of larger national and global systems? Whilst there may still be some who believe that most environmental, political, economic and social interactions and challenges are relatively simple to understand, and only require simple solutions, there is a growing recognition of their genuine complexity. The middle chapters of this book examine such complexity – and the threats to sustainability largely derived from such complexity – at such large systemic levels. Indeed, as one becomes better acquainted with the literature and the arguments here, the more one realizes just how complex reality can be. The Newtonian model of the universe suggested to many (even if it didn’t to Newton) that actions and reactions occur in linear, controllable and ultimately predictable ways. It is then understandable how the popular pre20th-century view of science was one where humanity through scientific investigations gathered an increasingly large collection of indisputable ‘facts’, which it was believed would in some distant future permit the human race to attain a perfect understanding of the universe, and hence to predict its actions and thus control it. It is undoubtedly comforting to assume that the world largely functions such that a causes b, that b causes c, and that c causes d. The problem with this kind of assumption in the real world is that attempts to extract individual factors from larger systemic contexts may be inadequate, as many variables rather than just a presenting few may need to be taken into account to understand what is happening and what is likely to happen. Yet even this is to be overconfident, for the more complex the situation, the more unlikely it is that any sort of certainty is possible. There are, as Rumsfeld (2002) said, ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknowns’, and also ‘unknown unknowns’: we may think we know what we know, we may know that we don’t know many things, but many of the ‘unknown unknowns’ may always remain unknown if there is a continued lack of knowledge about their existence; yet they may still be at the heart of many complex events. Since Rumsfeld, Rayner (2012, p. 108) has added a fourth category – what we don’t know we know, where ‘societies or institutions actively exclude [some aspects of knowledge] because they threaten to undermine key organizational arrangements’. And the result is, as the Jewish joke goes, that if you want to make God laugh, you tell him (or her) your plans. This discussion suggests that much everyday thought and much policy rhetoric about things such as educational leadership, policy and practice may fail to see such complexity, and in consequence, many problems may be seen as resting upon linear assumptions of causality. Yet if such challenges are located within systems neither simple nor linear, but complex and nonlinear, then the framing and definition of both problems and solutions need developing that mirrors such complexity. Even then, it may simply be impossible to prescribe solutions that completely resolve a problem. In a complex, non-linear world, best solutions may only be partial at best, and

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some problems may simply be insoluble. This isn’t what many policy makers, and indeed what many educational leaders, may want to hear. The former may have policy agendas to ‘deliver’ before a forthcoming election; the latter know that in low-trust cultures, a failure to ‘succeed’ may well be seen as their personal failure, rather than as an example of an approach that attempts to take into account context and circumstances, and that may be a job for the long haul rather than the quick fix. Indeed, many people probably prefer tamer versions of reality: rather like a Disney film, the quiet desire for the difficult areas to be rubbed out of life’s encounters can be very tempting, as is a need for assurance that everything will work out happily in the end. Yet many events occurring in complex political, social, economic and environmental contexts are very un-Disneyesque in character. Many challenges that have occurred in leadership policy and practice over the last 20 or 30 years, then, like devolving leadership, developing trust, and leading across institutions, constitute complex endeavours, suffused with differing aims, claims and values, which may need to deal with many difficult and sometimes ultimately insoluble problems. A belief in control, linearity, and the assignation of blame to individuals and organizations when policies do not work may then lead to yet more vigorous simplistic interventions from outside, which can then lead to initiative overload, much professional stress and guilt, early retirements, and a disinclination to apply for the role. So, as subsequent chapters discuss, a major connection between the sustainability of educational leadership and larger environmental, political, social and economic issues of sustainability lies in their sharing of similarly complex groundings. By examining such similarities, light can then be thrown on the nature and reasons for problems in leadership sustainability. Indeed, another link between them can be made, for not only do such comparisons make clearer the nature of leadership sustainability problems, but, despite differences in scale, they also share some surprisingly similar remedies. The arrow of causation is then in part reversed: understanding how to resolve problems of leadership sustainability can also point towards possible resolutions of larger sustainability issues. By educational leaders better understanding their own sustainability situation, they are then enabled to provide a more informed leadership in addressing issues of global sustainability.

Educational leadership and the evaluation of contrasting claims Understanding and educating future generations not only about the challenges to different areas of sustainability, but about the different kinds of complexity exhibited by different challenges, needs then to be seen as an increasingly important new role for educational leaders. Yet another

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important role lies in exploring the methods that need to be used in evaluating contrasting claims over disputed ‘wicked’ issues such as climate change, the use of natural resources, and the effects of population increase. Discussion of the means by which the validity of divergent claims is evaluated cannot be avoided, even if an increasing recognition of the complexity of these areas may be daunting. Whilst there is good evidence suggesting that there are many attempts to muddy the waters and undermine reputable research and argument in these areas (see Monbiot, 2007; Washington and Cook, 2011; Oreskes and Conway, 2012), it is important to realize that such action does not encompass the range or quality of argument and dispute about such issues. As Hulme (2009) argues, not only are there disagreements about the measurement and relevance of particular data, but the construction of positions on such issues may derive as much from deeply felt values as from any purely rational evaluative exercise (assuming that these are possible) or from any malicious self-serving attempt to derail discussions. In terms of climate change, for example, at one end of the spectrum there are those who fear that past and present human activity threatens not only the future of humanity, but all life on the planet as well (Rees, 2005; Lovelock 2006). Nearer the middle in such disputes are those who believe that global environmental recovery is still possible, but only if urgent action is quickly taken (IPCC , 2014; Stern, 2006). At the other end of this spectrum are a mixture of views: those who fear that belief in the need for urgency on many environmental issues is reducing the time required for proper scientific rigour and objectivity in investigating such issues; those who feel that greater confidence should be placed in human ingenuity in meeting such challenges; and those who believe that a now-dominant paradigm of environmental crisis is exerting undue influence over the allocation of research funding. Such disputes are not new. Sabin (2013) recounts the dispute in the 1970s between two internationally renowned scientists, Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon, about the limits of global resources and rising populations. Ehrlich argued that rising populations would consume much of what was left of the world’s resources, whilst Simon championed the belief held by many with a market perspective that reductions in natural resources would impel human ingenuity to find substitutes for them. They agreed on a bet concerning the future price of a number of natural commodities, with Ehrlich arguing that the price would go up as these resources declined, and with Simon countering that substitutes would be found, that the price would not rise, and might even decline. To many conservationists’ discomfort, Simon was correct on the precise details of the bet, and Ehrlich rather ungraciously sent a cheque in the post with no letter of acknowledgement. However, the debate doesn’t rest that easily: Sabin demonstrates that a selection of different materials over a different period of time would have produced results leading to Simon having to send the cheque to Ehrlich instead. It is also worth pointing out that Simon declined a second bet by Ehrlich on 15 worsening environmental indicators over the coming decade, which included higher

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global temperatures, higher carbon dioxide concentrations, the declining fertility of crops, less acreage of forests globally, and lowered human sperm count. Ehrlich would also have won that bet. There is then much to dispute in these areas. Yet, just because there is much to debate, that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that all evidence is so disputable that no action should be taken. There is evidence in areas such as climate change that is virtually indisputable. For example, the scientific proof that carbon dioxide does act as a temperature insulator in the atmosphere, and therefore raises global temperatures, goes back two centuries (see Archer, 2009, and Chapter Seven); the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years (Kolbert, 2014); the amount of this gas emitted into the atmosphere over the last few years is increasingly due to human activity (IPCC , 2014); and there has been a constant rise in global temperatures over the last century (IPCC , 2014). It would then be very dangerous for life on this planet if human beings did nothing but engage in protracted debates over issues when the evidence clearly indicates that such changes will almost certainly cause severe global problems in the future, that human action has very largely been the cause, and will need to be a large part of the cure, and that such remedial action needs to be taken sooner rather than later.

An educational leadership response Leading sustainability and sustaining leadership are then intimately connected, and discussion of the simple, the complex and the wicked of the sustainable and the un-sustainable are discussed and developed throughout this book, as these terms have major implications for understanding and responding to many political, social, economic and environmental challenges. Similarly, the argument for the re-framing of educational leadership purposes in order to more directly respond to these challenges is also addressed throughout. This reframing is based around a greater focus upon four values not normally highlighted in much policy or educational leadership literature – of humility, sufficiency, equity and well-being. If educational leaders can help to enhance a greater humility through appreciating the complexity underpinning many issues; can emphasize through their thought, policies and action the need for sufficient rather than excessive consumption of ‘resources’; as also the need for a notion of well-being which transcends personal wants; and finally can show how the realization of both sufficiency and well-being requires a wider embrace of the notion of equity, then this book argues that a form of sustainability could be achieved which worked not only for them, but for their society, and for the world in general. Whilst the world in a hundred years’ time will be a very different place from today, it is perhaps not quite so obvious how significant some

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differences will be. Temperatures in some areas will be much higher, and sea levels will rise. Some areas will be much drier, some much wetter. Some species of animal and plant will decline in their traditional habitats, whilst others will prosper and expand, not all of which will be welcomed by human beings. Weather conditions will probably fluctuate much more than in the present. Most societies are likely to have many more of their population living well into their 80s and 90s than they do currently, and will need to find ways of supporting them and making better use of their talents. Some of these changes will be in spite of humanity’s best efforts; but other changes can be because of their actions. Working towards the better sustainability of educational leadership has lessons for larger areas and challenges, as well as lessons learned from them. Educational leaders can help towards a greater sustainability at all levels.

CHAPTER TWO

The Meanings of Sustainability and the Dynamics of its Decline Creating greater sustainability: Maintenance or change? The previous chapter argued that living in a complex world requires a proper recognition of the complexity involved in framing problems and their solutions if greater sustainability is to be generated. But what is ‘sustainability’? It is sometimes used almost interchangeably with the phrase ‘sustainable development’ (SD ), and together they – along with ‘resilience’ – constitute major buzzwords for the present century. Whilst, as Shallcross and Robinson (2007, p.  138) argue, any discussion should avoid the ‘definition dementia’ of indulging in definition for definition’s sake, it is important to understand how the terms are currently used, and how they will be employed in this book, because they have not only become widely used, but have also been used to mean very different things. Now ‘sustainability’ can be used in two very different ways. A first view – and the one probably most commonly associated with the term – is its use to convey the notion that a state of affairs – of either a social, economic, political or environmental nature – is desirable, and therefore needs maintaining and preserving. An individual, an institution, a set of customs, or a culture might then be sustained by ensuring that they cope with particular challenges, without themselves being substantially changed. If, for example, the continued existence of Sumatran tigers, or the preservation of small school classes, were seen as desirable, ‘sustainable development’ would then refer to the need for suitable processes and resources to be employed to ensure that this happens. ‘Sustainable development’ is therefore being viewed here as a process that maintains and preserves the values and practices associated with this state of affairs. Such actions are also likely to improve the resilience of what is being maintained, making it more likely 15

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that they will survive if future challenges arise. In the case of Sumatran tigers, this might be through the creation of game reserves, actions against poachers, and the education of neighbouring human populations; in the case of small schools, this might be through the recognition that they normally require more teachers, more money and more buildings per pupil than would be required for larger schools. However, ‘sustainability’ can also be used, along with ‘sustainable development’ and ‘resilience’, to refer to a very different need: to develop different aims, structures and strategies which for a number of reasons don’t currently exist. Change, not maintenance, is then the desired action state, as what is currently in place is seen as failing to meet current values, needs and challenges. Such a notion is bound up with similar notions of resilience, as in such circumstances it is likely to be argued that to remain resilient, individuals, organizations or cultures will need to adopt very different values, practices and strategies. In education, then, rote learning might not be viewed as an adequate or sustainable way of understanding mathematics, or of its application to the wider world, and whilst it may be felt that the study of mathematics should be sustained, some methods, like rote learning, need to be discontinued and others adopted.

Business influences on the definition of sustainability Sustainability as necessary change is particularly the case when referring to current business contexts, but it should also be noted that introducing the notion of sustainability into this area also changes its range of concerns. McCann and Holt (2010, p.  209), after surveying a number of business definitions, suggest that business leadership should be concerned ‘with creating current and future profits for an organization while improving the lives of all concerned’. This need to balance concerns of profit with those of others’ well-being is expanded upon by Ferdig (2007, p. 29), who suggests that ‘sustainable business and economic conversations focus on “triple bottom line” outcomes, in which key business strategies are designed to be socially and environmentally responsible as well as economically viable’. It is important to notice two things here. First, the use of ‘sustainability’ in different areas tends to highlight the role of values peculiar to those areas. In the case of the business environment, unsurprisingly, these are values such as competition and profit. But second, Ferdig’s definition formally recognizes a now general acceptance that invoking sustainability normally involves a balance between such economic concerns, and the needs of the human social and natural environmental worlds. In their most developed forms (e.g. Brown, 2001; Braungart and McDonough, 2009; Hawken, 2010), business

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books can then argue that whilst business may have caused many of the issues of environmental sustainability, better business practices can help resolve them as well. In terms of the maintenance and change functions to which sustainability can be put, different fields have different emphases. The business world tends to strongly espouse a ‘change’ variation of sustainability. This has influenced other fields in the process. For example, in an interdisciplinary collection of writings, Holling and Gunderson (2002) adopt a change view of sustainability and resilience, and claim (p. 34) that this approach needs to be based on the notion of cycles of ‘creative destruction’ and renewal – a term popularized by Schumpeter (1942) when talking about the essence of capitalist economist practices. As later chapters will suggest, the intertwining of economic and environmental notions of sustainability is furthered by a likening of social Darwinist visions of environment and genetics, which suggest that nature (and our very humanity) are based upon the same kind of competitive, rationalist self-interest as that portrayed in neo-liberal economics (and see Roscoe (2014) on this). Such business influences upon sustainability have also been furthered by a clear move in the business leadership literature over the last 30 to 40 years. This has seen a movement away from viewing sustainability as being achieved through maintenance activities like ‘management’ or ‘transactional leadership’, and towards a much greater embrace of more dynamic terms like ‘transformational’ leadership. This has been largely prompted by a view of such leadership as needing to react to the decline of a comfortable Western business dominance, because of challenges from the Far East, and then the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The sustainability of Western business practice was therefore seen as needing to up its game in responding, and Grint (2008) suggests that the difference between such maintenance and change perspectives lies in the recognition that organizations and individuals increasingly needed to be concerned less about the maintenance of déjà vu (‘seen this before’) and more aware of the need to respond to vu jadé (‘never seen this before’). Certainly, ‘transformational leadership’, first coined by Burns (1978), was at first seen as the primary way of changing a Western business leadership focus away from maintaining procedures within large bureaucratic organizations, and more towards much greater emphasis upon a changeable, dynamic and proactive notion of leadership. More sustainable organizations would then be created, not by doing more of the same, but by leaders inspiring commitment to change perceptions in their followers. They would do this first through providing visions of the changes necessary for institutional survival, and then by persuading them to follow such visions. Yet such heroic leadership may only be suitable for some individuals, and might also fail to reflect that leadership is likely to be as much, or indeed more, about shared visions and actions. As Yukl (1999, p. 298) argued, ‘the vision is usually the product of a collective effort, not the creation of a single

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exceptional individual’. The danger of such an approach then lies not only in that individuals are invited to adopt a leadership style which may be inappropriate to them, but that it may also fail to capture the complexity of a leadership process requiring the commitment of many. Paradoxically, then, some attempts at developing greater sustainability in business practice and its leadership (and then, through discourse creep, on into other areas such as education) may create as much unsustainability as it does sustainability.

Sustainability and educational leadership This concern with moving from visions of maintenance to visions of change initially translated relatively slowly into the educational leadership literature. There was indeed very little of such literature before the 1970s, and much of that tended to adopt in a fairly uncritical manner many assumptions from the business world. Whilst there are now leadership colleges around the world, the first National College for School Leadership (NCSL ) was founded in the UK in 2000. It initially embraced similar business notions of charismatic transformative leadership, but moved its preferred style to that of a more ‘distributed leadership’ kind (NCSL , 2003), in part because of the realization of the stress it was loading on the shoulders of single individual leaders, and the implied lack of engagement needed by significant others in the change process. Moreover, whilst, as Bush and Glover (2014) point out, other styles – contingent, moral, authentic, distributed, democratic and instructional – have all been proposed and partially embraced, this influx of meanings has probably added as much to the burden on leaders as it has to more accurately define what they are – or should be – doing. Stress on leaders then is likely to increase not only because of the expanded breadth of the role externally demanded, but also because of its quantity and complexity. Twenty years ago, Evans (1995) semi-jocularly described the role as a miracle worker who can do more with less, pacify rival groups, endure chronic second-guessing, tolerate low levels of support, process large volumes of paper, and work double shifts . . . He or she will have carte blanche to innovate, but cannot spend much money, replace any personnel, or upset any constituency. Twenty years on, in quite a number of countries, one might need to add: and has the ability to endure constant changes in the conceptualization of what he or she is being asked to do, and in how these should be implemented, whilst knowing that any tardiness or mistakes will likely bring a punitively oriented inspection process into the school.

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It then seems significant that in a recent US study on the factors influencing principals’ retirement decisions (Reames et al., 2014), it was reported that the reasons for this had changed dramatically over the last decade. From primarily being concerned with attaining a job elsewhere, the major reason now was one of principals simply wishing to get out of the job whilst they possessed the health to do so, the general perception of external mandates and job expectations being that they placed too much pressure on principals. Perhaps then it is not surprising that an initial re-conceptualization of leadership from a maintenance to a transformative function, with a subsequent explosion of different terms and accompanying responsibilities and expectations, should be closely followed by the generation of a literature concerned with threats to ‘sustainable’ leadership. As noted in Chapter One, worldwide concerns with declining numbers of prospective headteachers or principals willing to come forward to take on the role have been allied with a similar concern at the number of those in posts wishing to take early retirement (e.g. Fuller, 2012; Times Educational Supplement, 2013; Doyle and Locke, 2014). Yet many strategies responding to such concerns have been rather theory-light, amounting to little more than promises of support and training (to increase individual preparedness and resilience), with much less time and reflection given to the kinds of issues underlying such unsustainability. There have been, however, a few writers on the sustainability of educational leadership who have argued that the adoption of simplistic measures, which fail to give deeper thought to the causes of a lack of sustainability, is a dangerous road to take. Hargreaves and Fink (2003, p. 694), for instance, defined sustainable leadership as that which ‘preserves and develops deep learning for all that spreads and lasts, in ways that do no harm to, and indeed create positive benefits for others around us, now and in the future’, and went on to argue in a later article (Hargreaves and Fink, 2007) that in many countries precisely the opposite had happened, because ‘educational reform in recent years . . . has sacrificed depth of learning to the achievement of standardised testing’ and that this has prevented the ‘ability to plan for a more sustainable future’. In similar vein, Davies (2007a, p. 1) argued that many educational systems were characterized by ‘tightly focused curriculum frameworks and testing regimes’, and that this raised the question of whether the results from these actions were sustainable. For Davies (2007b, p.  11), this could only happen when leadership was ‘embedded in a culture focused on moral purpose and the educational success of all its students’. These contributions are helpful because they indicate that sustainability as maintenance or change is not a simple mechanical task of preserving what currently exists, or of changing something in order for it to be more in line with official policy or with the practice of most others. It needs instead to be informed from the start by the stipulation of a desired state of affairs which, if it exists needs to be maintained, and if this does not, the pressure

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needs to be created for an educational culture to be changed to allow such change to flourish. The theorization of ‘sustainability’ in educational leadership literature, then, is relatively recent, but it suggests that, like every other area of concern, questions about sustainability cannot avoid asking fundamental questions about the purposes of that activity. One should not, then, advocate greater sustainability through the maintenance of an activity, or greater sustainability through wide-ranging changes, without describing and arguing the grounds for such maintenance or change. The term ‘sustainability’ is value-laden, and thus essentially contestable, just as are the terms ‘sustainable development’ and ‘resilience’, for they all advocate (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly) a desired state of affairs, which needs to be understood and critiqued.

Environmental influences on sustainability This requirement to focus upon deep-lying issues draws inspiration from earlier sources, which asked similar questions about what needs maintaining and what needs changing, and why. The most influential literature in this respect is sometimes described as ‘environmental’ or ‘ecological’ literature, though this radically under-describes its origins and purpose. The best wellknown definition, quoted in the previous chapter, came out of the 1987 United Nations Commission on Environment and Development Report (the so-called ‘Brundtland’ Report). It not only laid out many of the parameters of concern, but also helped to ensure an enduring popularity for the concept, defining sustainability (p. 8) as that which ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.’ It is clear that this definition focuses as much on human social and economic issues of sustainability as it does on those regarding the natural environment, as it argued that concerns about the environment would not be resolved until societal problems were addressed as well, and that this could not be done until there was a larger focus upon both greater intra-generational and inter-generational concerns, particularly those involving greater equity. In so doing, sustainability and its development were claimed as needing to be pursued not only through a healthier natural environment, but by also addressing human social and economic issues. However, this claim is politically contentious because it asserts that sustainability can and should be developed through the pursuit of greater equality in human societies, not only in this generation but in future ones as well. There are those – normally of a neo-liberal economic persuasion – who see no need for such greater equality, but for a general ‘lifting’ of the living standards of all by increased economic growth. Indeed, Hove (2004, p. 50) argues that the Brundtland discussions were compromised from the start by the attempt to write into its proposals ‘the inherently contradictory aims of economic expansion,

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environmental protection, poverty eradication, and the free market’. Moreover, as the discussions progressed, it became clear that few nations were willing to accept the price of a reduction in economic growth to achieve sustainability, and developing nations in particular were unwilling to sign up to an agreement that seemed to prevent them from aspiring to the same living standards as those seen in the developed world. The result then was a highly disputed assertion that sustainability could be developed by and through economic growth. Whilst critics of neoliberalism (e.g. Daly, 1996; Jackson, 2009; Heinberg, 2011) have argued that it is precisely economic growth – and the demand for more resource consumption – that is the root cause of environmental unsustainability, neoliberal governments have unsurprisingly rather strongly agreed with the proposition. The 1995 New Zealand Ministry of the Environment, for instance, argued that a vibrant enterprise economy was a key condition for safeguarding the environment (Chapman et al., 2009, p. 130). By 1998 the UK Government was arguing (DETR , p.  3) that ‘achieving all these objectives at the same time is what sustainable development is about’; whilst the US and Australian governments (and now the Canadian) have historically shown a marked reluctance to engage with agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce the emissions produced by their industries, though a change in political leadership in these countries (e.g. Obama in the United States) can result in a weakening of such resistance. The result of the Brundtland report may then have been something of a landmark declaration, but it was one carrying disagreements into the future. Whilst Owens (2003, p. 6) remarks that ‘the credibility of politicians and many other actors required them at least to genuflect towards sustainable development’, and Adams (1995, p.  7) suggests that ‘ships of very varied allegiance are sailing cautiously under the same flag’, the reality is as likely to have been one of people increasingly using the term to suit their own ultimate purposes. Some tempering (or fudging) of the Brundtland language is seen in the 1997 UNESCO report, which suggested that sustainability is ‘not a fixed notion, but rather a process of change in the relationships between social, economic and natural systems and processes’ and that ‘there can be no solution to environmental problems unless the social and economic ills besetting humankind are seriously addressed’ (UNESCO, 1997, p. 13). Depending upon one’s point of view, this is either a positive move, enabling a too-fixed and universal notion to have better applicability across contexts, or it is a retreat from Brundtland’s strong ethical commitments, allowing anyone and everyone to define it in the manner that suits their purposes, once again pointing to the term’s essential contestability. It is probably a bit of both – the term still carrying an important message, but one increasingly open to ideological abuse. This discussion then leads directly into considerations that should be of considerable importance to educational leaders. One is the need to reflect on what things should be most valued, and therefore what things need preserving

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and sustaining. Whilst debating value issues is common in the economic and social realms, it is perhaps rather neglected with respect to the environment. Yet it would be dangerously wrong to assume that the environment is some kind of unitary ‘good thing’ that needs preserving. In their books on building environmental resilience, Walker and Salt (2006, 2012) give a series of examples of how to build sustainability and resilience into existing systems, but seldom argue why these systems should receive this positive preferential treatment. Yet such choices are inevitably underpinned by (challengeable) values. When talking of individual species, which of these species would you wish to ‘sustain’: anopheles mosquitoes, penguins, slugs, hedgehogs, the plague bacillus, Japanese knotweed, or human beings? One might wish to sustain all of these, but any justification must be based upon something deeper than ‘they’re part of the environment’. ‘Weeds’ may only be ‘weeds’ because they don’t fit with our aesthetic sensibilities or food needs; ‘pollution’ may only be ‘pollution’ if it harms species we favour, leaving other lesspreferred species (such as rats) relatively untouched. It may be that the reason lies in the valuing of species bio-diversity (but again, why?), the maintenance of existing eco-systems, or out of pure human self-interest. But that probably still doesn’t answer why current ecosystems are seen as inherently more valuable than ones previously existing, or that may evolve in the future. Whilst global warming will likely threaten the existence of many species, it will probably encourage the expansion of others. On what basis do we judge between these scenarios? This is clearly a highly complex area, which will be returned to throughout the book, but here at least the problem can be posed: what are the grounds for maintaining or changing the balance of current environmental systems? Debates on the sustainability of different systems – including environmental systems – then point inevitably towards deeper issues about what we value and why, which adds yet one more layer of complexity to debates in this area. However, even if questions of justification cannot be finally resolved, it still needs to be asked whether sustainability is achieved through the maintenance of present strategies, structures, or practices, or whether this is more likely through change, and of what such change might consist. Arising from these issues, Brundtland asked for an examination of how environmental, social and economic issues interact with one another. Reflection on these, I suggest, raises four critical questions about sustainability and its development: 1 What issues need considering at this moment in time, and what are

likely to arise in the future? 2 What should we, individually, societally and globally, most value in

the areas under consideration? 3 What is the balance between maintenance and change in the determination of sustainable strategies, structures and practices? 4 What is the nature of the interactions in the area under consideration?

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Such questions have wide applicability, and indeed apply very well to educational leadership. Yet, as a field of study, Ribbins and Gunter (2002, p. 359) have argued that it has historically suffered from being ‘insulated by its characteristically pragmatic and essentially a-theoretical tradition’, concentrating on what is currently done and whether technically such practices can be improved. However, Ribbins and Gunter also argue that a proper research agenda should begin by identifying priorities within the field. For them, ‘leadership [must be] an educational and educative relationship . . . informed by a critical engagement with the social sciences and philosophy’ (p. 388). This harmonizes well with Brundtland’s ideas, and suggests that educational leaders need to go back to first base and ask questions such as: What issues should educational leaders be most concerned with? 2 What ideals should inform educational leaders’ thought and practice? 3 How do local, national and global contexts affect this activity? 1

Indeed, if one locates the purposes of educational leadership, and its own sustainability, within the broader contexts with which Brundtland was concerned, such leaders may be provided with a wider and deeper view of their role, making it and them much more relevant and useful to the societies within which their practices are located.

From sustainability to unsustainability: The stressing of systems The foregoing examination of the meanings of sustainability suggests a rich and complex connection between environmental, economic and social/ educational understandings of these terms, as values underpinning different areas interact and collide with ones from elsewhere. This makes serious long-term sustainability a necessarily complex endeavour. Yet whilst such interactions may conflict, there is also good evidence that processes of sustainability – and its decline into unsustainability – have much in common across different areas. All three major areas described by Brundtland – the social, the economic and the environmental – display similar stressors, and demonstrate similar kinds of unsustainability. However, before going further, it is important to state that ‘unsustainability’ is here described as a decline away from the kind of functioning ‘normally’ seen as healthy. This seems to lead into all kinds of relativistic judgements, but it need not. It would be strange if an ecosystem was not described as moving towards unsustainability if most of the organisms within it were dying; if social systems were not described as moving towards unsustainability if indices such as crime, drugaddiction and corruption were all rising, when others such as mental and physical health and communal feelings were declining; where educational

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systems were not seen as becoming increasingly unsustainable when inadequate ‘tame’ policies were adopted for ‘wicked problems’; and when leadership was not seen as becoming increasingly unsustainable if fewer and fewer individuals wanted to take up the job, or stay in it. Finally, whilst there are some economists who would argue that ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ are ‘normal’ features of an economy, and ‘a bust’ period is therefore part of a sustainable economic cycle, this assertion needs to be measured against other indices. These would include social effects of such ‘bust’ periods, such as unemployment and a decline in the mental health and levels of well-being felt by people in that society. If these are in decline, and other forms of economic system can avoid such cycles (and this book will suggest there are such systems), then it can be argued that the boom-and-bust economic system can as a whole be described as unsustainable, or at the very least as less sustainable than other systems. For educational leaders this can be a highly useful discussion, as educational systems are one subset of an overarching social system, and such leaders therefore may learn valuable lessons for themselves, their institutions, and educational systems through comparisons with other systems. Now the two principal stressors that all three areas have in common are: (i) an excessive exploitation of their resources; and (ii) the introduction of polluting substances, practices or ideas. Examples will be provided from a subset of each of the major systems. For the environment, the ecological will be chosen, for the economic, the financial sector, and for the social, the educational. Stressors in each of these, it will be contended, lead to similar crisis points, as actors find it increasingly difficult to adapt to rapid changes. Educational leaders can then learn much from the existence of similar causes in other systems – and from the likelihood of similar remedies.

From sustainability to unsustainability: (i) An excessive exploitation of resources A first stressor then is when a system’s resources are over-extracted or damaged to such an extent that there are indications of system collapse. There are many indicators of this on ecological systems in the exploitation of environmental resources. Diamond (2005) and Fagan (2004) both detail how deforestation in wealthier parts of the world during its industrialization phase is now being replicated in less-wealthy areas. Wilson (2003) documents how fisheries in various areas around the world have collapsed over the last few decades, whilst both Klare (2008) and Smith (2011) describe how increasing demands for fresh water by industry, agriculture and expanding populations have led to the over-exploitation of fossil-water. Whilst, because of the expansion of fracking, the evidence underpinning reports of declining oil exploitation (e.g. Strahan, 2007; Holmgren, 2009) is currently less robust

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than previously, it still remains the case, as Smith (2011) argues, that filling the energy gap until renewable energy resources are sufficiently developed will mean the continued and extensive utilization of ‘dirty’ fossil energy sources, and the consequent damage to ecological systems, due in some countries to this increased use of fracking, as well as the expansion of nuclear power, with the long-term problems of waste safeguarding. The results of such over-exploitation are seen in effects on a variety of species. Wilson (2003), Benton (2005) and Kolbert (2014) all argue that a sixth great planetary species extinction is currently occurring, and for the first time through the activities of just one species, with the possibility that over one-fifth of plant and animal species may be extinct or on the verge of extinction by 2030, and half of all species by the end of the century. The stressor of excessive exploitation is also to be seen in the financial sector, when money is over-borrowed and over-loaned. The basic principles of banking rest on the relatively simple idea that banks borrow money from savers at a rate below that at which they loan it back to borrowers. Crucial to this process is their ability to assess the borrower’s ability to pay back the loan – otherwise, of course, they place themselves in the unsustainable financial position of having insufficient reserves. The global financial crisis of 2007–8 was in large part caused by the breaking of this fundamental rule (Cable, 2010; Harvey 2011; Heinberg, 2011). The liberalization of banking regulations internationally, but particularly in countries such as the United States and the UK , led a substantial number of banks to move from a conservative approach to lending to one in which money was lent to ‘subprime’ borrowers – those who had little or no equity, and therefore were highly unlikely to be able to repay the debt. This error was compounded by the abrogation of what are called the Basel rules (Brummer, 2009), the internationally accepted banking code requiring banks to retain 8 per cent of capital in reserve against the risk of defaulting loans. They avoided this obligation through inventing extremely risky ways of holding less capital, called ‘credit default swaps’. Such risky lending was compounded by the banking practice of bundling all of these loans into packages, called ‘collateralized debt obligations’ (or CDO s), the risk content of which became impossible to judge. These behaviours led to extremely heavy financial resource exploitation, and also to many banks’ being unable to judge the quality not only of their own loans, but those of other banks as well. The result was that much of their own and others’ financial resources were damaged, resulting not only in huge financial losses, but also in a (now understandable) unwillingness to lend to others. The system consequently had to be bailed out by national governments, and therefore by the taxpayer, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. This is then a very good example of how the excessive exploitation of a resource – in this case, money – can lead to severe damage and system malfunction. The excessive exploitations of a resource – and consequent damage – are seen not only in environmental and financial areas but can also be applied

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to financial, physical and intellectual resources in educational systems. The one most pertinent to a book on leadership sustainability is the human resource employed in leading the ‘production’ of satisfactory results. The international literature, reviewed in Chapter One, documents how over the last three decades such human resource has come under increasing pressure from forms of policy and management predicated upon low trust/high accountability/high stakes testing regimes, with the intention of extracting more work from them (e.g. Levin, 2003; Bottery et al., 2008; Wright, 2011; Hammersley-Fletcher, 2015). The demands for increased worker flexibility described by Brown and Lauder (2001) – numerical, temporal, functional and locational – have intensified since they wrote, all have been seen in education, resulting in what they call ‘the democratization of insecurity’. The development of ‘bastard’ forms of educational leadership (Wright, 2002) has also been combined with the growth of ‘greedy organizations’ (Gronn, 2003), which have attempted to extract more time, more personal commitment and more loyalty from their ‘human resources’ – all leading to what Starr (2015) called ‘function creep’. The initiatives, the rush of policies and the kinds of management delivering these can then combine to produce what Galton and MacBeath (2008) call ‘initiative overload’, leading to increased stress, earlier retirement and fewer individuals wishing to embrace leadership positions (Rhodes and Brundrett, 2009; Reames et al., 2014).

From sustainability to unsustainability: (ii) The introduction of polluting substances However, excessive resource exploitation does not only threaten the sustainability of a system: its viability is also threatened when substances or practices are introduced that undermine or pollute normal functioning. This then is the second stressor: the introduction of inappropriate ideas, practices or substances. However, once again, we need to recognize that ‘inappropriate’ is a value judgment which needs justifying. Such disruption is seen in all three systems. Thus, in ecological systems, if species diversity is valued, the introduction of both invasive non-native species and polluting substances can have very damaging effects. The introduction of non-native species can devastate native species simply because they have no natural protection. The introduction of rats, for example, largely an accidental consequence of human global expansion, was nevertheless a major contributory factor to the extinction of the New Zealand moa and the Mauritian dodo. Moreover, the introduction of species is hardly ever simple or linear – the introduction of species a does not stop with the extinction of species b, as this extinction usually has consequences for other species because of the complex interlinkages within an ecosystem. Wilson (2003, p. 38), for example, describes how the introduction of the African big-headed ant into the Hawaiian islands not only exterminated the majority of native insects in the lowlands,

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but in so doing, prevented the pollination of plants by native species, leading to the extinction of other dependent animal and plant species. Human polluting activity, however, has been at least as stressful on existing environmental systems. The increase of global industrial activity has led to widespread and intensified forms of pollution, from the burning of fossil fuels, and chemical and oil spillages, to nuclear and synthetic chemical leaks, leading to increases in still births and cancers (Carson, 1962). In the light of this discussion, the use in financial systems of the terms ‘toxic assets’ and ‘toxic debts’, to describe the effects of excessive and inappropriate lending in the banking sector, is highly significant (Lanchester, 2010). Generated in large part by the uncritical adoption of neo-liberal economic practices, such lending was described as toxic because the individuals who took on such loans were in no position to pay them back, and when the housing market ceased to be one of rising prices, banks could no longer secure such loans against the value of the homes. Then, when large numbers of banks defaulted and a sudden glut of housing came on the market, house prices dropped rapidly, and these ‘assets’ suddenly became toxic ‘debts’. The problem, however, did not end there. As noted earlier, whilst defaulting led to serious weaknesses in the banks’ finances, further ‘pollution’ to the system occurred as these loans had been packaged together into collateralized debt obligations, the different elements of which could not be separated, and which were then sold on to other institutions. The result was that the creation of these polluting practices – the imprudent lending of mortgages, and the creation of inter-organizational toxic loans – damaged an essential element of the system, which was the trust between financial institutions, and which led to the near collapse of entire financial systems. In educational systems, whilst the consideration of ideas and practices from other systems can be a valuable stimulus to new thinking, real damage can occur when ideas are introduced that run against basic system principles. The importation of non-educational values, particularly those of efficiency, effectiveness and private interest, when they become the focus of practice, can sideline central educational values such as communal and public good, care, equity and trust. Barber (1984) and Grace (1994), for example, have both argued that education empowering core citizenship values such as the pursuit of community and public good have increasingly been replaced by ones of individual self-interest and consumerism, with the result that education has been transformed into something more resembling a commodity to be used purely for individual and personal competitive advantage. In like manner, the concept of trust, rather than viewed as a foundational social and educational value forming a key component of social capital, has been viewed by Fukuyama (1996) primarily as a predictor of economic success. The problem here lies, as we shall see, in that market values can undermine the very social and ethical foundations such as trusting relationships upon which these same markets are based. And as evidence

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continues to amass on rising wealth disparities over the last 20 years in those countries most wedded to neo-liberal notions (Forbes, 2014; Facer, 2011; Dietz and O’Neil, 2013), the priority of need has increasingly been supplanted by the priority of choice. Thus, in 2011 the OECD reported (p. 1) that [i]ncome inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century. The average income of the richest 10% of the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10% across the OECD, up from seven times 25 years ago. Similarly, Forbes (2014, p. 1) noted that ‘almost half the world’s wealth is now owned by just 1 per cent of the population’, and that ‘the 85 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest’. When this happens, education as a means of developing stronger notions of public good, which are essential to the creation of more cooperative attitudes to the reduction of current threats to sustainability, become increasingly unlikely. Not only then is there real danger that key educational values are subverted, but so are wider social ones, in particular an emphasis on equity, a subversion that can and probably will threaten a wider social sustainability, particularly if, as Wilkinson (1996) and Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) demonstrate, the life expectancies of both poor and rich are lowest in those countries with the greatest variation in incomes. Ideas and social differences can then be just as threatening to the sustainability of social systems as can physically polluting substances.

Reaching crisis point Complex systems are capable of absorbing and adapting to many kinds of stressful events. However, when changes within a system occur very rapidly and/or very widely, actors within a system may not be capable of adapting quickly enough, leading to widespread system collapse. A recent example of a growing ecological systemic threat is the concern that global temperatures may be changing too quickly for species’ adaptive capacity. Whilst there is considerable debate here, there is increasing evidence of the likelihood of more unpredictable, extreme and rapid climate change. Such rapidity is supported by archaeological evidence from the collapse of previous civilizations (Fagan, 2004; Diamond, 2005); from pollen samples from ice-core extractions (Kunzig and Broeckner, 2008), and from fossil and geological evidence that swift climate change has been a principal or contributory cause of all five previous great species extinctions (Benton, 2003; Ward, 2008; Kolbert, 2014). The possibility that this threat may reoccur, and do so in the near future, is now widely discussed (IPCC , 2014; Lynas, 2008; Stern Report, 2006). Moreover, given the complex and

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interdependent nature of environmental systems, the extinction of even single species could have enormous ramifications for entire ecosystems. Crisis points may also occur in financial systems when individuals cannot react quickly enough to rapid change. Thus, when a bank gets into financial difficulties, and if individuals are not quick enough in withdrawing their money, they may suffer heavy losses. Whilst this kind of event has clear parallels with those in natural systems, it is made more complex, as Wallace and Fertig (2007) point out, by the fact that human beings can anticipate and frame scenarios and then adopt behaviour to deal with these in ways that other species cannot. Whilst this ability to frame scenarios may sometimes be an advantage, it can also have the unfortunate effect of producing the situation feared. Unfounded fears about a bank’s financial health, for example, may lead to a run on its reserves, and produce the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy seen in the Northern Rock bank crisis of 2007, when customers withdrew £1 billion in a single day on the basis of false reports about the Bank’s inability to borrow money to repay other loans. Such financial panics generated by suspicions, hearsay and unfounded gossip are historically well documented in investment markets as well: speculation about the ill-health of a stock has also provoked the selling of stocks, irrespective of the truth of rumours, making mere suspicion a damaging reality. Similar parallel situations can occur in educational systems, leading to a lack of adaptive behaviour, and from there to crisis points. This is particularly the case with what Bangs et  al. (2011, p.  17) describe as ‘quick wins for political purposes’ – the production of results in sufficient time for the next election. Not only do these tend to take the form of top-down, low trust, high-stakes testing, and punitive forms of accountability, but in addition the time frames employed often leave little time for proper conceptualization, and for modification to local contexts, which Fullan (1992), in a now classic work, argued was essential for their sustainability. Moreover, their speed also makes it extremely difficult for those who work at the front line of practice, the ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980), to synchronize reforms with personal survival systems. Just as much fast food is normally made from poor quality materials, insufficient care is taken in its preparation, and it has damaging long-term consequences, so do fast policies have similar effects: they are likely to be insufficiently wicked in their preparatory thinking and framing through insufficient time for attention to detail, are likely to generate damaging consequences from a more than usual amount of policy failure, and produce increased stress and lowered morale among implementers. Crises in systemic sustainability due to such policies are then likely, and it is significant in this context that Gillian Shepherd, former English Secretary of State for Education, should say that had the Conservatives known they would be in power for 18 years ‘the whole of the reforms would have been completely different’ (quoted in Bangs et al., 2011, p.  48). Here then is a senior minister forced like the rest to march to an

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election beat, recognizing the limited quality of legislation and reform generated by fast policies. Moreover, and as Merton (1952) pointed out more than sixty years ago, the creation of compliance cultures, impacted by the constant influx of fast policies, produces the very real danger of individuals learning to do little more than conform. This almost inevitably leads to a lack of reflection about the purposes of policy, and of how policies might be thoughtfully adapted to present concerns and future challenges. What then tends to happen is a series of educational ironies (Bottery, 2008c), as, for example, when policy makers try to increasingly micromanage the creation of successful workforces, only to find that they are more likely to suppress the individual creativity upon which success depends; when more attempts are made to measure quality, and people increasingly concentrate only on the measurable; when people are less trusted, and then become less trustworthy in response; and when the more that the bottom line is defined, the more this becomes the only line that is aimed at. In many ways, then, the increase in the number of such ironies needs to be seen as the symptoms of short-term thinking leading to long-term unsustainability.

What can be learnt about the sustainability of educational leadership from such comparisons? The three systems discussed here – ecological, financial and educational – then all share many of the same kinds of threats to their sustainability, just as they also exhibit similar symptoms when crisis points arise. However, there are also a number of similar responses that can be used to bolster the sustainability of educational leaders. A first is in terms of resisting ‘resource’ over-use. If too much is asked of them physically (such as the number of hours they have to put in, the paperwork they have to read, and the number of new initiatives they need to understand and implement) as well as emotionally (the stress that comes from such physical demands, and from low-trust, high-demand, high-blame, punitive inspection regimes), it should be little wonder if such over-use is a constant refrain in the decades-old literature on early retirement and lack of willing recruits. The second is in terms of developing resistance to educational environmental ‘pollution’, when, for example, core values are substituted or downgraded, when they are marginalized by invasive notions of self-interest, consumerism and education for personal wealth and competitive advantage. An education system having as its root question ‘what is education for?’ tends to result in more responses concerned with the attainment of human well-being situated within concepts of social, economic and environmental sustainability. When such questions are asked, the dominance of one set of values at the expense of others, seen as essential to such well-being, may well

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be described as polluting. Education and educational leadership are not areas of activity standing outside social, economic and environmental arenas, and much of what happens in these areas affects more than the practice of education, and should be major changes in the framing of an educational leader’s role. This chapter then concludes by suggesting four such changes: moving from a focus on short-term visions for short-term gains to the greater adoption of longer-term visions of well-being; (b) moving from a conception of well-being based on resource consumption to one based on how well such ‘resources’ are nurtured; (c) moving from efficiency and consumption as the major criteria for resource usage to sufficiency as the major criterion; (d) moving from simplistic and linear understandings to ones based on complexity and non-linearity. (a)

(a) Moving from a focus on short-term visions for short-term gains to the greater adoption of longer-term visions of well-being. There are strong reasons for taking a longer-term view. A first is that when the dominant societal and economic motif is consumption, and usually seen in terms of immediate consumption financed by credit, societal focus will also, almost inevitably, be short-term in nature. A focus on resource sustainability, however, requires a review of the current condition of these resources, but, perhaps more importantly, projection of their likely conditions in the future. This is perhaps the seminal plea of the Brundtland Report (1987, p. 8) that sustainability should be achieved by meeting the needs of current populations ‘without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. A second is that many environmental changes caused by human action are likely to be long term rather than short term in nature, and multi-generational in their impact. Taking the short-term view is therefore likely to obstruct such understanding and contribute to the problem rather than help resolve it. The depletion of the ozone layer, for example, which was universally celebrated for its resolution by the banning of CFC s in 1987, in actual fact will likely continue well into the middle of this century (Benedick, 1999). Similarly, global temperatures will rise by 1.5 °C, regardless of any action taken now, and for similar reasons: their effect will be felt later down the line. And finally, those most likely to be affected by such changes will be the future generations Brundtland asks us to consider. Whilst there is much philosophic and economic argument concerning discounting for the future (e.g. Partridge, 2003; Garvey, 2008; Hulme, 2009), and whilst we cannot know precisely much of what future generations will value, we can be sure that good quality air, unpolluted water, fertile soils, a rich biodiversity and benign weather conditions will come near the top of any future list of needs. Yet these are all areas whose sustainability is threatened by present human action.

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The dangers of short-termism apply to education as much as to larger global concerns. If there is one profession needing as its focus the welfare of future generations, it is education. Whilst it needs to treasure and transmit great cultural inheritances, at least as important is the equipping of future generations with the skills, knowledge and ability to cope with a variety of current and future social, economic and environmental challenges. In that sense, it is worrying that a time-traveller from the 18th and 19th century would find much modern practice instantly recognizable – classrooms of young people marshalled by adults ‘delivering’ curricula, which may be arguably relevant to the present, but which in part through constant standardizing testing and an overzealous focus on ‘delivery’ lack much of the co-construction of which stimulating education consists, and which address little of the future needs of a generation or two hence. As Hargreaves and Fink argue (2003, p. 694), the sacrifice of deep forms of learning to the demands of standardized testing has led to disabling in ability ‘to plan for a more sustainable future’, as members of teaching professions are inducted into cultures of compliance, which Lauder et al. (1998, p. 51) suggest lead to the creation of ‘a trained incapacity to think openly and critically about problems that will confront us in ten or twenty years time’. (b) Moving from a conception of well-being based on resource consumption to one based on how well such ‘resources’ are nurtured. This is a particularly strong concern for those educators who refuse to see education as a simple matter of economic supply and demand, as an activity when governments and/or consumers decide on what they want, and trained human resources supply these needs. An alternative vision of education would be one more focused upon relationships between resourceful humans engaged in a meeting and development of minds, where both teacher and student deserved care and recognition for the role they played in developing more sustainable personal well-being and public goods. This vision also implies that human well-being should be measured not by how fast resources can be consumed, but by how well such resources are nurtured and maintained. Such a change could have major effects upon societal and educational practices, as it suggests the need for a major change in what is normally regarded as the principal source of well-being – the ability to consume. As Princen (2005, p. 24) puts it, the attitude tends to be ‘good is good, and more goods are better’. However, whilst a degree of consumption will be always be essential for physical well-being, consumption only satisfies up to a certain point, and whilst the GDP of countries like the US and the UK has risen consistently since the 1950s, other measures such as the General Progress Indicator (GPI ) have remained static or fallen (Bok, 2010; Haidt, 2006; Hamilton, 2004; Layard, 2006). A sense of genuine long-term well-being seems to come from very different factors – such as the satisfaction derived from striving for personally fulfilling accomplishments, the nurturing of engaging and meaningful relationships, and the development of both physical and mental health. Individuals and their societies would

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likely be healthier and more fulfilled if instead of viewing increasing economic growth and consumption as the primary worthwhile activity, more time was spent nourishing social connectedness. Perhaps as importantly, maintaining or reducing one’s material standard of living is not necessarily a prescription for poverty, but a call to reassess what kind of resources are ultimately needed to nurture the relationships and the living space upon which humanity ultimately depends. This issue will be returned to for further discussion in Chapters Four, Five and Ten. (c) Moving from efficiency and consumption as the major criteria for resource usage to sufficiency as the major criterion. Efficiency and consumption are economic values whose practice is currently accompanied by a failure to recognize the impact they have on environmental sustainability. This is because they are generated at least in part by the nature of capitalism as an economic theory, and by the centrality of consumption in this as a means of spurring economic growth. There are at least two ways in which this is problematic for environmental sustainability. The first is when consumption exceeds the ability of the environment to replenish that resource, or to absorb the pollution from such consumption. Yet a subtler influence is the effect of consumerism on the consciousness of those who live within economically developed societies. The logic of capitalist economics requires production to expand and grow, and consumption has the crucial role of fuelling such growth. Growth needs consumers, and as Campbell argues (1982, p.  282), if this growth is to continue, such consumers will need to ‘want to want under all circumstances and at all times, irrespective of what goods and services are actually acquired or consumed’. Such notions of consumption mesh dangerously well with Boulding’s (1968/89) description of much of humanity’s historical indulgence in what he calls a ‘cowboy’ approach to economic practice. This assumes an inexhaustible supply of resources for human beings to consume, and there always being enough land to leave any pollution behind. Such an attitude might have been understandable when the global population was small and the world seemed very large, but humanity now lives on a spaceship world, where the measure of well-being is not how fast the crew [of this world] is able to consume its limited stores, but rather how effective the crew members are in maintaining their shared resource stocks, and the life-support system on which they all depend. Boulding, 1968/89, p. 136 The desire for economic growth, the need to cultivate a culture of consumerism to sustain it, and an attitude of cowboy economics all raise dangerous questions about the sustainability of limited resources. Although first applied to natural environments, such questions apply equally well to human educational environments, as education as a societal function is increasingly co-opted into a primary role of supplying in the most efficient

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manner the skills and labour needed by nation states in a competitive global economy. In so doing, this limits what has historically been a much richer and diversified portfolio of educational activities. In the process, students and teachers are increasingly viewed as essentially human resources within a business paradigm, to be utilized in such competition, including those in education. In the process, though, students may well become less motivated and more bored as curricula increasingly fail to engage their interests, and teachers become more stressed as their efforts are constantly tested. Princen’s (2005) notion of imperative sufficiency – where resources are only utilized to the extent that they can be replenished – becomes a consideration that increasingly applies not just to the natural environment but to the human one as well, particularly when human beings are viewed through the same lenses of exploitability as coal, copper and cod. This also is an issue to which this book will return in Chapter Four. (d) Moving from simplistic and linear understandings to ones based on complexity and non-linearity. As already argued, many systems, including education, are much more complex than normally recognized, and such complexity can result in many outcomes which are never entirely predictable, as the acts of one agent change the contexts for others. Examples have been taken from environmental ecosystems, where the introductions of new species have impacted in unexpected and damaging ways. They have been described for financial systems, where the interactions between legislative and financial changes, and the resulting decisions by institutions and large numbers of individuals, have led to the downfall of multinational institutions in ways never predicted by governments, distinguished neo-liberal economists (e.g. Alan Greenspan), or the major institutions themselves. Finally, a lack of appreciation of complexity has led to simplistic assumptions about causality and responsibility, instead of a proper understanding of the stresses and complexities of educational leadership, which should lead to fewer leadership programmes about the development of skills and competencies needed to deliver particular policy packages, and more with acknowledging and helping leaders at all levels to understand and accept the diversity of the job. Such knowledge and acceptance of a better conceptualization of the role would also help develop the resilience needed to keep working in a role where some problems might never be ultimately resolvable, and would also reduce personal pressure through lessening the guilt attaching itself to many who do not achieve what they are constantly told they should achieve. It is alarming to read an English headteacher (in Hammersley-Fletcher, 2015, p. 204) writing that ‘making the right decision is a major concern for me as relatively new head. If I’m honest I’m terrified of failure and the punitive approaches that the Government set for school inspection/improvement.’ It is alarming, because it suggests that this headteacher has accepted (largely, it seems, through sheer fear) the idea that there is one answer (‘the right decision’), rather than appreciating that many of his problems are likely to be highly complex, and a belief in the ‘one answer’ – pushed on him

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by a particular kind of inspectoral system – is unlikely to exist beyond his finding a suitable Ofsted response. It is alarming, then, but for me personally not that surprising anymore: whilst there are headteachers who do manage to rise above such pressures, too often I have also heard comments like those by Penny (Bottery et al., 2013, p. 52), who said that whilst she was very concerned at ‘how desperately boring [the curriculum] had become for children’, she also realized that any alterations at the school needed to be backed up by ‘all kinds of systems and procedures that make sure it works, and lots of record keeping systems, because . . . that will be my evidence to Ofsted’, and that ‘whatever we are discussing, it’s always got the Ofsted element; it’s always there . . . “We can show this to Ofsted” always comes up, no matter what you’re doing.’ These are unhealthy reflections by individuals trapped in an unhealthy and likely unsustainable educational system.

Conclusions ‘Sustainability’ may have seemed a relatively innocuous and positive word at the start of this chapter. Yet it is not, as we have seen, purely descriptive; in all the areas considered, it is prescriptive: it suggests that the sustaining of particular environments and species, of financial and educational systems, are ‘good’ things, and either by maintaining their present functioning, or by changing some of this, there is better likelihood of their overall continuance. Yet such prescription assumes an overt or covert adoption of particular values justifying their sustainability. If this is true for social and economic systems, it is also certainly, if a little surprisingly, true for environmental systems as well. And whilst declines in sustainability in different systems seem to exhibit similar characteristics, and also similar remedies, an initial justification for the valuing of existing forms of systems and practices must be made. This inevitably points to the deep complexity of our interactions with each system, and each system with each other. It is to the further exploration of these issues and the implications of this for the educational leaders’ role that this book now turns.

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CHAPTER THREE

Tame, Wicked and Humble Leadership Introduction The meanings of sustainability then are diverse, and all have embedded within them assumptions about the nature of the ends to which such sustainability is aimed. The embedding of assumptions is not a criticism of the term, for it is difficult to imagine a word like ‘sustainability’ that didn’t indicate that some states of affairs were more desirable than others. Yet it does raise the question of what values are embedded, and how aware people are of their presence. And if such values are not only rooted in the nature of many challenges and problems (e.g. the care for children), but are also embedded in the ways that such problems are dealt with, then this suggests a degree of complexity to problem solving which requires a degree of humility in personal decision-making which is underplayed in most theories of leadership. It also suggests that if such complexity is not recognized, it could result in policies and actions that not only underestimate the nature of problems, but may actually exacerbate them. It is to such issues then that this book now turns.

Living in a complex world Now a point made in previous chapters was that, in real life, cause x does not always lead simplistically to effect y. Many actions do not have single effects: being located within webs of events, actors, reactions and interactions, they may well lead to unexpected and sometimes undesirable results. This at least seems the essential claim of theories about complexity, even if commentators like Morrison (2010) point out that there are many theories about the nature of this concept, underpinned by a variety of different assumptions and purposes. Nevertheless, as Johnson (2009) argues, complex 37

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environmental and human systems do seem to possess the following similar sets of properties: ●

they contain many interacting actors or agents;

●

the behaviour of these individuals is influenced by memory or feedback;

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they can and do adapt their behavioural strategies in the light of their previous histories;

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they are influenced by the environments within which they exist.

For Levy (1992, pp. 7–8), then, complex systems are those whose component parts interact with sufficient intricacy that they cannot be predicted by standard linear equations; so many variables are at work in the system that its overall behaviour can only be understood as an emergent consequence of the holistic sum of all the myriad behaviors embedded within . . . in living systems [therefore] the whole is more than the sum of its parts. And if this is the case, then Marion and Uhl-Bien (2001, p. 397) may well be right when they pithily remark that ‘in contradiction to Einstein, God does play dice with the universe’. Systems therefore may not only evolve in unexpected and complicated ways without any central direction, but also, and paradoxically, they may evolve in surprising ways precisely because of such central direction. The similarities between environmental systems and human cultures and organizations – even with the layer of ‘meaning making’ which Wallace and Fertig (2007) argue humans add to this complexity – also suggest that there are strong parallels between complex behaviours in different systems. In all such systems, then, certainty will diminish the further into the future one tries to predict. In human systems, the recognition of such complexity, and of a consequent unpredictability and lack of control, have all been major reasons over the last two to three hundred years for the greater bureaucratization of society and its organizations (Weber, 1947; Ritzer, 1993). Yet many of the critiques of bureaucratic working over the last few decades have pointed to clashes between the relatively simple approach that bureaucracies tend to adopt and the more nuanced and contextualised ways in which many people need to approach their work if it is to be properly addressed. The organization may, for instance, attempt to retain a simple understanding of reality and in the process fail to respond adequately to a complex and changing external environment (Kanter, 1983; Handy, 1978), or to respond sufficiently quickly to individuals’ understanding of this changing reality. Those implementing policy further down the line may then attempt to deploy more complex implementations of policy by bringing

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their own understandings of contexts and personal motivations to this (Fullan, 1991), and may then be alienated when top-down simplistic interpretations prevent them from making such meaning for themselves (Lipsky, 1980). Many critiques of bureaucracy, then, accept that attempts to reduce complexity, or failures to recognize it, can have damaging effects upon the morale of people within an organization, and on the ability of the organization and its people to adapt to a complex, constantly changing external environment. More generally, it is a dangerous and damaging conceit by those in positions of power to believe that their policies will have the effects – and only the effects – for which they were originally intended. The complex interplay within and between ecological systems and networks has led ecologists to accept that they may have very limited understanding of how systems and ecologies will play out when interfered with. It is why Kay and Schneider (1994, p. 34) argue that we need to take a step back and understand that ‘we don’t manage ecosystems, we manage our interactions with them’. Such ideas have considerable application to the field of educational leadership, as there are many more situations than normally accepted where events cannot be completely controlled because of the complexity of the interactions around such events, and because of the limited nature of individual subjective understandings of the context within which an event is situated. ‘Better’ leaders, then, would perhaps paradoxically be ones who recognize their limitations and their lack of genuine control, and who accept that it makes more sense to work within the limits that reality imposes upon them, and furthermore that it is unethical to impose overambitious and ultimately unworkable plans and strategies upon people which might harm them if this complex nature of reality is ignored. This then is a first injunction for a greater emphasis on the value of humility in leadership.

The tame and the wicked One can take this analysis further by looking at the nature of many complex problems with which human beings need to deal, and here a terminology referred to earlier, and first employed by Rittel and Webber (1973), is very helpful. They suggest that one needs to contrast what they call ‘tame’ with ‘wicked’ problems. Tame problems, as noted before, are not necessarily simple problems; they may be, but they may also be technically quite complex, being distinguished from ‘wicked’ problems by being embedded within clear rules of procedure, clear definitions of the problem, and strong agreement on – or strong imposition of – what is believed to be a successful solution. Examples of tame problems are seen in many different aspects of life. A tame and simple problem would be one where a door is locked, and so a key is needed to turn the lock and open the door. A slightly more

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complex problem would be that of driving from Hull to a hotel in Birmingham. Here one may need to log in the coordinates on a satnav and follow the directions to get to England’s second city. A final tame example is that of stripping down an engine: baffling to the uninitiated, engines are constructed in ways such that they can be stripped down and put together again if the appropriate instruction manual is properly followed. In sum, then, ‘tame’ problems are characterized by a number of features, which to many looking for control and order may make them both attractive and reassuring: 1 They have definitive and usually easily understood formulations, so

if actions are performed in the right order, the problem will be solved, and many times fairly quickly. 2 There is only a limited number of defined ways of understanding the problem, so it only needs performing in the prescribed ways for the problem to be solved. 3 Tame problems are usually standardized in form, and so one can be certain in knowing that the same solutions can be applied in all contexts. 4 If the first attempt at a solution fails, one can be sure that the fault lies in the manner of implementation, and with the implementer: so the same person can re-apply the procedure, or one can replace the individual performing the operation, for correct resolution. Such a distinction applies rather well to differences between management and leadership. Grint (2008, p. 12), for instance, suggests that the difference is ‘rooted in the distinction between certainty and uncertainty’. Tame problems, rooted as they are in certainty, are essentially management problems as they are ‘akin to puzzles for which there is always an answer’. So far, so good – though a major problem arises when individuals believe that the world consists mostly or wholly of such tame problems, as they may then ignore, or fail to see, the limited nature of their understanding of some problems and not take into account their own subjectivity in such judgements. They will tend to assume that the problems they have to deal with are ‘out there’, that these problems can be viewed objectively, and that, given time and information, they personally are perfectly capable of providing a definitive framing of nearly all problems and their solutions, which others can then be left to implement. They may fail to see, however, that they, like everyone else, necessarily impose particular frames on this external world, and it is only through these that they are able to gain some understanding of what is going on. But being creatures of such limited understanding, they will necessarily understand and appreciate only certain elements, only certain parts of a much larger and complex problem; and they will only see this particular part because of their personal framing of the problem.

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Indeed, some might rather unkindly say that if ‘hard’ physical scientists work uncritically within a paradigm definition of their field of study, a paradigm that has strictly defined rules, methods and parameters, they will also only solve problems within those frames, those constraints, within that paradigm (Kuhn, 1970). This would be a very inadequate description of good practice in the physical sciences (Chalmers, 2013), even if some may still practise it in this way. Rayner (2006), for instance, describes how he was ‘accused’ of doing ‘soft’ science because he was a social scientist, to which he replied, ‘[O]n the contrary, I do hard science; you do easy science. You can repeat your experiments; you have control over your experimental context. I don’t’ (p. 1).

Wicked problems Rayner was then referring to the fact that much of life – and by extrapolation much of the work of educational leadership – is not nicely rule-defined, but is much more messy, and many of its problems don’t have clear rules to which ready-made solutions can be applied. These are the kind of problems that Rittel and Webber termed as ‘wicked’, and which have been developed by writers such as Conklin (2006), Rayner (2006) and Bore and Wright (2009). They suggest that ‘wicked’ problems have a number of characteristics: 1

First, there may be no definitive set of rules from which to work. Whilst one can play a game of Monopoly simply by following the stipulated rules, there are no such clear-cut rules for tasks like enhancing creativity in educational institutions; even less so for enhancing creativity in particular classes or faculties in particular schools or universities, at a particular time, with particular individuals, as all of these conditions increasingly make this problem more and more unique.

2

So, individual contexts may affect the nature of problems and demand more individual solutions, as is the case, for example, with virtually every instance of student–teacher interactions when difficulties are encountered in a learning situation.

3

As already argued, a problem’s causation may not be linear: increasing efficiency doesn’t always lead, despite the intention, to less use of a resource. Efficiency in data communication to and from governments and educational institutions has increased dramatically over the last 30 years or so, but it has not led to less use of such means of communication, but instead has expanded central ambitions in the control and direction of such institutions, and thereby led to its increase.

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4 There may be several ways of understanding a problem: so failure to

achieve a target doesn’t necessarily mean that implementers are at fault if only one initial framing of the problem is used, and this does not succeed. Creative attempts at problem solving necessarily involve some leaps into the dark, and because of their very nature cannot guarantee successful outcomes every time. 5 There may also be considerable uncertainty as to whether a problem has been solved, or only its current symptoms have been eliminated; if a student’s truanting behaviour is resolved in the short term by regular house visits, how certain should one be that this resolves all the reasons for non-attendance? 6 Finally, an attempted solution may not resolve the problem, but

simply change its nature: visiting the parents of a student who comes to school hungry may reveal that this carer is finding it hard to cope with four children, but leads to a greater dependency by this parent than the school can supply. Wicked terminology then says something about the nature of external reality, but it is also saying a great deal about the nature of human subjectivity. As Grint (2008, p. 12) argues, ‘the category of wicked problems is subjective not objective – what kind of a problem you have depends on where you are sitting and what you already know’. So, in terms of an external reality, it is being argued that linear tame reactions do occur, but normally in the complex webs of interactions characteristic of many systems. In such systems, there will be many problems that are never repeatable, either because they are unique to a particular context, or because the very act of investigating them alters the nature of the problem. Now those holding to tame approaches may not wish to accept this idea for at least two reasons. One might be psychological: that it can be very comforting to believe that most problems and their solutions exist in some definitive sense, and can therefore be resolved by applying solutions that stand outside particular contexts, and that are therefore believed to be workable regardless of the number of times a solution is used. A second reason for holding such a view might be largely ‘political’: their recognition that the nature of their role is rooted within and largely defined by a system based upon such a tame approach. Such a system therefore expects them to perform in a tame manner – one that conforms to prescriptions devised by senior individuals in a hierarchy, and doesn’t demand creative thinking, but can and should be applied in a rapid and relatively unreflective manner. Now, they may understand that this is simply wrong, or a very bad way of dealing with the problem, but they may also accept that their job, their standing and their mortgage depend at least to a degree upon such conformity. They may then be among those who instead deeply hold that the wicked nature of many problems requires the rejection of such simplicity,

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and as with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in the physical sciences (Chalmers, 2013) would also accept that actions taken are likely to change both the nature and the context of the problem, and that real professional and leadership work requires a constant re-assessment of how a problem is constituted as one proceeds down roads of resolution. This will be a difficult and challenging position – of knowing what should be done, but of knowing what the system wants them to do. ‘Wicked’ approaches also suggest that there can be no ultimate or final description of many problems, because the manner of describing a wicked problem depends on the position and values adopted in framing it. Great caution then needs to be taken in the embrace of any particular interpretation until the context within which it is located is appreciated – and even then such appreciation is unlikely to be complete. Once again, those adopting tame approaches are likely to reject such a description: either because they believe that there is one right way of seeing every problem, and one correct way of resolving it; or because the current ethos and the nature of external pressures socializes them, and may even force them into this way of acting. Either way, when such an approach is adopted at the top of a hierarchy, the predominant approach is for sets of targets to be created which are usually short-term in nature. But these are likely to fail because the nature of the problem has already been determined without a fuller appreciation of potentially diverse and differently informed viewpoints. If such an approach is taken, and the solution fails, a number of consequences may occur. One, as noted by Bangs et al. (2011), is that those politicians and civil servants involved in the initiative may well have moved to another department, or to another problem, and so the ability to reflect and critique on such policy failure is missed, as a new set of policy makers come in with their own framing of problems and their own preferred resolutions of them. Another consequence fits well with the dominant approach globally to professional work (see Levin, 2001): blame the implementers, and, through adopting a tame approach, convince others that there is therefore strong justification for identifying as the major reason for policy failure the implementers themselves, and therefore of the need for more control and direction of their work, and for greater punitive inspection to ensure compliance to tame objectives. The result is then likely to be one that drives out wicked understandings and wicked resolutions, and so is likely to result in even more policy failure. If blame were to be attached, it would seem better aimed at initial definitions of problems and solutions when they are limited and impoverished, rather than at the efforts of those given the task of implementing such approaches. It will be clear then that just as many wicked problems have no ultimate and final descriptions to them, there similarly may be no clear or final definition of their resolutions. As with problems, many wicked solutions should then not be classed as right or wrong, but rather as better or worse, and any solution would then likely be only provisional at best, and it may

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be necessary to dig deeper for better resolutions if or when different symptoms of a problem present themselves. It might also mean, even more problematically, that a wicked problem may be no more than the symptom of something deeper. In this age of fast policies, there is real pressure to produce results to meet organizational deadlines or election schedules, rather than time being made available and taken to develop policies to an appropriately complex depth, and at an appropriate pace to the nature of the problem and the pace of possible institutional change. In such circumstances, there is a real danger that short-term, myopic tame approaches will be given priority, and that such approaches may actually be the cause of a further wicked problem. When combined with the power that hierarchy bestows upon policy makers, the use of targets, performance indicators, rewards and punishments is likely to generate a damaging and unsustainable conception of problem definition as definitive and final, probably accompanied by similarly implausible single ‘silver bullet’ solutions to match. From such a discussion, it will be apparent that the adoption of tame or wicked approaches to problems will have different effects. Those using tame approaches to problems will tend to assume that there is a very limited number of ways of viewing a problem, and a similarly limited number of solutions to resolve it. If this is believed to be the case, then any failure to resolve a problem will therefore be seen as being attributable to those tasked with achieving this resolution. Those using wicked approaches, on the other hand, will want to argue that this is not an issue of truth or falsity, but rather of the framing of better or worse definitions of a problem, a similar creation of better or worse solutions, and better or worse implementations and resolutions. If wicked problems are then being dealt with, assignation of blame for failure could well be inappropriate, as well as being dangerous and damaging to the sustainability of individuals in the system. It is of course perfectly possible that an implementer might fail to resolve a problem because they lack the expertise, energy, effort, intelligence, or application. But it is just as possible that failure of implementation comes from the prior incorrect definition of a problem, and therefore its incorrect identification, and therefore the proposed resolutions. In those situations, where problem definition and resolution are at fault, implementation is almost certain to fail. If blame is then attached to the implementer, they will likely have feelings of guilt, injustice, and a lack of trust and respect (see Bottery, 2004), and they well may consider getting out of the job, just as others may decide it is a job to avoid. So failure may lie as much with the proposed explanation of the problem, with the proposed solution, or with the lack of applicability to a particular context, as it does with the conduct and efforts of the implementers. The inappropriate attachment of blame in such circumstances may then not only be highly unethical, but may also constitute a major threat to the sustainability of leadership, and to the systems within which they work.

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Tame and wicked distinctions, or tame and wicked continua? It would in some ways be attractive if it were always possible to distinguish between simple and tame problems, and so to always know with certainty with which kind one was dealing. But this is unlikely to be the case, as many problems are likely to be mixtures of tame and wicked issues, and separating them out will be extremely problematic, and on some occasions even impossible. Take, for example, achieving checkmate in the game of chess as an example of a problem that possesses both tame and wicked elements. If a wicked problem is characterized by lacking a definitive set of rules from which to work, as argued above, then, as chess has these, checkmate might be seen as a tame problem. The achievement of checkmate also is not affected by individual contexts: the rules and the game stay the same wherever and whoever plays it; checkmate therefore has another tame characteristic. Moreover, wicked problems are those over which there is normally a degree of uncertainty about whether a solution is reached: yet checkmate is clear to all watching a game; so, once again, it has another tame characteristic. Yet, whilst individual moves in a game of chess are pretty linear, the game is highly systemic, for one move affects the power and position of all other pieces, and therefore affects the entire dynamics of the game; in this respect the achievement of checkmate possesses a wicked characteristic. Again, there are usually a variety of ways of understanding and framing a particular problem within a wicked problem, and, once again, this describes checkmate rather well, as different players frame moves and strategies in different ways to achieve this objective, and it may be impossible, a number of moves before the end of the game, to say which is the more correct. Here again, chess has wicked characteristics. Finally, wicked solutions don’t always resolve problems, but merely change their nature; and, once again, this is a good description of what can happen when someone makes a move in chess; it may not end in check-mate, but instead may change the game’s nature and dynamics, and create a new kind or set of challenges for both players. Chess seems then to be a peculiar hybrid of tame and wicked characteristics. It may have standard rules, and may contain linear moves, but these occur in chess ‘stories’ of complex and sometimes unique webs of interactions, where the framing by human players of how to achieve checkmate affects and changes the nature of that problem. And this is a situation paralleled in the lived world: many linear moves and apparently ‘tame’ solutions are located and function within complex systemic relationships, made more complex by the different human framings of what is happening. Much of life then is unlikely to be either ‘tame’ or ‘wicked’, but more likely a mixture of both, that by its nature tends towards the wicked.

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The advent of super-wicked problems? Finally, before moving to examine how an embrace of the notion of wickedity might change the nature of educational leadership, it is important to note that Levin et  al. (2012) suggest there is a further category of problems – what they call a ‘super-wicked’ category – beyond the wicked, located at the macro-level, and which they claim have the following characteristics: 1 that the time is running out for their solution; 2 that short-termist cultural mind-sets prevent the future impact of

such problems from being fully taken into account; 3 that there is no central authority to direct the proposed resolutions; 4 and that those who are trying to resolve the problems are also those

who are causing them. The problems of global warming, energy security, population growth and a culture of economic growth and consumption, it might be argued, fit well here. However, just as ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’ problems may not be separate categories but parts of a continuum, these ‘super-wicked’ problems may also be part of one, if one located at the wicked end. One reason for suggesting this is that there seem to be an increasing number of micro-problems also fitting such a description. Thus, the criteria for super-wicked problems describe the mind-sets of many current policy makers rather well: for a variety of reasons, they see problems as always urgent and needing solving in short time-frames, a consequence of which is that future impacts and concerns are downgraded; the market is increasingly used as final arbiter of who will be winners and losers; and when the market is not the final resort, in most cases central authority lacks the knowledge to fully control the solutions. So by taking such an attitude they create further wicked problems. Educational leaders will then need to prepare their colleagues and students for the nature and effects of such problems in the future, even as they and their institutions are victims of these kinds of problems because of current policy approaches.

Changing the nature of educational leadership This discussion then suggests a continuum of problems and their solutions, and in real life many ‘problems’ may actually consist of smaller ‘tame’ and ‘wicked’ problems. This is important because it prevents a too-quick separation into the tame and the wicked. Nevertheless, it is the wicked end of such a continuum that needs most attention, as it is the end that has received insufficient consideration. If this is the case, it then needs to be asked: how can educational leaders achieve better ‘wicked’ understandings of problems and communicate such understanding to others? Perhaps

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even more crucially, how does this change the nature and practice of leadership? A first change comes in the recognition that there is no one way of understanding reality: that individuals are highly likely to frame problems in different ways, and with different results, because they tend to see the world in different ways, and place different values on things, from which they derive different selections of ‘what matters’. Thus, as noted earlier, whilst some (e.g. Oreskes and Conway, 2012; Washington and Cook, 2011; Monbiot, 2007) have argued that differences over climate change are largely down to the malign influences of those with financial interests in maintaining the production and consumption of fossil fuels (and they do provide convincing evidence that this occurs on a wide scale), Hulme (2009) provides a more nuanced explanation: that there are also a variety of frames – scientific, economic, ethical – through which climate change can be and is understood – and over which there can be intense disagreement. Indeed, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ) has pointed out, climate change is the product of variations in population growth, economic growth, amount of energy use, type of energy use and degree of technological innovation (IPCC , 2014). In such circumstances, it would actually be rather surprising if there was complete agreement within each of these areas, never mind agreement over the degree to which each contributes to global warming. This is the major reason why the IPCC provides a variety of different projections for global warming, just as there are a similar variety of projections for population growth. This doesn’t, of course, dispense with the problem of the malign influences; but it does suggest that even if ‘evidence’, ‘reason’, and ‘objectivity’ held sway, there would still be many issues to resolve before an agreement on problem definition was reached. In a similar manner, educational leaders need to be very aware of combinations of such processes in dealing with problems in their area, of the need to reflect upon how others might frame issues very differently from themselves, of how they need to move beyond their own position and consciously compare different viewpoints. One critical role for educational leadership, then, is the need to help others to do so, for as Fairhurst and Starr (1996, p. 3) argue, ‘When we share our frames with others (the process of framing), we manage meaning because we assert that our interpretations should be taken as real over other possible interpretations.’ This could be taken as meaning that the leadership position should be that of asserting and imposing one’s own views on others; it might indeed be a description of more extreme forms of transformational leadership, where leadership is seen as almost evangelically promulgating an educational vision, which through the force of personality others are persuaded to follow. However, this is not the only possibility. Such awareness of framing can be used to help others communicate their understandings much better, for a greater consciousness of the framing process allows evidence and values to be surfaced and then to be compared and discussed, and to allow

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resolutions to follow from this. As Fairhurst argues (2005, p.  178), at its best, framing is in actuality ‘an invitation to joint sense-making’. It is in fact the blind use of framing, where the process is not recognized and understood even whilst it is being practised, that causes much more difficulty. Here Barge’s (2007) work is important because it points to a further leadership activity with respect to framing, and that is the teaching of an awareness of the process. Within a framework that emphasizes a mutual dialogue of framing rather than an imposition of one frame, such activity can heighten an awareness of the variety of discourses that may be used by stakeholders, and, through such understanding, deeper forms of communication may be developed. This leadership function can then be an empowering one, for it raises the consciousness of others as to the meanings that they and others are using, and can provide guidance in how to probe more deeply into ways of achieving better interactions and understandings. A second change also comes in the recognition that there is no one way of understanding reality, and unsurprisingly that this almost necessarily leads to the championing of complex and wicked approaches to the role of leadership. For some this may already be a way of thinking, but sometimes this notion is understood intuitively but not articulated. When such articulation fails to happen, wicked formulations of problems and solutions are not as effectively communicated to others, and weaknesses in the framing of problems and resolutions are likely to occur. Educational leaders then need to be able not only to formulate and enunciate the essentials of wicked understandings of reality, but also to explain to others how such an understanding can and should inform policies, and how such understandings can underpin reasoned objections to those policies that attempt to impose ‘tame’ realities, tame problems and tame solutions onto individuals and institutions. This is not just a practical necessity, but an ethical commitment as well, and extends the position taken by Popper (1966) when he argued that a form of decision-making based upon rationality and logic, rather than one derived from an acceptance of decision-making based upon others’ political authority, is fundamentally an ethical one, because such stances ‘deeply affect our whole attitude towards other men (sic), and towards the problems of social life’. Whilst it is perfectly true that tame approaches are also based on rationality and logic, the avoidance of recognizing the epistemological base upon which wicked problems are founded will likely lead to a less complex view of reality than is required for most problem framing and resolution. Indeed, not only does a wicked view of reality argue for a principled objection to tame impositions, but because human beings necessarily apply wicked understandings to the natural as well as the human world, it also provides a better understanding of a necessary relationship between ourselves and other living things on this planet. A third change to leadership practice is that thinking in complex and wicked ways affects the nature of the solutions that it fosters. In wicked situations, both the framing of problems as well as the creation of solutions,

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may only be the beginnings of a process. Chosen solutions in particular may well demonstrate all the issues mentioned earlier: they may not be appropriate if the framing of the problem is poor; they may only reveal that deeper problems require deeper solutions; and ‘silver’ or ‘magic bullet’ solutions, where single targeted remedies are seen as capable of entirely resolving the problem, are unlikely to work, as such one-shot solutions will probably be located within tame policy approaches. More appropriate solutions have been variously described (Rayner, 2006; Grint, 2008; Verweij et al., 2011) as silver buckshot or ‘clumsy’ solutions, because they do not pretend to be complete answers, but only the best possible at any moment in time. They may only partly work, but whatever impact they have, they are better constructed to provide evidence for deeper understanding of the problem, and therefore of the creation of better targeted solutions. Many leaders dealing with wicked problems then, despite living in a blame culture, should not berate themselves or their colleagues when a solution based on the best available evidence does not work. This should not be described as shared failure, but as the best attempt from what is known, and which now becomes an opportunity for reflection on how to frame the problem better, and so make the solution(s) more appropriate. Learning from failure was, interestingly, a key element of successful organizational cultures described in the mid-1980s by Peters and Waterman (1986), but which still seems to escape the understanding of many today. The fourth and final change to educational leadership argued for here lies in the very formulation of leadership itself. The act of embracing the notions of complexity and wickedity, the acceptance with many problems of the necessity for clumsy solutions, and the need for a dialogic comparison of different framings of problems and solutions are all based upon the recognition that leaders’ epistemological, personal and contextual limitations are located within the complex nature of the systems within which they work. This realization should be used to help greater acknowledgement of the need for the framing of problems and their solutions, as well as for the framing of visions and strategies, to be performed not by one but by a combination of intelligences. This suggests the adoption of a particular form of distributed leadership, for as Marion and Uhl-Bien (2001, p. 390) argue, it requires a movement beyond seeing leadership as concerned with the persuasion of others to a particular frame or vision. Instead, leadership through recognizing such systemic complexity should focus more upon facilitating an understanding of the ‘processes for managing dynamic systems and inter-connectivity’ (p.  390). A leader’s role would then move from providing answers and/or strong direction to others and focus more upon ‘creating the conditions within which followers’ behaviors can produce structure and innovation’ (p.  394). In other words, they would need to act less as creators of developments, and more as catalysts, as they ‘create transformational environments, rather than creating the innovation itself’. In so doing they ‘drop seeds of innovation rather than mandating

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innovation plans’. For many, this would be a radical change to the role of the educational leader, but it would likely be the best way of bringing as many intelligences, as many frames, as is possible to bear upon the many wicked problems educators need to deal with.

Conclusion: Tame, wicked and humble leadership Framing, complexity, distribution, wickedity, empowerment, reflexivity, provisionality, clumsy and silver-buckshot solutions, and the creation of a leadership that facilitates an environment within which these can be practised – these are then the suggestions for the beginnings of a model of leadership necessary for coping with the challenges to sustainability faced currently. It is very different from ‘tame’ conceptions of the role, and is at odds with the role many governments seem to want to advocate for educational leaders. Yet, as we have seen, such concepts do not just apply to the educational contexts of leadership work, nor indeed only to the national policy contexts within which much leadership work is framed. They also apply to global contexts, systems and challenges. The key word – the key ethic – for such a leadership model is then the rather surprising one of humility, for the understanding that is gained from such reflection is one of humanity’s necessary limitations, of highly constrained and framed individual boundaries, and therefore of the need for applying strong personal boundaries to the exercise of individual judgements, and therefore of the need for these to be supplemented by the understandings of other consciousnesses. This calls for a real humility in accepting and working from an understanding of the limits of personal knowledge. This ethic of humility would however be quite distinct from other interpretations of the virtue. It is not the kind of ethic described by St. Benedict (in Grenberg, 2005, p. 2) where it is advocated that each person should consider themselves ‘lower and of less account than anyone else’. Similarly, it is not what Hume (1994, p. 219) called a ‘monkish virtue’ – an acceptance of meekness, and of one’s inferiority to others. It is certainly not the kind described by Dickens’ (1983, p. 291) Uriah Heep, who told everyone he met he was a ‘very ’umble person’, which was seen by him – and most others – as a way of simply gaining social admiration, which then amounted to little more than the adoption of a set of behaviours to gain personal ends. Indeed, it is probably this combination of saintly virtue, self-abasement and manipulative ploy that has led some – like Hume – to reject it as a virtue, and to transfer it from any list of virtues, and instead to place it, as he said, ‘in the catalogue of vices’ (p. 219). Indeed, Grenberg (2005, pp. 6–7) suggests that ‘to give an account of a virtue which is meant to bring us to terms with our own limits promises to be a difficult task’ and that to make it a central virtue ‘needs to make an appreciation of human limits central to its grounding’.

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Yet the argument of this chapter – and much throughout this book – is to suggest that all human beings are subject to the same limiting epistemological conditions, and therefore to suggest the need to recognize the necessary limits and dangers of individual human decision-making – and of the need to counteract this by calling upon as many other views as is possible. The ethic of humility argued for here then points towards much greater degrees of consultation and participation both in decision-making, and in the understanding of the need for this. It would apply to all, even to those who would regard themselves as amongst the most knowledgeable, intelligent and powerful, and would suggest that many of the problems of sustainability – at global, national, institutional and personal level – are infected by the impact of variations and degrees of both conscious and unconscious hubris. From counselling against an unjustified personal certainty in the real nature of a problem, through to a rashness of decisionmaking, when thought is not given (or the time is not permitted) for proper reflection, and then on to decisions based on the arrogance of power, this kind of humility notes the obvious: that Grenberg’s (2005, p. 7) ‘appreciation of human limits’ is precisely the ground from which humanity in general, and educational leadership in particular, needs to begin its problems solving, and from which responses are developed that are appropriate to such limits. Such understanding then suggests an educational role that facilitates problem and solution definitions rather more than personally deciding upon them. It has to be said that this will never be fully realized without similar changes taking place elsewhere in systems, which facilitate their role in this direction. These will be discussed later in the book, particularly in Chapter Nine. In the next chapter, however, this critique is developed further by looking at the hubristic assertions of the dominant school of economic thought currently, and how the application of its concepts have led not only to challenges to social and environmental sustainability, but to personal and leadership sustainability as well.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Efficiency, Sufficiency and Educational Leadership

Introduction Previous chapters have shown how dealing with the formulation and resolution of problems in educational leadership may not be so different from problems seen in other systems. An important part of this – and therefore of challenges to their sustainability – may lie in a lack of appreciation of the kinds of problems they face, which leads to their inappropriate framing, and to the proposal of inadequate solutions. This chapter develops this argument by examining the concept of efficiency, as it is a strong example of how an important idea can undermine sustainability when applied in over-simplistic ways. It is not only a concept inappropriately employed in societal and global economic functioning: its misuse can and does affect the sustainability of many other levels and the people working in them, including educational leaders. So whilst the concept undoubtedly has a role to play in societal functioning, this chapter suggests that its role has been overemphasized and that another concept – that of sufficiency – should be developed and on many occasions substituted for it. It will be argued that this is a key move in creating a more sustainable practice not only for educational leadership, but for many other areas as well.

Efficiency as an unsustainable concept Over the last few decades, there have been attempts across the globe to make cars more efficient in their use of petrol, it being assumed that if this happens they will have less-harmful effects upon the environment. Yet the very opposite can happen, because fuel savings can then be spent on more fuel, which then leads to increased driving, and hence to the greater 53

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emission of pollutants. What then looks like a simple process turns out to be rather more complicated. Indeed, there are many interactions reverberating unnoticed through systems in uncontrollable and unpredictable ways, and if they are assumed to be simple, this may cause great damage in the long run. The term ‘efficiency’ fits rather well the description of a complex issue being categorized as relatively simple, as its current role is normally viewed as a ratio between a very small number of variables. If the ratio is between cars and the consumption of petrol, it is then assumed that individual factors such as efficient engines or petrol consumption can be extracted from much larger social contexts. Efficiency then tends to individualize and separate out particular factors, locating them within a linear model of causality with very limited time spans, where a is assumed to simply affect b. However, not just a and b may be involved: c, d, n, p, or y may also be affected. Indeed, individualized, linear and short-term impacts are highly unlikely to be the final result of many interactions. An engine made more efficient may encourage people to travel more, and the efficient engine might end up creating more pollution. However, it may also stimulate more demand because driving becomes more affordable, which will likely lead to more people wanting more cars, and more cars require more oil, iron and steel, more roads, tyres, and petrol stations. The result is likely to be even more damaging to the environment, to further reduce its sustainability. A focus on efficiency may then lead to greater, not less, pressure on resources, because more-efficient procedures make goods more available – and when that happens, the use of such resources tends to expand. As Hallett (2013, p.  69) put it: ‘Better appliances, better cars, better farming, better planes, better lights: they all result in more consumption.’ Increased efficiency may then mean more, not less, consumption, and more, not less, usage of natural resources. The complexity of a non-linear world then leads to results not predicted by simpler, linear views of causality. There are many other examples of a focus on the apparently simple hiding much more complex outcomes. For example, the false efficiencies of email will resonate with many. Email is quicker and easier than most other forms of communication, and also produces significant savings on paper. It may even, some might argue, be preferable to face-to-face communication as it can prevent a conversation going in directions other than its original purpose. It seems to be a highly efficient form of communication. Yet how often do people dread the return to work after a holiday because of the mountains of emails waiting for them? What happened to the promise that it would reduce the time spent on sending messages? The problem, as most users realize, is that emails do not create simple causal relationships, but generate more complex ones. One message may be time-saving in itself, but this apparent ease and cost-effectiveness means that many more messages can – and therefore will – be sent than

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would be possible by letters and post. Moreover, as emails can be multi-sent simultaneously, the effort of mass communication is reduced a thousandfold for the sender, even as it means that there are many more (increasingly overburdened) receivers. Finally, the fact that individuals can be cc’d into an ongoing email exchange means no more effort for the sender than a click of the mouse, but for the receiver it normally entails reading a set of emails with the need to decipher their ongoing meaning before the most recent can be understood. Emails may then seem more efficient, but they are a premium example of an increased, not decreased, expenditure of time and effort, by receivers at least, as an apparently simple action has a variety of unexpected consequences. A second weightier example is the more efficient extraction of coal, which was the backbone of the industrial revolution and of Britain’s political and economic dominance in the 18th and 19th centuries. As dependence upon this fossil fuel was increasingly recognized, an investment in more-efficient technology was seen as a way of reducing the amount used, and therefore of extending the use of the resource. However, W. S. Jevons argued at the time that not only would decreases in usage not happen, but rather that improving the efficiency of extraction would increase its usage. Whilst he was aware that many thought that through efficiency savings ‘the coal thus saved would be, for the most part, laid up for the use of posterity’, he argued, ‘It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth’ (in Hallett, 2013, p.  41). Jevons was right: efficiency was increased, but so was coal production and consumption. Nor, of course, did greater efficiency increase environmental sustainability, as the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution heavily contributed to the environmental damage. So when a prominent advocate of environmental sustainability such as Heinberg (2011, p. 171) takes a positive view of the efficiency of LED lighting, one perhaps needs to be a little bit cautious: Energy efficiency is a worthy goal. When we exchange old incandescent light bulbs for new LED lights that use a fraction of the electricity and last far longer, we save energy and resources – and that’s a good thing. Full stop. It may well be a good thing, but it is unlikely to be good, full stop, as it uses the same logic of the fuel-efficient car, the email and the extraction of coal. When tested by the complexity of real-world interactions, the argument for efficiency may well be turned on its head. A final example of the problem of efficiency comes from education, though it could also come from any other area of the public sector in the Western world. As Levin (2003) has pointed out, two of the most popular assumptions with regard to their running over the last 20 to 30 years have been:

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1 Educational standards can be more efficiently raised when a

workforce is firmly controlled and monitored from the centre, and accountability regimes are created to ensure compliance. 2 Educational standards can also be more efficiently raised when quality is defined by the centre, measured in publicly observable ways, and accountability regimes are used to ensure compliance. In both cases, the logic is again pretty linear: x (firm central control and monitoring, defining and measuring of quality, and punishment for noncompliance) will cause y (successful and creative workforces, and the raising of standards). Most of x and y are seen as desirable, and because many educational workforces have become increasingly less trusted, the setting up of control and measurement systems is also seen as necessary, even desirable. Yet once again, increases in efficiency here normally mean more, not less, work for those tasked with having to implement such requirements, and efficiency therefore requires more, not less, resource in terms of time and effort from them. For just as with the more efficient car, the use of emails and the extraction of coal, this efficiency thinking rests upon the crucial assumption that there are no intervening variables, no other events that make y less likely, and therefore the use of x less sensible. Yet, as argued elsewhere (Bottery, 2004) with respect to the diminution of trust between governments and most public sector groups, the development of such relationships is a two-way process, and when actions and pronouncements from governments make clear their lack of trust in these occupational groups, the effects are usually and unsurprisingly pretty negative and can include lowered morale, more stress and increasingly negative feelings to those initiating such exchanges. Such actions and reactions will then not bode well for the group’s morale, and in turn may well affect sustainability through lowered effort and commitment, and a decreasing desire to remain in the post. Moreover, from an occupational group’s point of view, not only are such views hurtful and insulting: many within the group will view the assumptions behind such behaviour as damagingly simplistic because they fail to recognize the diverse range of stakeholders to whom they must respond. These include politicians, civil servants, businesses, parents and children, who present a range of diverse and many times incommensurable demands and values. They must then respond to these stakeholders, but also recognize the demands of the particular context within which they work, whilst also wishing to listen to their own internal moral compass because this is a vocation that they care about, at the same time as they are told that as an occupational group they are not really trusted. As Hoyle and Wallace (2005) and Starr (2015) argue with respect to educational leaders, the reality can then be a life of paradox, irony and ambiguity, a deep and complex causal reality and challenge to which many in positions of power appear blind, and which may then be a major reason for fewer individuals wishing to take on the leadership role, and for more leaders wishing to retire early.

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Efficiency in a wider societal role Such criticisms of efficiency extend into its role in society. By occupying a disproportionately important role in the functioning of many of today’s societies, its embrace as a dominant concept in both social and economic language facilitates the wider adoption of simple and linear solutions to problems, when many need to be viewed as non-linear and complex. Such a mistake has profound effects upon educational, societal and environmental functioning. This is exacerbated by the fact that over the last couple of centuries it has acquired a high level of uncritical approval. Simply calling an action ‘efficient’ – defined as the intention to get more out of something for less effort – has come to provide it with an unmerited degree of endorsement. Both economic growth and efficiency have become ‘hurrah’ words, largely assumed to be beyond criticism. Yet as Princen (2005, p. 1) notes, it used to have a much richer meaning, going back as far as Aristotle, and normal prior to the industrial revolution, which incorporated into its meaning a contribution to social value. Its current restricted sense comes from its employment in dominant economic discourse, where it means no more than a measure of getting more out with less effort. Other concerns – like the quality of the service or the goods involved – are now not part of any judgement about efficiency. Its restricted meaning was raised to new heights in the early 20th century with F. W. Taylor’s (1911) advocacy of scientific management, and has come to be seen as a critical standard by which to judge the quality of performance. Sometimes it has become the critical standard. Bobbitt (1918, p.  42), for example, argued that a good education was an efficient education, because all one needed to do was observe the specific activities by which human life was conducted. Then, through observing these ‘abilities, attitudes, habits, appreciation and forms of knowledge that men [sic] need . . . one could arrive simply and efficiently at the objectives of a school curriculum’. As he concluded, ‘The curriculum will then be that series of experiences which children and youth must have by way of attaining these objectives.’ The problem here, as with much else in scientific management, and efficiency studies in particular, is that methodical and scientific means are used to measure what is the case, but they all fail pretty miserably to consider or determine what ought to be the case. This is why Princen (2005, p. 57) argues that whilst efficiency has become the quantitative measure in judging how well a task is performed, in doing so, it substituted ‘a philosopher’s concern for social meaning and purpose for the engineer’s concern for mechanical precision’. Those driven by efficiency in this discourse of sustainability may then know, as Oscar Wilde observed, the price of most things, but will probably fail to see the value of anything. As argued earlier, one needs to think about what should be sustainable before one goes about making it so. The danger of allocating a dominant role to efficiency is that the richness and purpose of human activity is stripped from consideration,

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and the focus becomes a much more limited universe of the economic, the calculable and the controllable. Efficiency then as currently used helps to curtail descriptions of the depth, the variety and the complexity of human pursuits, including that of educational activity, as it and other economic concepts became increasingly intrusive in the social world. Efficiency, by being allowed to climbed high up the hierarchy of economic terms, has had great impact on policy directions, but then has largely lost its – and the policy’s – soul in the process. Those, then, who would use efficiency as a major concept in their view of human life, and of educational purposes, need to consider that much of what human beings value, and what needs valuing, are simply not addressed by the term. As will be seen in Chapter Ten, when discussing the role of wellbeing, even mainstream right-of-centre politicians now seem to accept this limitation. Either its use then needs restricting to those few instances where linear causality is assured, or it needs to be better balanced with other concepts that recognize the complex long-term webs of interactions, and wider views of the purposes of human existence which constitute the reality of education and educational leadership. A crucial factor in such a better balance, it will then be argued, is a greater appreciation of the notion of sufficiency, and of its role not only in education, but in society generally.

Sufficiency as an imperative value Now some might see ‘sufficiency’ as a rather weak term, with little more than metaphorical implications. However, the term possesses a number of meanings, which when closely examined suggest not only that it has considerably more strength than might be thought, but also that it has considerable application beyond the environmental origins from which it currently derives its impact. This being the case, it can be a key value in education and in society as well. In Chapter Two, it was mentioned how Boulding (1968/89) had described the possible relationships between human beings and the environment as between seeing the world through cowboy eyes and seeing it as if one were permanently on a spaceship. Whilst the former view was predicated on the belief in an unlimited supply of resources, the latter was based upon the idea of living on a world of finite resources, which needed to be consumed much more carefully, and from which waste needed to be recycled. In an age when the human population was so small that it had marginal effects upon the ecosphere, the cowboy view may have been understandable. However, in a world of 7 billion, projected to rise to 9 billion by the middle of the century, a cowboy approach looks positively suicidal. Boulding’s sobering judgement was that we were practising a cowboy economics in a spaceship world. This seems even more justified today. Forty years on, Princen (2005, pp. 28–30) talked of the cowboy world as a frontier world, but he split the spaceship world into two in an attempt to

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describe different emerging understandings. So he argued that in an environmental protection world, whilst there is a greater acceptance of the spaceship metaphor, there is still room on this spaceship for policy tradeoffs between environmental protection and the pursuit of more economic growth and consumer behaviour. However, he also suggested – as have others (e.g. Meadows et al., 2004; World Wildlife Fund, 2008) – that human activity on this spaceship has been unsustainable since the 1980s. The emphasis, he therefore suggested, needs to move from the primacy of economic growth and consumer satisfaction to the maintenance and protection of the environment within which such human activity takes place. This he described as the sustainability world, where the maintenance of non-replaceable environmental attributes such as clean water, clean air, and biodiversity are not negotiable or tradable concerns. On this worldview, societies should ensure that the environment is maintained to at least present levels. This is a radical step, for it denies the primacy of dominant societal values such as economic growth, efficiency and consumerism, and argues instead that these are permissible only within the limits set by such environmental stipulations. In sum, at one end of a spectrum is the frontier world, where the values of consumption, growth and efficiency are preeminent, and where resources are seen as limitless, where linear causation is accepted, where there is almost an arrogance in the certainty of our understanding of how the ecosphere functions, where increased caution is seen as unnecessary, even timid, and where planning only needs to be short term. The environmental protection world occupies a varying middle ground, where policy is negotiable in a trade-off between the dominant economic and consumerism paradigms, and that of those concerned with environmental well-being. At the other end of this spectrum is the sustainability world, where the unrestricted pursuit of consumption, growth and efficiency is rejected, and where resources are seen as limited and declining. There is also here a profound acceptance of the limitations in our understanding of what we do and what we affect, that therefore both caution and humility are essential, and that the life-spans of policies and strategies need to be much more commensurate with the life-span of the planet and its resources. This end of the spectrum then views the preservation of the environmental as nonnegotiable, with other human wants and desires needing to accommodate to this position. On this spectrum, sufficiency then has weak, moderate and imperative implications. In the frontier world, it has a very weak environmental implication, because the natural environment is viewed as infinitely exploitable, and it is assumed that there are virtually unlimited means to satisfy human wants. In the environmental protection world, sufficiency has stronger implications, for here environmental resources are recognized as being finite and deemed worthy of consideration in policy trade-offs with human wants. In the sustainable world, however, sufficiency has very strong,

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even imperative, implications, for as human wants and needs are now seen as ultimately dependent upon the health of the environment within which they are situated, ambitions for more growth and consumption need to defer to environmental concerns. In this world, then, the activities of resource consumption, extraction, pollution and economic growth are only permissible to the extent that they leave the environment intact for perpetuity. If this cannot be achieved, then current levels of economic growth and consumption and society itself must change, not the environment. If one applies this argument to education and educational leadership, some of the policy and management in both the public and private sectors over the past few decades can justifiably be described as frontier management. The practices of ‘greedy organizations’ (Gronn, 2003), for instance, have viewed their members as heavily exploitable in the search for higher standards, larger profits and greater productivity. Some agendas, however, like those concerned with work/life balances and the importance of trust, seem to be better located in Princen’s world of environmental protection, as human beings may still be treated as means to ends; but it is better recognized that these human resources are finite. In sum, the same ends as those of the frontier world are likely to be sought, but with rather more concern for the resources. However, the evidence described so far suggests that a situation may be approaching where the care of these ‘resources’ needs to be seen as an imperative rather than a tradable position. This is for two reasons. First, when organizational wants and needs ultimately depend upon the health of the human resources that deliver these, and yet the extraction and consumption of such resources occur faster than they can be replaced, there are pragmatic reasons for policies prioritizing humane concerns. With such a position, policies would only be acceptable when the degree of ‘resource’ use leaves such resources intact – in other words, which puts the care of individual human actors before political, economic, or organizational demands. And if such prioritization is not compatible with current demands for speed of implementation, or the raising of particular standards, then it would be this speed, these standards, that would need to change, not those who are given the job of achieving them. A second reason is seen both in the environmental and leadership literature, and suggests that in both cases such ‘resources’ should be viewed as beings having value in their own right. On this kind of argument, then, human beings should attempt to preserve other species, not only because they might be of value as useful resources to human beings, but because they have a right to existence, regardless of the contribution to human welfare. In similar vein, human beings should be regarded and treated in true Kantian fashion as ends in themselves, not simply as means to organizational or policy objectives. Both of these arguments suggest a much more sustainable mind-set. Safeguarding the environment is then not about the more efficient

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consumption and extraction of resources, but rather about accepting the rights of other species, and understanding better the limited resilience of the complex systems within which they live, as well as our own limitations in understanding these. It means recognizing how careful and potentially limited the types and degrees of human intervention need to be, and that these might need to be managed with a long-term view to their impacts. In like manner, making educational leaders, their institutions, and the systems within which they work more sustainable means challenging attempts to extract ever-increasing amounts of work, every last drop of effort, in order to rack up record results in competition with other institutions, other countries. It signifies, as elsewhere, the need to treat human beings as ends in themselves, rather than primarily as means to ends. It demands an understanding and acceptance of the limitations in the resilience and vulnerability of both individuals and the complex organizations within which they work, and hence a recognition of the limitations in the type and degrees of intervention. It means managing these interventions with an eye to their impact on the present and the future of human society. Finally, it suggests that a lowering of some official standards may be good, not only because of the human cost of their prosecution, but because these standards may be measuring the wrong things for a more sustainable society.

Sufficiency as a necessary but not a sufficient condition The notion of sufficiency could then be a real improvement on a notion of economics based heavily around the concept of efficiency. Yet in its various forms – weak, moderate and imperative – it still sounds as if it is working the same street as efficiency; as if it is dealing with resources, things to be used by others for their benefit. It could then be argued that both efficiency and sufficiency view people and other living creatures within a frame of being resources, and that people and other creatures would then only be worthy of consideration to the extent that they satisfy needs of others – whether these be individual appetites, organizational wants, or national economic policies. Certainly, this resource frame is a necessary one, but it is not a sufficient one – it doesn’t define all for which humans and other living things have purpose. A more nuanced grounding for sufficiency would be to accept the need to view them in particular contexts as resources, but to curb this resource framing by viewing people as resourceful humans. Such a view would emphasize that people and other living creatures need treating much more than currently as ends in themselves, where their care and well-being are fundamental concerns, irrespective of their utility. This better appreciates that social and economic sustainability must be based on more than notions of sufficiency, even if they are imperative notions, as they also need to be

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based on the promotion of the well-being of those living within such systems. Sufficiency is then a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sustainability.

Sustainability, sufficiency and changing leadership values Educational leadership and the environment then share basic underlying issues of sustainability. In both, a lack of sustainability can be due to a linear and too-certain human vision of causality, an inattention to the valuing and maintenance of the resources, and an inappropriate emphasis upon a technical concept of efficiency. Ecologically and educationally, a nuanced understanding of the notion of sufficiency can lead beyond consideration of weak and moderate towards an imperative conception of the term. However, to operationalize this, at least four attitudinal changes will be required. A first, as argued in the last chapter, would be a greater acceptance of an ethic of humility, because of the provisional nature of human knowledge, and therefore of the degree of caution needed in policies and their implementation. Because human beings are limited by their historical, geographical, social and sensory positions, there are necessary limitations to their understanding of the world around them. This was beautifully expressed by Popper (1982, p. 111), when talking about the limits to the claims of science, as he argued that: the empirical base of objective science has . . . nothing ‘absolute’ about it. Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. In like manner, many of the judgements of educational leaders must also be provisional. This does not entail an embrace of relativity, however, for in adopting rationality, logic and the use of evidence as the means to make judgements between different claims, leaders are, as Popper argued, making a moral stance against accepting the unquestioning imposition of views by others. But such provisionality does suggest the need for considering a diversity of viewpoints, as well as a tolerance of opinions different from one’s own. Greater emphasis upon the need for such personal humility (Bottery, 1998, p. 168) will likely be very threatening for some, apparently challenging their status and expertise; these will likely include not just some professionals,

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but managers and policy makers as well. Yet recognizing personal fallibility is not an acknowledgement of failure but an acceptance of being human. It fits well with the recognition that there will never be a full understanding of how systems work, and what the final effect of actions will be upon them. This is well illustrated by the case of tipping points, and Lenton et  al.’s (2008) suggestion that one of the reasons for the slow reactions to current sustainability crises is because of assumptions about the ‘smooth projections of climate change’ (p. 1792), even as the evidence increasingly suggests that the dynamics of change involve these sudden ‘tipping points’, critical thresholds ‘at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system’ (p. 1786). Such environmental phenomena have been applied to human situations as well (Gladwell, 2000), suggesting once again that it is very difficult, even impossible, to predict outcomes in complex systems. In such circumstances, believing in the certainty of policies, practices and leadership amounts to dangerous hubris. Given such an epistemological position, and an accompanying personal humility, another logical change would be in the adoption of greater caution in dealing with complex systems, and in how one deals with the actors in those complex systems. One of its most radical exemplifications in terms of global sustainability is probably in Principle 15 – the Precautionary Principle – of the 1992 UN Rio Conference, which argued, ‘Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation’ (in Rogers, Jalal, and Boyd, 2008, p. 98). If the same principle were applied to human systems, it would mean that when serious concerns were expressed about the effects of policy outcomes on the well-being of those impacted, the amelioration of such damage would be the priority, and remedial action would be taken before any damage was irreversible. This is not a simple issue, and it passes the onus from those who are affected by policy to those generating it. This has produced considerable protest in parts of the business world (Myers, 2002), it being argued that such a principle stifles not only the ability to conduct normal business, but that it also stifles innovation. Nevertheless, it is a further signal that humanity is moving from believing that it lives in a cowboy world, to accepting that this world has more of the qualities of a spaceship. A third attitudinal change derives from the environmental insight that one needs to reflect upon appropriate time spans for properly sustainable policies. Felling a tree requires consideration of the time for a similar kind of tree to grow to maturity; understanding the long-term effects of human actions on ecosystems, and of their ability to recover from change or damage, are both complex and long term. Similarly, in human organizational terms, as already seen, short-termism tends to be part of the nexus of assumptions and values surrounding policies of economic growth, efficiency and consumption, and such assumptions and values, whilst beginning in the private sector, now also affect the working of the public sector. In education,

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then, there are real tensions between the short-termism of the next test result, the next balance sheet, the next inspection, and the impact of such approaches on students’ attitudes to learning over a lifetime, to job fulfilment over a career in education, and on the ultimate well-being and sustainability of the individuals, institutions and society within which such policies are pursued. A fourth change would be a much greater approval of ‘slack’. This may seem surprising, for the term can carry connotations of the inactive or sluggish, the negligent or the remiss. Such associations tend to be derived from the kind of heavily economically influenced linguistic universe most societies currently inhabit, where quick growth, productivity and consumption are viewed as ‘better’ than more relaxed practices or behaviours. In this universe, ideal practices are those that are hyper-efficient, highly controlled and ‘just-in-time’. Yet these assumptions have the kinds of practices attached to them that have led not only to severe environmental challenge but to organizational stress as well. And ‘slack’ has other meanings, other underpinning assumptions, which fit a different, more sustainable universe. Slack can mean being relaxed, having time for reflection and judgement, something that is not so taut that it is likely to snap. Indeed, ‘engineering tolerance’ precisely captures the value of such a notion, for the specification of such tolerances in the production of machinery is recognized as essential for safety purposes, as it allows sufficient leeway for variability in performance without damaging the machines involved. If slack is antithetical to a universe of economic concerns for quick growth, productivity and consumption, it is central to one preventing damage to the things that produce the goods or performance in the first place, and to fostering wellbeing and sustainability. Thus DeMarco (2001, p. 2), writing from a business perspective, argues that a better definition of slack is ‘the degree of freedom required to effect change’. Such slack, then, refers not only to ‘time slack’ but ‘control slack’ as well – and alludes to the need for individual discretion and professional judgement. Slack, he suggests, is the ‘natural enemy of efficiency, and efficiency is the natural enemy of slack’. He also points out that the exercise of creativity needs space, time and individual freedom, and efficiency by its nature is uncomfortable with these concepts. As he argues (p. 3), we live in an age of performativity where it is assumed that ‘organizations are effective only to the extent that all their workers are totally and externally busy’. Yet when an ability to reflect upon and ameliorate challenges to the sustainability of social, economic and environmental arenas is increasingly not a choice but an imperative, a high-stakes, highly controlled, immediate delivery mentality prevents the proper degree or kind of consideration of such change. Slack then can create the time, space and freedom for reinvention to happen. As DeMarco pithily remarks (p. 42), when companies can’t invent, it’s usually because they are too busy. The argument for greater slack from the need for creativity and invention is strengthened by the recognition that prediction and control in complex

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systems are highly problematic. In such circumstances, systems that are taut, controlled and focused on the immediate leave little room for adjustment and reinvention when things occur unpredictably. The result in organizations looks remarkably like a lack of engineering tolerance, for the result is worker tension, burnout, early retirement and problems of leadership sustainability. It suggests that certain elements of professionalism are essential here. Thus the expert on the ground, the individual who is familiar with the context within which a policy will be implemented, is best suited to utilizing the ‘slack’ of discretion in deciding on what is needed at any particular moment in time. The recognition of an individual need for slack can not only produce better organizational results, but it is likely to produce more personal fulfilment as well: in part because of greater autonomy; in part because of the greater trust that accompanies it. The deliberate incorporation of slack can then be a surprisingly powerful weapon in sustaining individuals and organizations. A final attitudinal change follows naturally from the above. The adoption of buffers – the institution of engineering/environmental/organizational tolerances – will be an essential component in the embrace of such slack. If, as is possible, unintended and unexpected harmful consequences ensue from policies, contingency plans need to be in place to retrieve the situation. Princen (2005, pp. 40–3), in an analysis of environmental buffers, suggests two principal strategies. A first is an increase in stock, as a larger stock is more capable of absorbing pressure than a smaller stock. However, and ethically perhaps more importantly, a second strategy is an avoidance of pushing resource exploitation towards its maximum. In educational terms, these strategies would first translate into an increase in the number of workers in the system, so that demands are more easily spread and absorbed between them. But, second, it would mean that organizational and policy cultures would move away from being ‘greedy’ and move towards the adoption of a stance that accepted the need for more space, slack and tolerance.

As many problems as answers; or as many answers as problems? The adoption of buffers, as with the development of other tolerance strategies, would clearly have financial costs. Indeed, moves towards imperative versions of sufficiency, as with a wholehearted adoption of the Precautionary Principle, are unlikely to be welcomed by some, as they would not only increase the cost of such systems, but also challenge some fundamental assumptions about the functioning of present societies, in particular suggesting that there are better ways of achieving feelings of wellbeing than through consumption. Imperative versions of sufficiency would

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also tend to endorse the notion that much of individual well-being is dependent on social and environmental well-being, just as individual sustainability is dependent on social and environmental sustainability. Policies would focus more heavily on how larger structures and systems can contribute to or damage personal well-being. These issues will be considered in later chapters, particularly in Chapter Ten. As importantly, if the current dominant neo-liberal model of economics is predicated on continued growth through increased consumerism (Greider, 2004; Jackson, 2009), and that growth is harming the environment and educational systems because it has reached a point where resources in both areas are being depleted or damaged, this sufficiency approach suggests that growth needs reducing, and societies need to consider adopting other models of economic functioning that don’t have such effects. Such ideas raise other difficult questions. How would, for instance, transition to a more caring and less extractive society be made without affecting social stability, as much current employment is predicated upon the extraction of materials and their utilization in the creation of consumer goods in order to feed such economic growth? It would be wrong, however, to assume that such discussion is new territory, and that there has been little thought put into the reframing of current economies. There is in fact a long tradition of thinking arguing that truly sustainable economies need to mimic the manner in which the natural world works, which recognizes how resilient and creative nature is, and how humanity can learn from it to resolve many of the economic problems it currently faces (see, for example, Benyus, 1997; Hawken, 2010; Daly, 1996; Braungart and McDonough, 2009; Holmgren, 2011; and Hutchins, 2012). A first step in this process involves a move away from approaches inherited from the industrial revolution. These early approaches essentially employed an ‘extract, use, dump’ approach to natural resources, and so assume that prosperity is necessarily created from the extraction of non-renewable materials, the pollution of air, water and soil, and the production of toxic wastes. Moreenlightened visions accept that in order to provide for future generations, much legislation and many regulations will be required to limit the effects of such extraction and dumping. These newer kinds of moves are already seen in many countries, as efforts are made to lessen the extraction of nonrenewable materials and replace their use with renewable ones, to lessen the pollution created by industrial processes, and to clean up such pollution through strong regulatory activity. Yet such alternative approaches still adopt the same early industrial mind-set, for even terms regarded by many as more environmentally friendly, such as ‘recycling’ and ‘reduction’, implicitly subscribe to products having limited lifespans before they are dumped, where ‘recycling’ really means ‘down-cycling’, and where materials are still used in ways that require their ultimate disposal. Even a term like ‘reduction’ means little more than using fewer resources or generating less pollution, but still leads to the eventual

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dumping of such resources. However, writers such as those cited above argue that what is needed is a move towards a more ‘closed loop’ approach, where the sustainability paradigm moves from one of ‘dispose’ to one of mimicking nature, as industrial processes are re-designed to ensure that they do produce as much or more energy as they consume (through, for instance, using solar panels), and that they create products that are not thrown away or down-cycled once their useful life is over, but enrich the soil or the air as they decompose (such as using rice husks embedded with seeds for packaging). Whilst there is no simple short answer to these questions (they are after all truly wicked questions), there is enough evidence to suggest that more sustainable alternatives than those dominant in the present system are not only being discussed but being practised, and that one does need to envisage and then live through the turmoil that the sudden replacement of one form of society by another would cause. Instead, every time a household changes to renewable energy supplies, every time a factory moves to a closed-loop system of production, these actions move societies a little way along this more sustainable road, towards a more sustainable form of economy. It needs acknowledging that societal movement towards more sustainable forms of economic practice is a genuinely ‘wicked question’, and, like all wicked questions, it is unlikely to have many ‘silver bullet’ solutions. This will be threatening for some, the temptation being to stick with what is known. Yet following chapters will demonstrate that the challenges facing humanity require more than an ostrich response. As Philip K. Dick (1978, p.  1) said, reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away, and there is now overwhelming evidence to suggest that humanity is in for a difficult time over the next few decades. Whilst there may be disagreement over exactly when a variety of tipping points will occur, and how severe some of the changes will be, when the evidence is so strong that they will occur, it is positively foolish to ignore this. In such a situation, one needs to work clumsily, and with silver buckshot, towards a better state of affairs. The notion of sufficiency then is more than an environmental allegory for educational leadership. Both environmental and educational systems are threatened by the same demands for economic growth, consumerism and efficiency, and display the same kinds of problems. In both cases, the overuse and depletion of resources has led to a decline in the overall quality of their respective systems. Moreover, the suggestions made for their alleviation have much the same import, for it is clear that movements towards a more imperative policy of sufficiency point in both environmental and educational cases to a reduction in what is extracted, and to an increase in costs, as resources are nurtured and retained. Ultimately this will require changes in both educational and societal values, for the evidence increasingly suggests that by setting the bar too high for the wrong objectives, resources have been unsustainably depleted in both areas.

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Reflecting on macro-problems These are large questions for educational leaders to consider, and some might argue, beyond their remit. Yet critiquing the current framing of their work – in other words understanding the ecology of their leadership – is a hugely important subject for them to consider, for neither they, nor their colleagues, nor the students they teach exist in a bubble. Indeed, such ecological framing must now include the demands placed on an environment which permits the societies within which they function to exist at all. This is why the next four chapters more closely examine a number of critical issues facing the societies in which educational leaders practise, and for which such leaders must prepare future generations. The next chapter then will examine how a culture of consumption impacts on both human and environmental well-being, as well as upon educational sustainability, whilst the following chapter examines how this culture places huge demands on energy supplies, and what this implies for future energy provision and for educational systems. Chapter Seven shows how such energy consumption has contributed to problems of climate change, and how the examination of evidence in this area provides a model for educational leaders to use in examining other controversial and difficult issues. Chapter Eight then looks at how large changes in human population patterns are altering the nature of societies facing these other challenges, and how these will impact on educational systems. As argued at the start of the book, if these challenges are not properly recognized or considered, then educational leaders – those given the role of equipping future generations to deal with these challenges – will not then be properly prepared, and will therefore not be able to properly lead on them. It is then to an examination of the impact of economic growth and consumption on educational and societal sustainability that this book turns.

PART TWO

Global Drivers of Unsustainability

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Cultures of Economic Growth and Consumption Introduction: Consumption, storage and clutter There can be little doubt that, up to a certain level, what James (2008) calls ‘survival’ materialism – the consumption of food, clothing and shelter required simply to stay alive – is essential for physical well-being. Moreover, as both Schor (1999) and Jackson (2009) argue, some possessions may also have an important symbolic role in establishing one’s status in society; a cultural trait going back at least 3,000 years to the Iron Age (Oliver, 2012). Yet there is increasing evidence in a number of developed countries that over the last three decades consumption may have exceeded requirements, and a new phenomenon has occurred – the growth of self-storage facilities, with the United States as its leading example. In 1983 there were approximately 7,000 such self-storage facilities across the country, with about 300 million square feet of rentable space (Kruk, 2014). By 2010, the number of facilities had leaped to 46,500, and the rentable space had similarly increased to over 2.24 billion square feet, with a forecast for this to continue to grow for the foreseeable future. The UK is seeing a similar rise: as one UK advert for selfstorage said, ‘Like the United States, the UK is a nation of people who like to purchase and then hoard their goods, but the lack of space available means a self storage unit is the best option’ (Kruk, 2014). This phenomenon seems to be one symptom of an overdeveloped consumer society, where people have more possessions than they need or can consume, and lack the space to house them. A similar example of tackling the problems of excessive consumption seems to have occurred with the rise in books advising the individual on how to deal with ‘clutter’. Such advice can vary from how to store it better, through to deciding on what to keep and what to get rid of. When I accessed the Amazon book website in March 2014, there were four pages of this kind of self-help publication, most published within the last few years. One of the more 71

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striking was by Palmer (2012), the full title being Clutter Busting Your Life: Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter to Reconnect with Yourself and Others. The blurb informs the reader that the book investigates how ‘clutter affects all of our relationships and how our relationships affect our tendency to hold onto things we no longer want or need’. It goes on to claim that ‘this is the stuff that keeps us from experiencing “the joy of connection” ’ and the promise is made that the book will take readers ‘from overwhelmed and vulnerable to liberated and empowered, so that they enjoy deeper, more authentic, and clutter-free relationships of all kinds’, suggesting that too many possessions can get in the way of enjoying other treasured goals such as personal relationships. This is an issue that needs returning to later. The explicit message both from self-storage facilities and from clutter books is that, in an age of overconsumption, we need to either store excess material elsewhere or get rid of it. The more implicit message is that we are buying more than we can consume, and there is now another and increasing literature on the significance of such overconsumption for societies and their members (e.g. Naish, 2008; James, 2008; Skidelsky and Skidelsky, 2012). This chapter suggests that excessive consumerism may not simply be a case of greedy individual behaviour, but more a phenomenon created by the culture in which we live, itself inspired by a particular form of economic activity. This chapter then examines whether overconsumption is simply an example of individual aberration or excess, or the outcome of an externally designed and targeted form of behaviour, critical to a particular kind of economic functioning, where individuals need to be induced to consume if this model is to work. As importantly, such product consumption may be leading to a depletion of raw materials at an unsustainable rate, posing grave threats for the wider environment. For any educator interested in the kind of society they are educating their students towards, and in the state of the environment to be left to future generations, these should be important issues for consideration.

Economic imperialism? Claimants for this model of economic activity see it as necessarily imperialist and almost evangelical in its intentions. Writers like Friedman (1962) do not see economics merely as one area of activity among other areas of social interest, which can be underpinned by other values, other objectives. Rather because they argue that human beings and societies are fundamentally constituted by the qualities of economic exchange, the values of market economics are regarded as really being the only way of understanding and describing all human activity. If one holds to this view, it follows logically that all social thought and activity should be constituted in this economic image. In so doing, activities that many might have thought outside its

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purview – education, health, social work, raising a family – now need to be viewed through its single lens. As Rome conquered other civilizations such as Carthage and Dacia, and then remade them in its own image, in part by destroying their language, culture and values, so this version of economic thought aspires to do the same with other areas of activity, including that of education, first by ‘capturing its discourse’ – changing the language within which educational concerns are discussed – and then by changing the actions and values that are seen as constituting ‘good activity’ in the area. Once again this would seem a very important phenomenon for educational leaders to consider – not only because of the way it affects the kinds of society that they are preparing their students for, but because of the way it changes the nature of their own work as well. However, as mentioned, it is also a highly important issue because of the charge that it also threatens environmental sustainability, as the engine of the economic model within which this vision of consumption is located is that of continued and expanding economic growth, which in a finite world requires the potentially excessive extraction of natural resources from a currently expanding number of human beings. As Guillebaud (in Weismann, 2014, p. 112) said, ‘If the world were run by biologists and not economists, everyone would know that no species can go around multiplying indefinitely, humankind included, without eventually running out of vital resources like food, and ultimately ending with the collapse of numbers through deaths.’ He concluded with the quietly threatening comment that ‘unremitting growth . . . is the doctrine of the cancer cell’. If then this current dominant economic paradigm is misguided in its intentions, it will threaten social sustainability through failing to recognize that consumption is not the only or main path to personal and social wellbeing. As importantly, it will also threaten economic sustainability by failing to realize that economic activity depends upon social values like trust, respect and promise-keeping, which are generated outside of the economic realm. By reducing the influence of these, it will then inflict considerable damage on a large number of areas. It is a topic that educational leaders cannot afford to avoid. So one needs to ask: how does this model of economics, with consumerism as a major driving force, actually function? Perhaps the best place to start is to examine two major aspects of the model. The first is in how it conceptualizes ‘growth’, and ask how well this works. The second is in examining its conception of what fundamentally constitutes human beings, as the role of consumerism and much of the rest of its conceptual structure follows from an acceptance of these ideas.

The concept of economic growth Economic growth, when related to the functioning of the nation state, essentially refers to an increase in the market value of the goods and services

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produced by that nation from one period to the next. Such growth – which necessarily requires both production and consumption – is currently seen as an essential measure of how well a society is doing economically. Anyone watching or reading the news on national economic performance will have observed that the underpinning if unspoken assumption is that economic growth not only increases material well-being, but also facilitates a more general personal and social well-being. Increased economic growth is then usually announced by a TV presenter in an upbeat manner, whilst any reports of zero or negative growth are automatically taken as bad news. A further underpinning assumption is that such growth is good because it allows the same number of people to have a larger slice of an expanding economic cake, and therefore restricts the need for governments to go down the thorny (even if perhaps more equitable) political road of redistributing wealth, which a non-expanding ‘wealth cake’ would seem to require. Such growth in an economy is normally measured through calculating a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP ). This GDP is the total annual value of all goods and services produced within a country. As one might expect, this calculation has been used by many economists to assess a country’s welfare progress, even if its inventor, Simon Kuznets, never intended it used in that way. However, there are a number of problems with the use of GDP for such purposes. For a start, and a little surprisingly, it doesn’t do very well in measuring the market value of goods and services. Thus, because GDP is tied so strongly to notions of work within market situations, it fails to capture those outside of the market. Activities like voluntary or household labour, then, are excluded from such calculations, even though they are very likely to be large contributors to social welfare. Moreover, because GDP very simplistically adds together all such goods and services, it adds in the costs of many activities that actually diminish human welfare – such as the cost of dealing with family breakdowns, treating illness, remediating crime, or dealing with pollution. By adding in these, they falsely bolster a country’s GDP, and hence the calculations of its growth. Yet the ultimate logic of this situation is that the more crime there is, the more illness, the more breakdowns, the more pollution a society has to deal with, the better off it apparently will be, because the measures to deal with them all boost its GDP, its growth and therefore supposedly the increase in the society’s general welfare. In similar manner, the GDP process also fails to recognize that calculating the consumption of natural resources needs to be viewed as a cost. Instead such consumption is recorded as income. Yet consumption is the depletion of a resource, and should be treated as a cost. A better measure then might be something like the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI ) which Hamilton (2004) proposes. This measure explicitly recognizes such activities as costs, and so instead of adding these to an annual income, works out a price for them and subtracts them from this income. When this happens, the result is

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that most countries have shown little, no or declining economic growth over the last 30 years. Finally, we need to return to the issue of equity, for GDP as a measure of social progress fails to take account of the distribution of income – of how growth is distributed – in society, and, as importantly, it fails to compare the extreme poverty experienced in many countries to the living standards of wealthier countries. We have seen how the standard approach (also adopted, a little surprisingly, in the Brundtland Report), is to suggest that the best way to reduce poverty within and between countries is not to divide wealth more equally from the same cake, but instead to increase economic growth and thereby enlarge the cake so that there will be ‘trickle-down’ benefits to the poorer members of society. Yet even if there were no concerns about the effects of growth upon the consumption of finite resources, and no misgivings about whether GDP was an adequate description of progress in social welfare, there would still be a very strong argument that distribution through such expansion of growth does not in reality work (Chang, 2008). Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that a redistribution of income from the very rich to the very poor would be a better strategy for improving global welfare than some kind of trickle-down effect. Dietz and O’Neill (2013, p. 27) make the telling point that despite a twenty-five fold increase in the size of the global economy over the past century, more than 1 billion people still live on less than $1 a day, and a total of 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a day. In addition, for every $100 of global economic growth between 1990 and 2001, the poorest one billion people received an average of only 60 cents – 0.6 per cent of the increase. As the authors point out, ‘Someone is profiting from economic growth, but it’s not the world’s poor’ (p. 27). The concept of economic growth doesn’t then seem to be boosting either human or environmental sustainability very well. Yet it is the dominant economic approach currently, and it is therefore important to fully appreciate the way that this model conceives of the world, and of human beings and their behaviour. If it is wrong on this, it is likely to be wrong on much else, and it is to this that the chapter now turns.

Homo economicus The model of humanity put forward by most market advocates is what one might call homo economicus, or economic man. On this model, each person is seen as being essentially individual rather than social in orientation, pursuing personally designated ends. Rather than working cooperatively with others in achieving jointly valued ends, human beings are seen as essentially self-interested and competitive in pursuing what they want. They

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pursue these ends, it is argued, in a fundamentally rational and calculating manner, rather than, as many might suggest, through a complex mix of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, values and concerns. Human beings are essentially made this way, it is argued, because they live in a world requiring such attitudes, such values, such behaviour. This, argues Dennett (1995), reflects what happens in the natural world, where individuals in a species compete against one another and other species for survival, by weighing up which course of action is of most benefit to them with the least cost. Any important decision-making, then, is essentially one of cost-benefit analysis – the weighing up of different courses of action for personal gain, and the working out of which will produce the greatest reward for the least effort. This description of the human world through linking a particular view of market economics with a conception of nature red in tooth and claw suggests that all individuals are essentially in a Social Darwinian fight for survival, where only the strongest survive. It is a view seen earlier when discussing what sustainability might mean, as some advocates suggest that the values of environmental sustainability are close to the values of a competitive business world. This view of human beings as essentially calculating self-interested individuals fits well with a worldview of competition, where a social order maintained through cooperative and altruistic feelings would be seen as simply naïve. At its worst, this could be a world that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, where submission to the political authority of some Leviathan, as Hobbes suggested, is better in survival terms than the anarchy that results from no order at all. Another means of keeping such self-interest in check, though, is the design of a system that channels such behaviour into accidentally benefiting not only oneself but others as well. Here, it is argued, lies the genius of the market, for the interests of the buyer are matched with those of the seller. As Adam Smith (1976, pp. 26–7) has often been quoted as saying: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Such sentiments are seen as the cornerstone of market thinking. They are also normally taken to describe Smith’s complete vision of personal and social life, though, in actual fact, he saw such market activity as a highly circumscribed form of behaviour. In an earlier and much less quoted book, Smith (1976, p. 9) began with the assertion: How selfish so-ever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary for him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

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Smith at least was clear that a focus on self-interest needed to be balanced and indeed underpinned by a much richer complex of social customs and values if it was to flourish. Others, however, have taken this optimistic view of the market and, stripping it of Smith’s cautions, have suggested that this kind of thinking applies not only to economic functioning, but to how the concerns of all other social institutions should be framed and run as well. Hayek (1944, 1960) for instance combined a strongly held belief that human beings are only capable of understanding that with which they are most familiar, with a political fear not only of the totalitarian rule of Hitler and Stalin, but also the fear that social democracies ‘have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past’ (1944, p. 10). This led him to advocate that the most robust information is held by those closest to situations, and governments, being necessarily at a distance from most transactions, are the least best positioned to decide on who needs what. The solution then has to be the encouragement of individuals to transact with others in a marketplace, and in so doing both secure economic prosperity and avoid the evils of political totalitarianism. In similar vein, Friedman (1962, p. 9) argued that he knew of no society that didn’t have ‘a large measure of political freedom’ and that didn’t use free markets ‘to organise the bulk of economic activity’. From being a minority academic argument through the 1940s into the 1960s, the financial and social problems of Western societies in the 1970s and 1980s led to policies restricting the role of governments and expanding the role of markets – an approach that has continued to this day. As one might expect, the expansion of market activities has also led to the expansion of a variety of other activities, in particular the primacy of consumption. Now the role consumption plays in this economic approach is more than the promotion of an individual’s ‘natural’ instincts. The role of the consumer is deployed as a central driver in boosting economic growth through the expansion of market activity. Economic growth requires two things in particular for it to be successful. One is the greater exploitation of resources used to make the products bought and sold in the marketplace; the other, if a little obviously, is the people to buy/consume these products. There would, after all, be little point in production – and certainly no economic growth – if there were no consumption of these products. Not only then must production expand, but so also must consumption. Whilst obvious, this is not a trivial point. Greater consumption is not only trumpeted as the reward for increasing economic growth, it is also an essential mechanism in producing it. As Campbell (1982) suggested, individuals in such market economies now acquire greater responsibilities than they might have thought. They may have more freedom so as to better make their own decisions, and better reap the benefits of their talent and work, but they are now allocated a responsibility and duty to keep such a system going. They need then ‘to want to want under all circumstances and at all times

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irrespective of what goods and services are actually acquired or consumed’ (p. 282). More than that, such a market economy must ensure that such consumers must not be too happy with what they buy; they need to become unsatisfied with what they already have, and constantly need to seek a better model, a newer edition. Only in this way, by the expansion of both growth and consumerism, can the system keep going. A little suddenly, then, the role of consumer is not quite the road to freedom originally claimed for it. Instead, individuals as consumers seem eerily like cogs in the wheels of an economic system, for without them playing the vital role of consumption, the system ceases to function. The end point, as Lebow (1955) argued, is that such an economy requires that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate. If this is the case, a number of questions arise. A first is that if consumerism increasingly looks like a designated role within a particular paradigm of economic growth, how much of it – and the homo economicus model that accompanies it – is description, and how much is prescription? Moreover, if there are elements of prescription in such a conception, if people are as much needed to behave in a market way as much as, or more than, they actually want to, one needs to ask whether people always choose to consume, or whether they are lured into believing they must always consume. Moreover, if they do indulge in consumption to such a degree, what kinds of threats are posed to different kinds of sustainability by making consumerism such a primary personal and social goal? Finally, if consumption does have serious downsides, are there other goods that humanity might consider as at least worth pursuing? Each of these questions needs to be considered in turn.

(a) Description or prescription An initial claim by market theorists then is that homo economicus, just like the other parts of the system, is not a prescription but a description. What is then proposed, it is claimed, is a simple reality; a conception that runs with the grain of human nature. This is clearly a very important claim because it implies that if this picture is purely description, then policy, legislation and practice should reflect this reality. This in itself, however, is a debatable claim: if all people are inherently violent, one still has the choice of creating societies that permit or encourage such violence, or of designing societal norms, values and institutions that work to suppress such violence. Similarly

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it would not follow that even if market theorists were right, politicians and educators should embrace such assumptions, devise legislation and create education systems that reflected such a viewpoint. Of course, if the claims of market theorists are wrong, this would raise even larger questions about the way in which market values have been elevated, and how other social values and virtues have been relegated to a subsidiary status. So one needs to question a central market proposition directly: are human beings naturally individualist, self-interested, and rational calculators? There are people who apparently believe this. Take two descriptions: one by an English politician, the other by an American economist. The politician, Margaret Thatcher, did say in 1987 (and despite its withdrawal later) that ‘there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families’. She had no doubt read her Friedman (1962, p.  13), and seems to be taking her view from his argument that societies consist of little more than a number of households – a collection of Robinson Crusoes . . . Each household uses the resources it controls to produce goods and services that it exchanges for goods and services produced by other households, on terms mutually acceptable to the two parties to the bargain. She was, however, probably wise not to vocalize what he also said on page 33 of the same book. This would not have gone down well with her electorate: [C]hildren are at one and the same time consumer goods and potentially responsible members of society. The freedom of individuals to use their economic resources as they want includes the freedom to use them to have children – to buy, as it were, the services of children as a particular form of consumption. There is no such thing as society . . . society as a collection of Robinson Crusoes . . . children as a particular form of consumption . . . most people, I suggest, would, on reading these, probably raise their eyebrows and produce a smile of incredulity: do people really see themselves and others in this way? If the majority of people don’t recognize these as valid descriptions of themselves and others, then one must ask why they think these images are so wrong. And the reason may simply be that so much is excluded from them that they radically oversimplify a complex reality. This need for an appreciation of complexity is brought out strikingly in the work of Frans De Waal. Over a 30-year period of both observational and experimental research (e.g. De Waal, 1982, 1996, 2009) with our nearest genetic relatives, De Waal has shown that chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos are capable not only of self-recognition, but of logical thought in solving problems, of showing great care and concern for others (not only

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for their own kind, but for human beings as well), of deception, of jealousy, and of empathy. The list could go on, but De Waal’s research very strongly suggests that complex primate behaviour looks remarkably like ours, and that rather than being hard-wired for the kind of self-interested competition described by Social Darwinists and market theorists, such primates are capable not only of acts of deeply disturbing aggression, but of profound kindnesses as well: a description that many might think accurately describes the human condition. De Waal’s work, then, points up the sheer complexity of behaviours and casts large doubt upon the one-dimensional portrait that market theorists suggest. Of course, it might still be argued that, regardless of cross-species comparisons, kindnesses, empathy and altruism inevitably reduce to selfinterested behaviour, because those who help others (ape or man) do so because they get pleasure from such action. De Waal would argue instead that much of the ‘altruistic’ behaviour he observes acts to the detriment of the helper (such as one chimpanzee running to the aid of another bullied by alpha males, and thus likely incurring a beating themselves). At the human level, the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding behaviour has been made across the whole of human history, and it seems implausible that so many people over so much time have got something so important so wrong. Moreover, as with De Waal’s apes, it might also be asked how people who sacrifice their lives for others can be said to do this out of pure selfinterest, if they know they will die in the process. At both evidential and logical levels, then, there is good reason to doubt that self-interest is the only game in town. However, there are other ways of deciding whether ‘human nature’ is as deterministically fixed as market economics would suggest. Human personality is the product of both nature and nurture, and whilst one might expect a certain genetic fixity, if the environment has any effect on the malleability to human nature, then there should be evidence to show that individuals are changed by their experiences. A couple of examples illustrate this rather well: one at a group level, a second at a societal level. Thus Frank et al. (1993) investigated how students from a variety of academic disciplines reacted to the alternatives presented in the famous ‘Prisoners’ dilemma’. This dilemma poses the question: when two lawbreakers are caught, and they know that the severity of their punishment depends on what information they provide to their captors, what do they do when they know that: (a) if they both keep quiet, they are both likely to receive a medium

sentence; (b) if they inform on their colleague, they will get a reduced sentence, whilst their colleague will get a heavy one; and finally, (c) if they remain silent, but their colleague informs on them, they will get the heavier sentence.

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What would you do? Frank et al.’s results demonstrate that when students’ responses were analysed in terms of the academic disciplines they studied, economics students, schooled in the view of humanity as homo economicus, displayed a stronger tendency to inform on their partners in crime than did students from other disciplines, and that their results were in keeping with the view that ‘differences in cooperativeness are caused in part by training in economics’ (p. 170). Frank et al.’s conclusion (1993, pp. 170–1) was that in an ever more interdependent world, social cooperation has become increasingly important . . . with an eye toward both the social good and the well-being of their own students, economists may wish to stress a broader view of human motivation in their teaching. This suggests that economics students made their decisions at least in part because they were inculcated into these values, rather than simply because they held them originally. However, the experiment does not discount the possibility that students may have chosen economics as a discipline because they were more naturally self-interested than those choosing other disciplines. Individuals studying nursing, teaching or social welfare, for instance, might do so because of initial strong other-regarding tendencies. Even so, whilst this experiment cannot demonstrate that some individuals do not begin with self-interested proclivities, it does demonstrate that this is not the core attribute of all human beings. Another way of investigating human malleability is to demonstrate that some societies are characterized by other-regarding behaviour more than many more economically advanced societies, suggesting that there is a spectrum of possible behaviours which different societies can elicit. One such society is that of the Aitutaki of the Cook Islands (Graves and Graves, 1983). In the days before Western culture became a more dominant influence, if fishermen caught too many fish for their families to eat, they would store the surplus ‘in their neighbours’ bellies’, thus setting up reciprocal obligations with other families. Similarly, the thatching of roofs requires a communal effort for this to be completed in reasonable time, and the same kinds of obligations were therefore engendered. Finally, Aitutaki children, on going to ‘Western’ school for the first time, could not understand why they were not allowed to help their friends who struggled with schoolwork: why, they would ask, would you leave people in distress when you can help them? This type of schooling then tended to separate and individualize behaviours, in the process breaking down social bonds. So also did the advent of refrigerators to store fish in, and of sheet-metal roofing in place of thatched roofs, as they reduced the need for others’ help, leading to the kind of individualized and isolated nuclear family arrangements characteristic of many economically advanced societies today. Graves and Graves’ point then isn’t that people are naturally other-regarding rather than self-regarding, but rather that both tendencies exist within all human beings, and that different

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kinds of societies, using different rules and mores, bring out different values and different behaviours. Finally, the fundamental assertion by market theorists that individuals always behave in ways that maximize their personal benefit is heavily contradicted by the work of Dan Ariely. The title of one of his books – Predictably Irrational (Ariely, 2009) – says it all; in experiment after experiment, Ariely demonstrates that human beings’ decision-making in economic exchanges is skewed by emotions, expectations, contexts and social norms in ways that market theory would never predict. Taking just one example, Ariely (p.  3) describes how the magazine The Economist provided the reader with a choice of different subscriptions: 1 internet-only subscription: $59; 2 print-only subscription: $125; 3 print-and-internet subscription: $125.

How would you choose? When he gave these options to his students, 16 chose option 1, none chose option 2, and 84 chose option 3. When, however, he removed option 2, a similar-sized cohort of students chose very differently; now 68 chose option 1, and only 32 chose option 3. He describes (p. 2) the people at The Economist as ‘quite mischievous in a British sort of way’ in that they had deliberately placed option 2 there as a decoy, so that the first cohort would see immediately that it was obviously better value to choose option 3 than 2, and that they therefore would be diverted from the choice between options 1 and 3, thus ensuring that a greater number chose the more expensive and – for The Economist – the more profitable option. This is not unusual practice – people need context to arrive at a judgement, and Ariely describes how contexts can be manipulated to advantage the seller, and encourage the buyer to choose the non-rational option. This is but one kind of behaviour that Ariely describes, but the message is clear – rational, logical thought is seldom the main way in which individuals choose their purchases. There are those, however, who would argue that laboratory experiments are fine, but they fail to capture the complexities of the real world (e.g. Levitt and List, 2007). To this, Ariely points out (2009, p. xvii) that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, and a committed market theorist, admitted to Congress in October 2008, during the global financial crisis of that year, that he was ‘shocked’ that the markets did not work in the way they were supposed to. Anyone who has any knowledge of the details of this economic debacle – some of which is recounted in Chapter Two – would have to conclude that people like Ariely are right in their views of the complexity of human behaviours, market and otherwise, and that the Greenspans of this world have been captives of an economic approach, and its ensuing mistakes, which so far have cost taxpayers around the world several trillions of dollars. As Leggett (2014) sums it up: ‘ “Logical” is the

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last thing human thinking, individual and collective, is. Too compelling an argument can even drive people with a particularly well-insulated belief system deeper into denial.’ Several conclusions then seem to be reached. One is that human beings – and other species – are far more complex than market theorists would suggest. A second is that we all have the potential for self-regarding and other-regarding behaviours within us, and either one may be brought out by the kinds of individuals, groups, institutions or cultures with whom we associate. And a final one is that markets, rather than providing the structures best suited to the natural self-interested inclinations of human beings, may instead be doing something very different – they may in fact be creating the conditions for this particular form of behaviour to emerge. Rather than market behaviour simply being a reflection of a given genetic blueprint, and market-language consisting of no more than simple descriptions of what is naturally the case, it may be instead that both are fundamentally prescriptive, as they help to create what they value. If Roscoe (2014, p. 12) is right, then, ‘through its language and tools, economics brings into being the agent about whom it theorises’.

(b) Do people always choose to consume, or are they persuaded into believing they must? If, as the previous argument suggests, market ideology is more prescriptive than descriptive, then whilst consumption may be an activity that many human beings enjoy, such consumption may be at least in part a learned behaviour – the result of the inculcation of a questionable view of human beings. In the process, its exercise may reduce other potentialities, if they are neglected in its pursuit, and the importation of a market language into other areas of human activity may change their nature and their principal objectives. In effect, all such activity, all such behaviours, may then be transformed into activities where things are produced, packaged, sold and consumed. One might think this is fine for baked beans and umbrellas; but what about health, education, children, or the natural environment? Should these be viewed as exclusively or primarily personal goods, acquired for present and future personal benefit? By viewing them as objects of ‘consumption’, their potentialities are limited in ways that produce farreaching and undesirable effects. The categorization, then, of education and health as personal consumption items reduces their ability to contribute to any common good by confining their benefits to the individuals who ‘consume’ them. Moreover, a Friedmanite categorization of children as goods for consumption reduces or eliminates their rights until they reach the age of being a parental consumer themselves. In the case of the environment, this also relegates it, and the species within it, to the status of consumer

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goods, to be used and disposed of as desired by one (human) species within it. This then strips them of the possibility of the status of beings which might have intrinsic rights, as actors within ecosystems within which humanity also exists and depends, and which demands of humanity the kind of ethical stewardship completely lacking from a market vision of extraction and consumption. With such consequences from such an economic approach, global politics and policies over the last 40 years need to be viewed in a particular light. Neo-liberal policies and legislation may then not have ‘freed up’ human beings from the unnecessarily restrictive confines of the social democratic welfare state, but rather substituted one set of (disputable) political and ideological values for another. Indeed, such imposition explains a major contradiction in neo-liberal policies, for whilst its logic proposes a lessening of the power and influence of the state, political history during the last 40 years has seen in many states a paradoxical increase in central direction and coercion, as governments have had to enforce their view of marketoriented practices, as many practitioners have not felt this in keeping with their own broader views of human functioning. Not all then have been happy to accept such enforcement. As one English school headteacher explained, when interviewed in the early 1990s by the current writer, he attempted to hold on to personally held social democratic values (Bottery, 1998, p. 24), by using different tactics to mediate and mitigate the market thrust of the reforms, from ‘defy through subvert to ignore, on to ridicule, then to wait and see, and in some exceptional cases, to embrace’. Yet as implementation demands have also been accompanied by increasingly detailed inspection requirements, they have gradually internalized and then changed the values of many of those involved. Fergusson (1994, p.  213) describes this process as one where practitioners ‘come gradually to live and be imbued by the logic of the new roles, new tasks, new functions . . . in the end [they would] absorb partial redefinitions of their professional lives, first inhabiting them, eventually becoming them’. Indeed, as job descriptions change to specify a different set of competencies for an increasingly different role, a spectrum of educational leaders has been created. At one end, the Welfare state advocates still see education as critical to a welfare state project, contributing to the ‘common good’ of their societies, as education is seen as the principal means by which individuals come to understand and acquire the ‘social citizenship’ which Marshall (1950) described – a positive right to access the health, economic security and education services necessary for the exercise of other rights. They may increasingly also come to believe that notions of common good are global rather than national issues, and for a few individuals, that these are no longer single-species issues, but ones concerned with the well-being of all species on the planet. For this educational leader, ‘consumerism’ is understood as being limited to the behaviour of buying something in a shop, and only has application to educational purposes in this restricted way. So, as such

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individuals see market terms invading their value universe, they increasingly find that their version of improvement is increasingly against the grain of much legislative reform. A little further along this spectrum exists the educational pragmatists who, whilst committed to the welfare of the students in their care, are rather less committed to a view that education has a role to play in a political vision of building a ‘good society’. They accept that terms like ‘market’, ‘products’ and ‘consumers’ are all now part of the conceptual universe they inhabit, and therefore necessarily influence the kinds of work they do. They also feel they have little choice but to accept increased competition, to comply more with external demands, and to prepare for more intensive and potentially more punitive inspections. Governments, they recognize, are more interventionist than previously, and whilst trying to hold on to their personal values, need to find the least damaging and most rewarding ways of remaining in the job. With budgets tied much more tightly to the number of students enrolled, they feel the need to be doubly sure that parental concerns are not neglected. Their job, as they see it, is to lead a team in making a difference to the lives of the students in their care, in a more directed and more market-focused environment. With few grand narrative political pretensions or aspirations, they see this as quite enough for an educational leader to deal with. At the other end of the spectrum are educational entrepreneurs, who fit rather well the desired transformative qualities which are now part and parcel of educational leadership job descriptions. They are at ease with the conceptual universe of businesses and markets being applied to education. The use of the term ‘consumer’ is not a problem for them, as it is seen as being an accurate description of the kinds of relationships that they now have with a variety of stakeholders. Making a difference to their students means providing them with the skills to compete in a competitive marketplace; their managerial focus is necessarily directed towards ensuring that their institution can compete in a similar market environment. They feel well suited to this job: it gives them a real ‘buzz’ of freedom, of creativity and of excitement. The logic and pressures of the market also provide them with both carrot and stick in dealing with staff: it provides the motivational and creative reasons for improving service, just as it makes clear that no person’s job is guaranteed. It is only by providing the best service, they argue, that the institution can be confident of having sufficient student numbers for staff to remain in employment. Such language colonization exists at all levels of education. Look for example at how the UK Minister for Higher Education, David Willetts (2012), described his intention of improving university education. By turning students into consumers: we have . . . increased choice and flexibility. We have also transformed the amount of information that is available for prospective students, which

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we believe will drive up standards in universities as prospective students think about what contact hours they will have, what the class sizes will be, how universities score on the national students survey and crucially, how universities score on employment outcomes for graduates. Willetts’s argument is clear and unidirectional: providing students with information about class sizes, contact hours, student scores, and crucially (his word) employment outcomes are the key measures not only for assessing universities, but also for making them better. No mention is made of the quality of the educational relationship, nor indeed of the other benefits from university education – a joy of learning, the development of a critical mind, or of a more informed citizen. Reducing the student-teacher relationships to that of a producer responding to a consumer produces an exclusive focus on extrinsic motivators, and on personal economic benefits. It fails to focus on the benefits beyond employability, and the intrinsic motivators that spur on so many individuals. It is an issue also missed by Friedman and Friedman (1980, p. 23) when they argue that if your income will be the same whether you work hard or not, why should you work hard? Why should you make the effort to search out the buyer who values most highly what you have to sell if you will not get any benefit from doing so? Whilst a degree of external positive and negative reinforcement might well improve some individuals’ performances, both Willetts and the Friedmans signally fail to take into account the important effects of intrinsic motivators: many individuals work long hours, for relatively little financial reward, or high marks, because of their internal locus of control. In work over a decade long with principals in the UK and Hong Kong (Bottery et al., 2008, 2013), the overwhelming driver for virtually all those interviewed has been the desire to make a difference to the lives of the students in their care. They are driven by an inherent desire to help the next generation, in part because it gives each child a better chance, and in so doing may help to build a better society. I suggest that neither Willetts nor Friedman – and certainly not Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer – put in the hours and the effort they do simply because of the financial rewards accruing from such work. To ignore or exclude the importance of such internal motivations is not only overly dogmatic and myopic, but also highly damaging, as it accounts for only one portion of an individual’s motivation, and in so doing may well depress the ability to realize what drives these individuals the most. Not only then would it be short-sighted to take external motivators as the fundamental human drivers: it could lead to the exclusion of other motivators and other goals to which human beings aspire. Whilst some consumption may be an essential part of human activity, there are many other intrinsically motivating activities which do not fall comfortably under the umbrella of ‘consumption’,

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and its use to describe them as such perverts their original purposes. It is then important to recognize the different natures of these other activities, and to recognize how they may have been displaced or transformed in ways threatening the sustainability of their original purposes. This then leads to the third of our questions.

(c) What threats are posed by making consumerism a primary personal and social goal? If market discourse excludes or changes other discourses, if it creates social contexts that attempt to inculcate individuals into seeing their life-world as one primarily of production and consumption, and if it attempts to encourage individuals to over-consume, then the sustainability of environmental, social and economic areas may all be threatened. To better appreciate how all of them may be threatened, we need to step back for a moment from the discussion on consumption and reflect more on the interconnectedness of these three areas. This is sometimes explained through the use of a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles (see Figure 5.1), where sustainability is the area in which the three circles overlap. However, there are problems in using this model for this purpose. One is that it can suggest that many activities exist outside the areas of overlap, which may then deflect from the need to appreciate their inextricably linked nature. A second problem lies in suggesting that they are all of equal importance. Yet if ‘the environment’ is seen as all that exists within the

FIGURE 5.1 Sustainability as a Venn diagram.

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biosphere we inhabit – that thin envelope which covers the earth but rises only seven miles upward – a better way of conceptualizing the relationships between these areas would be to think of sustainable development as constituting a stepped pyramid between them (see Figure 5.2). At the bottom of this pyramid, supporting the rest, is environmental sustainability, for without a healthy and sustainable environment, there can be no way for living things – including human beings – to survive. A major threat to the sustainability of all three sectors comes from the primacy of a production-consumption economic paradigm, which pays little or no regard to the fact that as we live in a finite world, we need to pay attention not only to the limited resources that it contains, the limited amount of waste that it can absorb, the number of human beings consuming and polluting it, and last but not least the other creatures that inhabit this environment. As Manning (in Weismann, 2014, p.  116) said, ‘Every plan for the future is totally anthropocentric. What can we do to make us better?’ As consumption is a key element in this process, its role in creating habits and desires that damage the environment needs to be carefully scrutinized. When Boulding (in Dietz and O’Neil, 2013, p.  15) said that anyone who believes that exponential economic growth can go on forever in a finite world must be either a madman or an economist, he was stating the bald truth. Thus, fundamentally dependent upon environmental sustainability is the sustainability of the human social world – the maintenance of healthy societies, and of people living within them. Whilst it may be possible to discuss social sustainability without including environmental sustainability (through, for instance, focusing purely on reducing crime rates), the social world ultimately depends upon environmental sustainability for its own sustainability. But as economic discourse penetrates the language and values of the social world, terms such as ‘consumerism’, ‘growth’ and ‘profit’ challenge and then displace formerly first-order values such as equity, care, concern and environmental stewardship. In so doing, greater resource

FIGURE 5.2 Sustainability as a pyramid of dependence.

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exploitation is less challenged, and the pursuit of profit and gain as firstorder social priorities is less contested. In similar manner, social practices such as education are reconfigured to become what Hirsch (1977) called a ‘positional good’ in the pursuit of individual benefit and consumption, rather than as collective goods to benefit all within a society. On such a scenario, its ‘producers’ – teachers, students and leaders – are also increasingly viewed as resources, interchangeable, exploitable and expendable means to such individual ends. Their withdrawal or early retirement then constitutes less a problem for a society concerned with its people’s welfare, and more a problem of their replaceability. Finally, economic sustainability in its turn depends upon both environmental and social sustainability. It depends upon the environment because, as Dietz and O’Neill (2013, p. 17) elegantly put it: All of the inputs to the economy come from the environment, and all of the wastes produced by it return to the environment. As the economy expands, it consumes more materials and energy, and emits more wastes. But since we live on a finite planet, this process can’t go on forever. Like a tube inside a tyre, the subsystem can only grow so large compared to the system that contains it. Economic sustainability also depends upon the social sustainability of a healthy society, for viable economic exchange depends upon the ‘health’ of societal values such as trust, promise-keeping and honesty to underpin market exchanges, and when such core values become second-order values in the generation of economic growth, rather than being undergirding values of that society, they cease to provide ethical censure and guidance to the economic sector. When this happens, the kinds of behaviours all too evident in the global banking system, such as promise-breaking, deceit and the extraction of large salaries even when profits plummet and others are laid off, come to be seen as perfectly acceptable ‘if you can get away with it’. Trust, promise-keeping and personal relationships are then used simply as means to personal ends, and can be dropped as and when they fail to achieve these. The increased display of such behaviours then leads to what Rifkin (2000, p.  247) describes as a case of ‘poisoning the [cultural] well from which we draw important values and feelings’. Furthermore, as politicians and businesspeople increasingly move from one sector to the other, and those in the political sector are seen as condoning such behaviour through a lack of action against it, such practice leads to the weakening of respect for the political state, its institutions and its actors. In the UK , for example, the lack of censure of bankers after 2008 by either major political party was in large part due to the previous acceptance of their behaviour. The unsustainability of the dominant economic model then begins to feed back and affect the sustainability of those sectors upon which it depends.

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If, then, economic sustainability depends upon social sustainability, and if both depend upon environmental sustainability, a pyramid of dependence is created, the most dependent part of which is the economic. Yet over the last three decades, economic theories have been allowed to dominate political and social life, and economic theorists in particular have acted as if there is no need to consider their sector’s dependence upon the social or the environmental sectors. The current model of economics – and the role consumption currently plays within it – have in effect been parasitic on both, and seriously weakened both.

Final thoughts: Is consumption then really that good, or are there other goods more worth having? Consumption may well be a ‘good’ in which individuals partake, but it is also something that is necessary for a particular economic model’s functioning. However, even as a personally enjoyable activity, just how enjoyable and satisfying is it? The currently dominant economic discourse – backed up by the importance attached to GDP calculations – seems to suggest that it is the principal form of individual satisfaction. Yet, as noted earlier, there is now strong evidence (Hamilton, 2004; Layard, 2006; Haidt, 2007) suggesting that consumption’s ability to satisfy is increasingly curtailed as higher levels of income are reached. As these levels are reached, well-being seems to be better supplied by things like a deeper engagement with partners, family and community. If this is the case, then one needs to ask whether the current economic paradigm and its focus on intensive consumption actually deflect individuals and societies away from other kinds of activities that would be better not only for individuals and societies but for the environment as well. A different agenda for societies and education might then need to be sought. However, for many this will be difficult if they fail to locate individual practices like consumption within wider social and economic steers and constraints, and if they are then prevented from understanding and remedying these issues. A first question then must be concerned with how current social structures, messages and practices induce more individual consumption behaviour, which diverts attention from areas that could provide deeper and more meaningful forms of social and personal fulfilment. Such understanding might aid a movement towards what Naish (2008, p. 39) called a more ‘cautious consumerism’. Other foci would lie in better understanding the pressures contributing to poor work/life balance, and whether well-being would be better achieved by developing measures improving issues of personal fulfilment and social connectedness. As Speth (2008, p. 209) argues, the debate would then focus on being more rather

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than on having more. Once again, if educational leadership needs to be concerned about the aims of society, and of the role of education in contributing to these, then this seems a highly important question. It is a question returned to in Chapter Ten. In the next chapter, however, we look at another area of global concern, created at least in part by cultures too focussed on consumption. This is the area of energy use.

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CHAPTER SIX

Global Energy Challenges Introduction: Raising the flag On 2 August 2007, a Russian mini-submarine placed a titanium version of its national flag on the seabed of the North Pole, two and a half miles below the Arctic Ocean’s surface. Whilst there may have been a little bit of nationalistic bravado in this action, it was a move in a much larger game, that of national energy security. The Arctic is seen by many experts as one of the last great areas where fossil energy deposits may lie, and, as its ice increasingly retreats, so countries bordering it (Russia, Canada, the United States, Greenland and Norway) are attempting to claim as much of it as possible for themselves. Indeed, if substantial gas and oil deposits are found, such competition is likely to increase, because as the ice retreats due to global warming (largely because of the burning of such fossil fuels), more ice-free areas will be opened up for easier exploration. If the previous chapter focused on the creation and expansion of individual consumption, this planting of a red, white and blue flag in an iconic location signifies a larger national concern over the consumption of energy, and of the international competition for it. Such energy takes a variety of forms, from fossil fuels, to nuclear, to renewables. Its essential function for human beings is to facilitate not only personal desires and wants, but also the huge range of social and economic activities underpinning technologically advanced civilizations. The current challenge lies in working out what happens if the amount required falls below what societies need to keep functioning at desired levels. At the present time, 80 per cent of this energy is derived from fossil fuels, and yet there is a burgeoning literature suggesting that the supply of these is running out, potentially causing the social and economic unsustainability of many activities. This is an immensely important challenge for the sustainability of the human world, but environmental sustainability is also threatened by the way in which major forms of energy are extracted, and because of the by-products left behind. Energy issues then threaten the sustainability of both the natural 93

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and human worlds. They also, uncomfortably, occur in complex, not easily resolvable ways. It seems hard to argue against such understanding and reflection being central educational concerns for those involved in equipping the next generation with the values and skills required for adaptation to such a situation, one created in part by the activities of their own generation.

Is the challenge one of energy supplies, or one of EROI ? Whilst it is clearly important to be able to access raw materials for consumption, such materials need to be transformed into finished products, and to do this sources of energy sufficiently cheap for such conversion are needed, as is the energy needed to transport such goods to desired locations. Yet extracting these sources of energy has a cost: it takes energy to find, access and convert this energy into a usable form. So to burn a log fire, energy may be expended in finding the wood, cutting it down, and bringing it to the location where it will be burned. And if it is calculated that the energy expended is simply too much (perhaps because the nearest wood is five miles away, and it’s a warm evening anyway) then it’s unlikely that the activity will take place. This is a bit like evaluating a financial investment, in that any sensible person would calculate the size of an investment, compare it with the expected return, and on that basis decide if the investment is worthwhile. If the cost of the investment is calculated to be lower than the expected returns from the investment, then the investment will probably be made, and the profit may be used to invest in other things. But if the size of the return doesn’t match the size of the investment, then it would be pretty foolish to go ahead with it. This calculation is much the same for energy extraction. Hall (2011) describes this as the EROI : the energy returned on investment. The EROI is calculated by dividing the number of units of energy produced by the units of energy taken to perform the action. If it then takes the same number of energy units to produce energy as is actually produced, the EROI will be 1 divided by 1 = 1. This means that before such investment is worthwhile, an EROI of more than 1 is needed. Simply put, more energy needs to be produced than is expended if the work is to be worthwhile. Indeed, because society’s institutions and activities can only be created and maintained by using a considerable surplus of energy from an original investment, it would also seem clear that socially and technologically complex societies can only exist when the EROI is a good deal more than 1. This realization prompted Homer-Dixon (2006, p.  52) to suggest a highly dependent relationship between farmers and urban dwellers, as ‘in any complex society, those of us who aren’t farmers are essentially parasites on those of us who grow the

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sources of energy – the grain, the vegetables, fruit and meat – that keep all our bodies running’. In a similar manner, Wrigley (1990) argued that extensive urbanization can only occur when individuals working the land can support the energy demands of much greater numbers; and because pre-industrial societies produced comparatively low crop yields, experienced large and damaging variations in the weather, as well as a host of other challenges, yet lacked the modern mechanical, scientific and technological advantages to deal with these problems and so improve crop production, ‘there was no margin available to support any considerable proportion of the population outside agriculture’. Homer-Dixon also used this dependency on a high EROI to provide a non-standard view of the rise and decline of civilizations, as he argued that ancient civilizations like Rome could only survive if they brought sufficient surplus energy (in the form of things such as imported food and the actions of slaves) to their hubs – which normally meant expansion through conquest. It is also the principal reason, he argued, why, because there was no energy source where the return on investment was high enough to permit such urban ‘parasitization’, after the collapse of Rome, no empire grew sufficiently large and expansionist to import such energy to fuel its growth. This meant that there were no major European cities above one million people for a long time after Rome fell, and why, until the advent of the industrial revolution, only 10 per cent of the population was urban. The industrial revolution changed that picture. It was the beginning of an extraordinary period in human history, as for the first time fuel sources with very high EROI were accessed and used on a large scale. The first instance of this was the extensive use of coal, which had a much higher EROI than did traditional energy forms like wood, peat, wind power, or animal dung. Its EROI , when first exploited, was much higher than today, as in many cases it simply lay exposed on the surface of the planet, and little energy was used in extracting it. Its early availability meant that in the United States in 1930, for instance, coal had an EROI of 30:1 – in other words, only one unit of energy was needed in the gaining of 30 other units. Even then, however, its utility was being surpassed by oil, which in places like Oklahoma and Texas simply oozed out of the ground. Oil’s initial EROI was an astonishing 100:1 (Heinberg, 2011, p.  119). With the realization of its advantages over other forms of energy, and its extensive exploitation, the American century was set fair, as incredibly cheap energy was used to power factories which produced the goods, the building and heating of homes, and the cheap transportation that urbanization would transmute into urban sprawl. Due to the low cost of transport, people no longer needed to live near their place of work, and oil could even be used to create the tarmac upon which the cars and the buses would run. Cheap energy then meant cheap production costs, cheap travel, cheap goods and cheap consumption. The American – and increasingly the global – dream was being realized.

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But it is important to note, as Porritt (2007, pp. 83–4) points out, that whilst ‘conventional economic growth and cheap oil have marched hand in hand for the best part of 60 years’, it is a once-in-a-planet’s-lifetime opportunity. Fossil fuels created over hundreds of millions of years provided more concentrated and portable energy for a sudden and explosive growth of societies, their populations and their economies. Whilst economic growth hovered around 0.1 per cent before the industrial revolution, one country after another turned to this gift of fossil fuels, and exploited it to the full, with little recognition that it, and thus its use, was finite. China and India are only the latest (even if they may be two of the last) to achieve double-digit growth spurts on the basis of such cheap energy. Curiously, most economic textbooks ignore cheap energy’s crucial role here, focusing instead on the interactions of capital and labour to explain economic growth. Yet this is surely to play Hamlet without the Prince. The prince is cheap energy, and without it, global economic and social growth over the last two to three centuries would almost certainly have been impossible. This is also where the picture becomes darker, because as this gift is used up (with little thought for future generations), it becomes much more challenging to sustain the living standards gained from fuels with such low EROI s. The quality of life currently enjoyed then depends very heavily on this commodity being both accessible and inexpensive. It is not a realization made often enough. One of the consequences of cheap energy is that it has become as addictive a drug to modern societies as nicotine or cocaine is to some individuals. Societies have come to depend upon cheap energy, and particularly in the form of oil, or rather upon the EROI that oil provides. In the process societies have used it to create an amazing array of goods and services. When Yeomans (2004) set himself the task of getting through one day without utilizing any oil-based products, he thought this wouldn’t be too difficult. He lived in New York, didn’t need a car, and so could get to and from work by walking. Yet he failed miserably in avoiding the use of oilbased products. He was not able to wash his hair, shave, shower, or deodorize, as shampoo, shaving cream, shower curtains and deodorant all contain oilbased derivatives. Virtually all the plastics in his apartment were oil-based, so he couldn’t use his telephone, computer, kettle, hair-drier, television, or radio. In addition, he couldn’t wear most of his clothes because they had been manufactured using machines lubricated by oil. In addition, much of the energy and lighting in his flat was derived from oil. The list seemed endless: ‘bandages, blenders, garbage bags, glue, pacemakers and pantyhose . . .’ (p. xiii). Finally, even walking to work was not possible because the rubber on the soles of his shoes was oil based, as was the asphalt of the roads and pavements. Yet at least as important were the things he did not mention: the bread for his toast and his breakfast cereal were very likely produced through the extensive use of oil-based fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. These

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oil-based products have been vital for feeding an expanding world population, and as Rifkin (2002, p. 163) argues, supporting more than half the human race in urban environments would not be conceivable were it not for the increase in agricultural yield and productivity made possible by the use of oil to power farm machinery, fertilize land, fend off agricultural pests, and transport products to faraway metropolitan areas. Once again, the dependency of urbanization on a strong EROI is clear. Weismann (2014, p.  51), however, takes this thought further in a very worrying direction: Before artificial nitrogen fertilizer became widely available, the world’s population was around 2 billion. When we no longer have it, or if we ever decide to stop using it – that may be a number to which our own [population] naturally gravitates. We shall return to the issue of supplying an expanding population in Chapter Eight.

How quickly are we moving from ‘easy’ to ‘tough’ energy? Advanced societies today, then, are heavily dependent upon energy sources with a sufficiently high EROI ; without it they look increasingly unsustainable, as they will lack the energy to produce needed machines, buildings, food and all kinds of services. Porritt (2007) is only one commentator who, in describing the connections between economic growth and cheap energy, cautions that within a few years ‘it will become increasingly apparent that both are on their last legs’. If this is true, that both cheap energy and economic growth are disappearing, we move into an era of much ‘tougher’ energy acquisition, and the human story begins to look as if it will take on a much darker and more threatening hue. But how does one tell if this worrying scenario is actually with us already, is just around the corner, is still many decades or centuries off, or is simply the doomsday prediction of a few? There seem to be four possible measures of the seriousness of the situation: increases in the price of particular forms of energy, as rising prices suggest greater demand than the amount that can be provided; 2 the amount of that form of energy calculated to be still remaining in the ground; 1

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3 the rate at which amounts of this energy can actually be extracted; 4 the EROI of the form of energy being extracted.

A first measure then might be to check the changes in the price of a particular form of energy like oil. If its price rises over time, this might be taken as a strong signal that demand is outpacing supply. The current author made just such an argument (Bottery, 2008a) focusing on the potential impact of high oil prices on educational policy and practice. The article was written at the time when the price per barrel had just reached $139. I was not alone in worrying about this: other writers had anticipated the effects of such a rise with attractive titles such as The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel (Leeb, 2006). Whilst the major energy companies and their supporters (including a number of governments) hit a continuously optimistic note about the situation, there were a large number of more objective writers (e.g. Campbell, 2003; Deffeyes, 2003; Shah, 2004; Kunstler, 2005; Strahan, 2007) who also believed that the price movement was a one-way process, and a very strong indicator that oil was quickly running out. My own piece argued that education would rapidly face a number of unexpected challenges which needed considering and strategising for. I still don’t doubt the long-term prognosis, for reasons to be explained shortly, but the history of predictions is that many don’t work out (see, for instance, Strathern, 2007), and this particular one didn’t. Other forces intervened to reduce the price, and two in particular. One was the financial debacle of 2008–9, and the precipitous slump in economic activity globally, which reduced the demand for oil. The other was the apparent endorsement of arguments by optimists like Simon (Sabin, 2013), or media sources like the Wall Street Journal (2005), who argued that humanity’s creativity and inventiveness would always result in the finding of substitutes. And a reasonably credible alternative seemed to occur in the discovery of unconventional energy sources in the United States, particularly through the ‘fracking’ of shale oil and gas. Fracking is where fractures in rock formations are created, by injecting high pressure fluids into cracks to force out the oil and gas contained therein. In the United States particularly, this was seen as being so successful that by 2012 oil prices were back to below $100 a barrel, and analysts like Wile were writing in Business Insider (Wile, 2013) that ‘Peak Oil is Dead’, as the idea that oil extraction had reached a peak, and would now forever decline, was dismissed. Finally Dispatch (2014) notes that the International Energy Agency was then arguing that because of this the United States was projected to become the largest global oil producer by about 2020; in fact it achieved this in 2014. At the time of completing this chapter (January 2015), oil prices had dropped to below $50 a barrel, a move largely caused by OPEC strategies to drive out other competition by reducing the oil price to the point where it was not viable to extract alternative sources in other places – including the large take-up of US shale oil. No doubt this see-saw in prices will continue,

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but the long-term trend is inevitably towards a decline in oil availability. The exhaustive career-long EROI work by Hall and colleagues (e.g. Hall and Klitgaard, 2012) led to Hall suggesting (2011, pp. 2496–7) that ‘the EROI of essentially all fossil fuels studied is declining, in many cases sharply, and . . . the economic implications of these are enormous’. His central question (p. 2496) then was, ‘since it appears that we will be living indefinitely in a world of decreasing EROI s, what are the economic, social and psychological implications?’ Not a bad question, one might think, for political, business – and educational – leaders to consider.

It’s not what’s there, it’s what you can access . . . This short review makes it clear that oil prices have gone up and down, and it is possible that future high prices might well go down if other large reserves are uncovered through the kinds of global explorations for further energy supplies detailed by Klare (2012). A real ‘elephant’ of a conventional field might be discovered, or better techniques might be found to extract supplies from unconventional sources. If either of these were to happen, or indeed if other political and economic factors came into play, then oil optimists might well paraphrase Mark Twain, and suggest that reports of the death of oil and other fossil fuels as the premier energy sources would be very premature. All that one can say with absolute certainty – because this is as ‘wicked’ an issue as one might investigate – is that the amount of fossil fuels is finite, and the more one extracts, the less there is left to extract. If future prices are likely to be variable, a second, and apparently more straightforward, measure might be used, and this would be to figure out the amount that is left. This tends to be what most energy companies, and many oil-producing and oil-consuming countries, focus on. Of course this can be no more than an estimate, and it can vary wildly, just as there is also good evidence that previous figures have been doctored (e.g. Bottery, 2008a, p. 287; Leggett, 2014, pp. 118–19). It is understandable why some parties would publicize very optimistic sets of figures. For a start, energy companies wouldn’t want people worrying about whether they are about to run out of what they sell, and to start buying other forms of energy instead. Oilproducing countries would also want other states to keep on buying their resources for much the same kind of reason. Finally, the politicians of oilconsuming countries would see no political advantage in scaring the electoral horses with bad news. As explained to Leggett (2014, p.  9) by a senior government official: If the early peak argument is right [i.e. oil is running out soon], and the peak and its shock hit while you’re in office, you’re dead. The opposition

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lie machine will pin the oil crash on you, and there will be nothing you can do to persuade the tabloid-reading public otherwise. On the other hand, if you believe in the early peak while in opposition, and try to warn about it, then you will be accused of irresponsible scaremongering, both by the energy industry and the sitting government. The tabloid press will crucify you. Oh, and the voters will hate you for telling them an unhappy story about the future. ‘So,’ said Leggett (p.  9), ‘if I’ve got it right, you just sit tight and hope desperately that the likes of BP have got their story correct? . . . He shrugs, with that Latin use of the hands that says so hey, what can you do?’ However, there are a number of fairly obvious problems with using an estimate of the total amount remaining. First, this has to be an extremely speculative measure – you can’t actually know how much an old oil field or a new oil field contains; and they both may turn out to contain resources that are simply impossible to extract. Second, as Leggett (2014) points out, this extraction may cause so much environmental damage that not only the company involved but the entire industry may have its reputation damaged so badly that public outrage and governmental concern may force the decision to explore other less-risky sources in less-risky environments. One only needs to think of the public outcry at the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989, the hugely polluting effects of tar sands, the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the increased concern about the effects of fracking for shale oil and gas (Heinberg, 2014), and the increase in abnormal weather due to atmospheric warming from the burning of such fossil fuels (IPCC , 2014). These concerns may become so politically serious that plans for exploration and extraction are abandoned. If this happens, energy companies would then probably find that they had invested huge amounts, but they would gain little or nothing in return, in amassing what Leggett (2014, p. 137) calls $6 trillion of ‘unburnable carbon’. This would then begin to reprise the reasons for the financial collapse of 2008, being another huge example of an investment in ‘toxic assets’ – both environmentally and economically – as public opinion prevented its use. The really interesting question would then be, as it was in 2008: are these energy companies too big to fail? If there are serious problems with calculating what is actually left, an increasing number of writers (Heinberg, 2011; Hallett, 2013; Leggett, 2014) have argued for a measure that recognizes the greater accuracy and importance of what can be extracted, as social and economic sustainability doesn’t come from how much of a thing there actually is, but how much of it can be utilized. This then might be a third measure – how much is actually accessed and used? This is certainly easier to calculate. Yet even this doesn’t quite do the job, for issues of EROI reappear once more. Whilst it clearly matters how much you can extract, as important are the costs incurred in extracting it. Take

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coal, for instance. Surface coal – the sort with the highest EROI – has all but disappeared, and new mines are having to be built which need to go deeper and deeper, at first under the ground, and then sometimes under the sea, in increasingly inaccessible and dangerous sites. Oil exploration has gone the same way, the few sites of surface oil having long since been mopped up. After early large increases in the number of ‘nodding donkeys’ accessing oil not too far below the surface, major energy companies are now having to employ enormous and highly sophisticated drills, which have not only gone deeper (sometimes thousands of metres) underground, but have also been used in largely unexplored areas of the world. Klare (2003, 2004, 2008, 2012) in a constantly updated overview of this subject raises a number of important issues from his analyses. Not only is this work increasingly difficult and dangerous, but as increasing amounts of energy are needed to extract the resources, the EROI starts to go down. Moreover, the more that unconventional resources are extracted, the lower is their EROI , because it is so difficult and expensive to extract the energy from the compounds within which they are embedded. And when the EROI hits a certain level, it simply becomes uneconomic to attempt extraction, and production has to cease, unless you want to make a loss on the exercise – and hence the OPEC move to lower prices below the EROI of shale oil. Once again, this is not necessarily the end of the matter, for energy companies have been highly inventive in improving the machines and techniques used for extraction, and some sites have become economic once more. However, as extraction continues, the EROI inexorably declines, until there comes a point when the source is so thoroughly exploited, or the remainder is so difficult to access, that work ceases for a final time. One is reminded of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, when she says that ‘it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place’. Finally, if supplies of conventional energy really do start a terminal decline, Hall’s (2011, pp.  410–12) conclusion on their alternatives now needs to be added to this scenario, for he argues that ‘traditional fossil fuels almost universally have a higher, often a much higher, EROI than most substitutes’, the final conclusion being that humanity has over the last few centuries lived in really good times of high EROI fuels; but is having to move from these to other fuels with a much lower EROI , with all the concerns that this is likely to generate for present and future generations.

International problems and national energy security This investigation of the current energy situation has direct implications for both social and economic sustainability, because of the critical involvement of EROI in economic and social growth. But there are also other problems

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of a different kind which need recognizing, and which generate new international and environmental concerns. The new energy sites being investigated increasingly possess a number of characteristics that make them much less desirable than their predecessors, as they may be in politically difficult or geographically inaccessible areas. Huge ‘elephant’ oil fields, like the Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, or the Rumaila in Iraq, may be relatively accessible in terms of geography, but they require the maintenance of strong relations with regimes which may be viewed as politically repugnant, and which may need propping up militarily, or which create the perceived need for direct military intervention to ensure continued energy supplies. The difficulties and consequences arising from having to source energy from such volatile areas led Klare (2004) to suggest that a dangerous fourfold trend was developing for the United States, which had similar implications for other economically developed Western nations. A first element was the United States’ then escalating need for imported oil; a second was the continued need for oil from unstable and unfriendly suppliers; a third was the consequent rise in anti-American feeling, which would also be directed towards its allies, and finally there would be an intensification of competition between both developed and developing economies for remaining supplies, supplies that increasingly would not be able to meet this demand. These kinds of developments, then, have led many Western countries over the last couple of decades away from dependency upon politically undesirable regions, and towards the exploration of more home-based solutions, and the more geographically inaccessible. Major areas for the United States include Alaska and regions northward into the Arctic; other nations (particularly Canada, Norway, Russia and Denmark (because of Greenland)) are also involved with either private or nationalized oil and gas companies in such exploration. But as areas are explored, so different political issues have appeared, as countries have begun to stake out, and so try to claim tracts of both land and sea that are suspected of having oil or gas deposits. The potential for political conflict is then enhanced. The planting of the Russian flag at the North Pole was then one more move in a game of staking claims for the anticipated discovery of new sources of fossil fuels. The same kind of posturing and political standoffs has happened in areas such as the Falklands/ Malvinas Islands (between the UK and Argentina), in the East China Sea (between Japan and China), and in the South China Sea (between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei). Finally, it remains to be seen whether currently existing international treaties governing the nonexploitation of resources in the pristine wilderness of the Antarctic will hold if the pressure for new energy sources gets even stronger. The issue of energy security, then, is increasingly framed as the question of how individual nations ensure that vital resources of energy continue to be available to their peoples (just as they are increasingly doing for food and water security). The national focus of energy security has led Klare (2012, p. 215) to conclude that currently this is a game based on survival of the

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‘fittest’ nations, where ‘every key player in the race for what’s left will do whatever it can to advance its own position, while striving without mercy to eliminate or subdue all the others’. These are strong words, and Klare is no warmonger; he concludes by arguing for much greater international cooperation in the search for solutions, rather than the pursuit of an agenda dominated by the survival of the most powerful. But even if more cooperative moves could be agreed, the world would still face a finite energy supply, reducing quickly through the continued high-level demand from already affluent countries, as well as the increased demand from fast-developing economies such as India and China with high levels of growth and huge populations, and by an increasing world population. These issues are not going to go away.

The future of unconventional energy sources A supply of conventional fossil energy reserves to meet expanding demands then seems increasingly problematic. Indeed, and as Leggett (2014) demonstrates in a detailed review of actions and statements by governments and oil companies over the previous ten years, both of these have increasingly moved from a belief that energy demands can be met in the foreseeable future through an expansion of conventional energy supplies, towards a belief that these conventional supplies have or are rapidly reaching their ‘peak’ level of supply, and need to be supplemented by the development of unconventional oil and gas reserves, such as the tar sands of Alberta in Canada, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil (lower-grade oil, which takes considerably more effort to become usable), Rocky Mountain shale oil, and the global exploration of the possibilities of shale gas through the ‘fracking’ process, as well as attempts to convert coal into more liquid forms of energy. Yet each time the problem is readdressed, and new solutions sought, new problems crop up. The attempt to supplement conventional with unconventional and difficult-to-reach reserves has three particular problems attached to it. One of these, described above, is the EROI for these sources; whilst the EROI of unconventional reserves is much poorer than that of the more conventional sources because of the great difficulty and energy needed in extracting oil or gas from the materials accessed, the EROI for difficultto-reach reserves – like oil at the bottom of the Arctic sea bed – is also low, but here because of the sheer difficulty in getting to them. A second problem is the environmental pollution they cause. Much has been written on this topic with respect to unconventional resources, and mention has already been made of the devastating effects of tar sands upon their local environment, and the increasing concern about the effects of fracking, from chemicals leaching into local water supplies and vegetation. But the same concerns apply to conventional sources, and it seems highly significant that in September 2012, for instance, the energy giant Total suspended drilling for

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oil in the Arctic because it had learnt that it would not be possible to cap any oil spill which occurred just before the Arctic winter set in, until the next summer. This decision is perhaps not surprising, given the enormous environmental damage, cost and bad publicity to BP following the world’s currently biggest-ever oil spill – 5 million barrels – from the Deepwater Horizon rig, in April 2010. One shudders to think what would happen to the oceans of the entire Northern Hemisphere if oil gushed into them for a full six months before action was taken. A third problem is the increasing worry about the size of new deposits. Whilst new sources of conventional fuels are being found, both Klare (2012) and Leggett (2014) point out that some 80 per cent of current oil provision comes from fields discovered before the 1970s, that these are steadily declining, and that much of the calculation of remaining supplies by Western companies and governments actually comes from non-verified statements by the governments of oil-producing nations. The other fact, as Leggett says (2014, p. 15), is that the new fields being found are ‘prairie dogs’ rather than ‘elephants’, and seem highly unlikely to be of a size capable of replacing the supply from the current giants. The same kind of thing seems to be happening with the unconventional oil sources. Take for instance the fact that despite the US Department of Energy predicting that there would be enough gas in Polish shale to supply domestic consumption for at least 300 years, when the first two wells were drilled by Exxon the next year, no commercially viable quantities were found. One then has to be careful by claims such as that of Caudrilla Resources (BBC News online 1/2/13) that the results of the two fracking test wells in Lancashire, England, indicate the presence of the largest shale gas reserve in the world, worth £136 billion. The final problem is the subject of the next chapter – the continued release of atmospheric warming gases, which increase global warming.

A super-wicked problem requiring a super-wicked response? The evidence detailed in this chapter suggests a number of things. One is that it is becoming increasingly likely that new discoveries of oil and gas will fail to compensate for the depletion of existing resources. When exactly this time will come, though, is still unclear. There are those who have claimed it has already happened, those who have suggested that it is happening now or in the immediate future, and those who have claimed there is a small window of ten years or so before we fully experience its impact. Finally, there still remain some who argue that this won’t be a problem for many decades to come. These, however, are a declining number, and the problem of peak oil, rather than going away, rather like global warming, is increasingly accepted across the political and scientific spectrum. The differences in

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argument now seem to be more about whether this is a problem that is a couple of decades away at most, or one that is already with us. It is not a comfortable thought. The evidence also suggests that this issue of energy availability is, in Levin et al.’s (2012) terms, a particular intransigent wicked, perhaps ‘super-wicked problem’, in that (i) time seems to be running out for its solution; (ii) current short-term mindsets prevent its longer-term impacts from being fully taken into account; and (iii) it appears to be a zero-sum game of competition, with no central authority directing collaborative action. Levin et al.’s final characteristic, (iv) that those who are trying to solve the problem are also those causing it, may, however, not be conceptually wicked enough. It may be largely true for politically authoritarian countries such as China and Russia, but in Western countries it is made even more complex by the ‘revolving door’ of appointments between legislators and the private sector, as individuals move almost seamlessly from government positions into jobs with companies having to implement (and avoid or modify) policies, and then back again. At the same time, the relations between the government and powerful sections of the private sector seem to many to becoming increasingly close. Whilst this has to some extent always been the case, the trend has intensified, and the danger is that policy impartiality is compromised, as the gamekeeper gains the knowledge to be a very effective poacher. One can only speculate on the inside knowledge that Hector Sants, CEO of the UK Financial Services Authority at the time of the 2008 financial crisis, took with him when he resigned from his post and joined Barclays in 2012. Again, one must wonder at the impact on senior civil servants from ten UK governmental departments and agencies from being exposed to a two-day course in 2013 run by Shell on the energy giant’s view of the future. As Leggett, CEO of a renewable energy company and justifiably aggrieved, points out, ‘such access to officialdom was something the renewables industries could only imagine’ (Leggett, 2014, p. 169).

Energy trends, climate change and educational involvement These kinds of complex obstacles – as well as the non-rational manner in which many critical decisions can be made (Ariely, 2009) – suggest a number of trends in the search for sustainable energy supplies, and of their impact upon climate change. One trend is that despite the IPCC (2014, p.  40) warning that ‘effective mitigation [of the deleterious effects of climate change] will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently’, self-serving strategies currently are much more characteristic of governments than the coordinated global response required for the generation of energy forms that don’t add more greenhouse gases to the

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atmosphere. It seems clear that global agreements are possible – as with the banning of CFC s (Benedick, 1998), and the Kyoto Protocol – yet the evidence is mixed at best. Solutions to the challenges of energy security – and, for that matter, of food and water security – are currently sought largely by individual nation states, in competition with others, and because of this could well become trigger points for future international conflicts. More economically developed countries are much better placed to win such struggles, but they would then also be primary targets and breeding grounds for terrorist activity, which they would probably find much more difficult to suppress. A more globally cooperative ethic, which raises the concept of a ‘public good’ from a national to a global conception, could enhance the possibility of more shared and equitable solutions. In this, the education of present and future generations would play a vital part. A second trend is an increasing acceptance that the challenges to energy sustainability are more likely to be imminent rather than distant problems. This again provides a compelling case for their inclusion in many presentday agendas, including those in education. A failure to do this only hastens the likelihood of social, economic and environmental problems. The IPCC (2014, p.  13) made this point very strongly when describing the effects of delaying measures to reduce greenhouse gases. They state ‘with high confidence’ that: Delaying mitigation efforts beyond those in place through 2030 is estimated to substantially increase the difficulty of the transition to low longer-term emissions levels and narrow the range of options consistent with maintaining temperature change below 2°C relative to pre-industrial levels. The third trend is that whilst there is increased recognition of the need to move to cleaner energy alternatives, the domination of agendas by energy companies through their financial and political muscle has slowed this process down. A decade ago, William Keegan wrote in The Observer (Keegan, 2004) that he felt ‘an atmosphere of suppressed panic’ in IMF meetings about the rising price of oil; there is the same feeling in the literature on an increasing inability to secure sufficient flow of resource demands to ensure social and economic continuity. In 2008, the World Wildlife Fund argued that ‘humanity is already in unsustainable territory’, whilst others like Lynas (2004), Stern (2006, 2010) and the IPCC (2014) all suggest that consumption demands have created a pattern of climate change close to permanent overshoot. Finally, there are some, like Rees (2005), Lovelock (2006) and Emmott (2013), who argue that not only has humanity overshot, but that the situation is probably not recoverable. The pessimistic camp may have the odd fringe lunatic, but these are sober scientists: Lovelock is an internationally renowned scientist, Rees is the past President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Emmott was at the time of

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writing Professor and Head of Computational Science in Cambridge. It is not possible to dismiss such concerns as the ranting of the obsessed. If one were to judge this very ‘wicked’ situation on the basis of the best available opinions, there seems justification for real concern by all who can affect such outcomes. These should include, one would have thought, a society’s educational establishments and their leaders. None of these three trends mean that an apocalypse is imminent, but the evidence does suggest that governments need to commit themselves more energetically to cooperative international policies, that the private sector needs to see resource consumption as more than an issue for increasing shareholder value, and societies need to use mechanisms like education to communicate better the nature of the situation to its members, and to provide future generations with the knowledge and expertise to resolve it. If not, the evidence does not point to easy or peaceful resolutions.

Energy and the impact on education Looking specifically at the situation of education systems, it needs to be asked: how will energy changes threaten their sustainability and that of educational leadership? A first impact of oil depletion will probably be an increase in cost and resource constraints, and this will be because of three factors. First, as the supply of oil fails to meet global demand, its cost will increase. It seems strange to write this last sentence at a time when the price of oil is less than $50 a barrel. Yet oil is a finite commodity and reducing its cost will only hasten the time when it becomes prohibitively expensive to extract the remainder. Yet the reduction in the price of oil is not only unsustainable in the long term; when fossil fuels become much less expensive, this also reduces the opportunity to develop cleaner forms of energy, because they cannot compete with such low prices. When energy becomes more expensive again, it will then take longer to bridge the gap between fossil fuels and cleaner alternatives. So when energy costs once again become more expensive, educators, like the public sector in general, will probably have to cope with increased energy costs with what are very likely to be static or declining budgets. This will have impacts on education in a variety of ways, to be discussed shortly. Another factor to be figured into this problem is to be found in the worldwide increase in the average age of populations (see Chapter Seven on this), as global demographic trends produce a lower proportion of populations contributing to a tax base, thus resulting in additional pressure on government spending, and making more difficult the maintenance of current standards of educational provision. The combined effects of higher energy costs and smaller tax bases through increasingly aging populations are therefore likely to place heavy financial pressure upon public sector activity, and particularly areas like education devoted primarily to younger

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populations. Public sector educational leaders across most countries will then likely have to continue to do what they have been doing for a number of decades – doing more with less, managing smaller budgets whilst meeting increased government demands, and dealing with lowered workforce morale. Trends seen since the first oil crises of the 1970s will therefore probably be exacerbated, and future leaders will need to be prepared for such challenges. If such training needs are not properly addressed, the situation described across the Western world in earlier chapters of stressrelated illness, high turnover, early retirements, and a lack of applicants for senior jobs will be likely to continue or even increase. Such a reduction in public sector finances will probably increase two well-practised governmental strategies. One is the defraying of costs onto the ‘consumer’, with parents being asked to contribute more to their children’s education, not just at the tertiary level but at lower levels as well. It will also likely add to a movement, aided by an increased use of IT, to locate more student work at home. This will not only save on public sector energy and transport costs, but may also reduce the number of educators employed. Indeed, if Friedman (2006) is to be believed, English-speaking parents in the developed world may find themselves hiring tutors on the internet from overseas locations like India, where tutor costs are considerably less expensive than in their own country, but where English is still technically very good. And there is a growing literature (e.g. Williams, 2008; Barnett, 2013) suggesting that universities need to recognize that competition for numbers is now international rather than national in nature, and that many students will increasingly see tertiary education as accessed through virtual institutions, and IT-based home-study because it is the most affordable form of gaining qualifications. Indeed, such home-working may be seen by both businesses and governments as useful preparation for working in economies which reduce costs by decreasing the number of geographic locations to which people have to travel for work. Another trend is likely at both primary and secondary levels to be a continued devolution of responsibility through school-based management. This, however, will not necessarily provide greater professional autonomy, for as noted earlier this has normally been accompanied by greater use of QA mechanisms, ensuring that whilst institutions work out ways of achieving targets with fewer resources, they remain focused on achieving requirements that are largely externally mandated. Educators would then very likely continue to be given the responsibility of finding ways of implementing policies with reduced resources, but find that controls on their work are just as rigorous as before. Along with these changes would likely be an expansion of private schooling. There are a number of reasons for believing this. One is that increases in state expenses on public sector activities from increased heating and transport costs might well impel the defrayal of such costs. One way, on a spectrum of strategies, would probably involve the expansion of

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state-‘sponsored’ schools, where the ‘sponsoring’ body made a financial contribution to the school’s costs in exchange for their greater autonomy in the determination of curricular and other policies. As argued elsewhere (Bottery, 2009), such a strategy is in effect partial privatization, and there seems little reason to believe that financially constrained governments would not consider the expansion of such schemes, particularly if they held neo-liberal visions in which privatization of the public sector was not only viewed as economically expedient, but ideologically desirable. Private schooling may also be encouraged if, as some argue, diversity in the sector facilitated greater creativity and adaptability. Friedman (2006), for instance, has argued that in an age when new challenges will need to be urgently addressed and solved, educational institutions that are focused on learning how to learn, on the innovative, the adaptive and the creative, will be critical to this endeavour. The perceived need for diversity in a complex age is also supported by an ecological literature (e.g. Walker and Salt, 2006, 2012; Gunderson and Holling, 2002), which argues much the same thing – that a species’ survival depends upon a degree of differentiation in that species permitting greater adaptation to new challenges. In the difficult circumstances ahead, governments may then view the enlargement of private sector education as a key means of developing more innovative and unusual responses. A pattern may then be rolling out internationally which increasingly locates education as a complex sector of activity in which private sector concepts and values infiltrate the public sector through the adoption of private sector practices and strategies. Ball (2007), for example, has described how in English education these practices and strategies become ever more influential as the government employs many different and private bodies to do work previously undertaken by public sector institutions. When private firms are then employed by the state to evaluate the performance of other contracted private sector companies, so the values of individuals and organizations quietly and unobtrusively, but with great effect, transform the nature of public sector activity. It may well be then that all three trends – the defrayal of costs, the need for greater creativity, and the infiltration of private sector concepts into the public sector – come together in a energy-expensive world to make the expansion of private schooling a strong likelihood. In one sense such strategies may be seen as sustainable responses, as they reduce government costs, and may lead to an expansion of creative approaches. In addition, one would expect curricular developments in both the public and private sectors to focus more intensively on environmental issues, population growth and energy consumption, with Information Technology as an increasingly important medium for such activity. Yet a privatized competitive educational world tends to be one with private concerns, and with rival competitors. In a world requiring a stronger focus on issues of national and international cooperation for the development of public goods, it seems unlikely that .

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such wider visions would be adequately addressed, and greater moves to privatization might then lead to less sustainable outcomes.

Educational localization Whilst some educational work may take on wider perspectives because of arising global challenges, some of it may, paradoxically, become more localized. This is for two reasons. One is that whilst increased transport costs will make more home-working attractive, it will also probably make suburban commuting less affordable. Work itself is likely to change. As delivering goods to hypermarkets from hundreds or even thousands of miles away becomes less economic, so the local and small will become more attractive, and work is likely to be increasingly generated in the production, maintenance and selling of the local. In an age of hi-tech education, there may then be a paradoxical renaissance of the local craftsman. In such circumstances, educational institutions will need to provide appropriate curricula, part of which may well be hi-tech and global in nature, but other parts will need to equip future generations for occupations much closer to home. The second reason for such localism is more troubling. The danger of an increased insularity and competitiveness between different countries and different regions, through competition over diminishing energy resources, may well lead to greater international conflict and widespread trading tensions. If governments and media develop more parochial and perhaps chauvinistic attitudes towards other countries, educators may find the development of greater understanding between peoples and nations increasingly in conflict with such trends. If this is the case, societal movements towards the embrace of thick trust (Uslaner, 2002), where people seek security through relationships with those who share their values and beliefs, will challenge and may overwhelm thinner forms of trust aiming to bridge differences between peoples of different beliefs and approaches to life. A final danger of increasingly parochial thinking then stems from nations or regions attempting to horde or gain control over diminishing energy reserves. As they do so, disputes over oil may lead to enhanced political tensions, trade protectionism and insularity. Whilst Kunstler (2005, p. 98) was almost certainly overstating the case when he argued that ‘before long, all nations will retreat back into themselves either in autarky or anarchy’, there is a real danger of retreat from international and global outlooks, and a concentration on national, regional and local self-interest, with some governments using economic and political crises to manipulate populations into greater insularity, xenophobia and nationalist or racist sentiments. In the circumstances, educational institutions and their leaders may find themselves being asked the most serious questions about their role, and about whether they should question the nature and purpose of policies, and

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particularly the effects these have upon education and society. It is an issue that, in an energy-deficient world, may become unavoidable.

Final thoughts The erosion of non-renewable global fossil energy supplies is likely to pose real problems for societies generally, and for education in particular. The trends towards the dominance of a competitive national ethic, the imminent rather than distant nature of these challenges, and the lack of speed in recognizing and responding to these issues should all involve educational systems in more crucial roles. Yet like much else beyond the purely educational, the role that energy plays in modern societies has been a largely neglected area, and not just for education and its leaders. As noted earlier in this chapter, oil-producing countries, oil-consuming countries, and energy companies as well all have ‘good’ if different reasons for ensuring that this subject is kept very low down on public agendas. It is therefore perfectly understandable if very worrying if the subject continues to be reserved for relatively minor areas of the curriculum. This is clearly dangerous, not just to education, but perhaps even more importantly for the societies they serve. The appreciation of and action towards dealing with diminishing energy reserves is a powerful argument for a much greater ‘ecological’ understanding, not just by educators and their leaders, but by the wider public as well. Educators could have a critical role here as humanity may currently be at something of a crossroads. It can pursue a path of the nationally self-interested, where those countries with the economic and military muscle sustain or increase their current living standards through consumption at present energy levels, and in which their societal health is measured by how much their economies continue to grow, and how much of such supplies can be kept for themselves. But a different more cooperative and more sustainable path is possible. This would recognize that energy problems are truly global; that responses to global problems need to be underpinned by a greater emphasis on the equity of such solutions; that EROI is a concept that all should understand; and that societal health is reframed in ways recognizing that the level of the resource consumption must be no more than can be equitably distributed and no more than the earth’s capacity to replenish such resources. Equity and sufficiency are the key words here. Such understandings and changes should then be part of all educational agendas for sustainability, their embrace giving direction to an ecological understanding not only of their own profession, but of the nature of the planet on which they depend. It would provide a raison d’être which transcended the narrow, target-driven, form-filling performativity that so many governments seem to want to assign to such professionals. It would give educators a real and vital role in a troubled world.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Climate Change and the Assessment of Evidence

Introduction Climate change is probably the most publicized and debated global issue of the present time, and for a number of reasons it has strong relevance to the challenges that educational leaders face. It is a highly contentious and debated issue, and it is probably the best example of a wicked problem currently in existence. Not only does it strongly demonstrate the problem of trying to understand the likely outcomes of systemic rather than linear causations (and not just in environmental, but in economic and social systems as well); it also generates a very varied selection of views on what it is, what causes it, and whether it is actually that important a problem. One might also add that there are those with strong reasons for undermining concern in its importance, as they believe that most remediating action would undermine their vested interests. Educational leaders can then learn a lot about their own predicaments from these issues because they are similarly faced by problems caused by complex systemic causations, by similarly varied stakeholder views on what problems actually matter, and how these should be resolved. Education is also an area where those with power and money perceive that considerable benefit is to be gained if agendas favour their interests. As the evidence on the causes and effects of climate change is examined in this chapter, it will become clear that this is also a very good example of a problem with few ‘silver bullet’ solutions, where the solutions that are proposed are highly varied and highly contested. It is also an important example of what happens when the wickedity of problems is not recognized, for then tame solutions may be applied, and the likelihood of resolution markedly lowered. Once again, this concern applies to educational issues: tame, simplistic understandings of educational problems are normally 113

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followed by tame simplistic solutions with a limited chance of significant success. Finally, in both cases, when wickedity is not recognized, and when results do not come out as expected, blame may be attached to those attempting resolution in the (false) belief that those implementing solutions should be criticized for lack of success, rather than it being recognized that failure is much more likely to have been caused by the poor initial definition of problem and solution. The phenomenon of climate change then has important lessons for education. A good place to start is by framing climate change as a wicked issue, and then asking what kinds of views are generated about the nature of this problem.

The problem of climate change from different perspectives For many people, who one might call ‘the concerned’, the problem of climate change is seen as one of rising global temperatures causing damaging weather changes, which affect people and their possessions, reduce crop growth, and lessen biodiversity. For them, an increasing volume of evidence demonstrates that climate change has the potential in the near future to directly threaten not only social and environmental sustainability, but economic sustainability as well. On this scenario, then, climate change is a global problem, which needs to be urgently addressed by everyone. Others, ‘the overwhelmed’, take a different view. Whilst they may agree that climate change has the potential to pose major threats to the environment and society, they think it is simply too big and too difficult a problem for the average man and woman in the street to understand, and its full appreciation depends heavily upon the experts in this area. Moreover, and because it is of such large proportions, it is little good if individuals, single communities or even nations take unilateral action: this is a global issue, which needs to be dealt with by global solutions and with global planning and governance. For yet others, ‘the sceptics’, the idea of climate change may be accepted, but it continues to be seen by them as but one of a series of problems with which humanity is faced, even if currently it happens to be the one most favoured by global idealists and bureaucrats. There is too much about it, they would argue, that is uncertain, and because of this, time, effort and money would be better spent on other, more immediate, global problems. In the end, they would argue, encouraging the invention of cleaner and cheaper technologies through the greater use of human ingenuity and market competition will solve the problems posed by any climate change. A fourth group, ‘the spoilers’, is composed of those who attempt to prevent a debate about the impact of climate change from happening in the first place. They use the necessarily complex nature of scientific evidence and

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arguments in this area to confuse and befuddle the general public. They also seize upon pieces of research that could have alternative explanations, or whose methodology might be flawed, and move beyond any rational critique to instead question the entire basis of the scientific method and the objectivity of scientific ‘experts’. Now whilst there is clearly good reason to critique scientific procedures and reasoning, and to recognize that scientists are as fallible as anyone else, they do not engage in such criticism to improve the quality of evidence. Rather, because they have a vested interest in undermining any action in this area, their intention is a destructive rather than a constructive one. Whilst this is a brief and simplified overview of different approaches to climate change, it hopefully makes clear just how disputed this area is. One of the reasons for this is that it has elements of the story of the blind men and the elephant: its shape and nature are both identified by the parts to which you are closest, and with which you are most familiar. Whilst there is a huge difference in size between the problems of climate change and those of educational leadership, there are nevertheless strong similarities between them, as the problems of both are likely to be identified through the values, framing and personal approaches brought to the concern. The stance taken in both will then very likely determine the selection of some issues and the discounting of others. The approach you take in climate change also affects the way you view the nature of the evidence produced. If the problems of climate change are seen as primarily the province of science and the scientist, then forming a view of the problem and its possible solutions will be seen as being through an examination of the evidence gained through the use of the scientific method, this being claimed as providing the most ‘objective way’ of accurately estimating climate change risks and dangers, and therefore of informing policy makers and public alike about what needs to be done. There also may be for the non-specialist a degree of reassurance and comfort here, underpinned as it seems to be by a long-held view (Merton, 1952) that the proper conduct of science has a number of necessary characteristics – a constant and organized scepticism; an agreed universalism of method; a disinterestedness in the design, conduct and reporting of that research – all of these being forged together into a set of scientific professional values. This approach then implicitly suggests that scientists can avoid being ‘tainted’ by particular social, economic and political forces, and that they are therefore capable of providing policy makers and public alike with some kind of ‘true’ picture of the problem which the layperson can trust. Yet such an approach also seems to hark back to a rather 19th-century view of science as having the ability to discover and then provide the public with a set of eternal scientific truths, the more of which are acquired, the more certainty there can be in understanding the world we live in. Such a view, however, needs to be contrasted with more recent views of science considerably more cautious about the ‘truth’ of any scientific statement (see

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Chalmers, 2013). Readers will remember how Popper (1982, p. 111) argued that science did not rest upon some kind of ‘solid bedrock’, but rather was built upon a swamp, and human beings built their structures, their theories on that swamp, always driving down to find a firmer base, but always having to admit that it was extremely unlikely that any solid base would ever be found. So we keep on driving down, and when we find that our structures seem stable, we use them, but need always to recognize that such stability is only there ‘for the time being’. Many people are probably quite happy with this approach, and with scientific claims like that of IPCC (2014) scientists that they have a confidence level of 95 per cent that ‘it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century’. However, other people will have concerns with such a statement. It seems a bit like the advert claiming that a particular brand of toilet disinfectant kills 99 per cent of all known germs. What happens, some ask, with the (presumably) identified 1 per cent that this disinfectant doesn’t kill, and all the other germs of which we don’t know? Honesty and openness are all very well, but does such a claim of 99 per cent increase confidence or anxiety? Some would similarly argue: what confidence can we have in a group of scientists who only claim, on such a massively important issue, that they are only 95 per cent confident that human beings are to blame for current climate change? To which probably the best response is – as much confidence as members of a species with limited understanding and abilities and who want to be honest can have. The 1 per cent and the 5 per cent will concern those looking for absolute certainty, and indeed such a qualification is a useful weapon for those in the ‘spoiler’ group wishing to exploit uncertainty for their own self-interested purposes. These are expressions of humility that many other areas of human activity – particularly political cultures – might do well to embrace. But just as such intellectual humility does leave room for debate and uncertainty, there is a similar level of debate about the position that scientists can and should take with respect to policy decisions in the real world. Take but one instance, the four idealized roles for the scientist described by Pielke (2007) in a scientist/policy maker relationship: 1 acting like a pure scientist, who simply provides research

information, but leaves it to others to make the best use of it; 2 attempting to be a scientific arbiter by providing the scientific information on specific questions asked by policy makers; 3 acting as an issue advocate, believing that not only should scientific information be provided, but that scientists should also provide their best judgement on which alternative should be preferred; and finally, 4 behaving like an honest broker, by providing the scientific evidence

for conflicting views, but leaving it to others to make the final choice between such perspectives.

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There are other models of the desirable relationship between scientists and policy makers (e.g. Hulme, 2009), but a detailed adjudication between them is unnecessary here, for it is clear that a variety of relationships between scientists and policy makers can and does occur at one time or another. However, the more important (and non-scientific) questions are: when and why should such relationships occur? Furthermore, what kind of evidence, arguments and values would you use to decide when they should be adopted? This is actually not a scientific question, but one that takes questions about climate change beyond the realms of science and into complex value debates, in which the scientist may have no more authority than anyone else. In similar manner, if educators were to ask what evidence there was for better achieving creativity in the classroom, some of this evidence might be ‘scientific’, but as importantly there would be other questions to ask: about the definition one wishes to give to ‘creativity’, its importance compared to other educational concerns, and the value of different kinds of creativity to different societies. Once again, the questions needing to be asked will likely invoke scientific evidence, but they are not purely scientific questions, and they require more than scientific answers, for they are entangled with other kinds of issues, other kinds of values. Now this is not to denigrate the importance that the use of science, reason and logic bring to the human endeavour. Whilst the use of scientific knowledge may be relatively limited in some decision-making processes (how would a scientist resolve the question of ‘Was Bach a better composer than Beethoven?’), its use is likely to be a very important part of decisionmaking processes that require strong empirical evidence (and increasingly important the more threatening the situation appears to be). So when writers such as Monbiot (2007), Washington and Cook (2011), and Oreskes and Conway (2012) detail how members of the ‘spoilers’ group described above deliberately attempt to undermine scientific evidence, and the processes underpinning them, with respect to issues such as climate control or the effects of smoking, it is important to investigate such claims, because as Popper (1966) argues in another context, methods of arriving at decisions based upon evidence, reason and logic are much to be preferred to those based upon processes of power and authority. In this context, it is noteworthy how Gore (2006) was able to point out that there had been 928 peerreviewed articles in the previous decade dealing with climate change, none of which doubted the societally generated nature of global warming, yet 53 per cent of the 636 articles in the previous 14 years in the US popular press, none underpinned by the same blind peer-reviewed intellectual rigour, had cast doubt on such causation. There are, then, important political and ethical choices to be made in the decision-making methods chosen, and the motives of those attempting to undermine decision-making processes based on evidence, reason and logic need to be carefully examined. However, and to repeat, science is still highly unlikely to provide a complete answer to many of the larger questions we seek in life. As Hulme

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(2009, p.  105), a highly respected climate scientist himself, argues, ‘we should not hide behind science when difficult ethical choices are called for’. For some, this will be deeply disturbing, as it may take away from them the comfort and the trust provided by such authority of opinion. It may indeed feel rather like a security rug being pulled away from an understanding of the world.

The role of the economist in climate change Yet for others, the authority of science may not be the major basis upon which they feel decisions should be made. They may instead rely more on the discipline of economics and the role that it can play in climate change, and if its concerns are rated more highly than those of scientific evidence, a very different position may be taken. When George Bush Snr. withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, his declared reason was not the poverty of the scientific evidence, but the potential damage to the US economy. His judgement was probably based on the belief that the value of an employed workforce and a continued standard of living in the United States outweighed any current scientific evidence about the future consequences of climate change. In this way, if you feel a different part of the elephant, you may arrive at different conclusions as to what it looks like. Now whilst there is much discussion about what exactly ‘economics’ is concerned with (see Chang 2014), the most widely held view is that it is basically the study of how individuals and groups of people choose to allocate resources; and the most common economic framework applied by policy makers to climate change and most other policy areas, including education, is that of cost-benefit analysis – the consideration of whether the costs of doing something (such as reducing atmospheric emissions) are more or less than the benefits derived from not taking such action. Most of the time, such costs are decided in monetary terms. Clearly, if the costs exceed the benefits, action is not indicated; if the benefits exceed the costs, it is. This was probably the kind of reasoning that Bush was using when he concluded that the costs of signing the Kyoto Protocol were too high for the US economy when compared with the benefits that might derive from not signing it. Never mind that many might accuse him of a short-term and selfish nationalism, the fact is that he made a choice, what he and many mainstream economists would call a ‘rational’ choice, but not one based wholly or even mostly upon scientific evidence. However, if there are limits to the field of scientific activity, there are also limits to economic activity as well. If economics is about how people use and allocate resources, a whole series of wicked questions begin to bubble away beneath this calm definition. Among the most important are:

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If, in most cases, part of cost-benefit analysis is an estimation of people’s welfare, how is its monetary value to be measured and ascribed? 2 If two people differ in their valuations, on what basis are such differences evaluated? 3 On what basis are the monetary costs of action or inaction to be measured? And what parts do we measure? In terms of personal well-being? In terms of the effects upon communities? On agriculture? On biodiversity? Or the many other issues that might be affected? And why are some included and others excluded from consideration? 1

4

Finally, are the monetary costs measured just for this generation, or for future ones? And for how many of them? How do we decide? And are the costs discounted the further we go into the future? And why should this be done, and by how much?

Hulme (2009, p.  127) argues that economists using cost-benefit analyses disagree about the needed action on climate change for three main reasons: they cannot agree on the discount rate for future generations, they cannot agree on the costs resulting from climate change damage, and they cannot agree on the likelihood of really catastrophic outcomes of climate change. Indeed, he points to two reports on climate change – Lomborg’s (2004) Copenhagen consensus, and the Stern Review of 2007 – which came to completely different conclusions about the need to invest in protective measures against the impact of climate change now, because they begin from different assumptions about the impact that early intervention would have upon the long-term effects of climate change. Once again, the values and assumptions adopted at the start of a ‘rational’ process play a large part in any final decision, and any attempted cloaking of value positions through the provision of large amounts of statistical data should not hide the fact that much of this data may be generated from deeply held un-provable and untestable assumptions, often outside the province of economics. A major danger here is that if, in the real world, this sometimes does happen, many may have neither the access, the knowledge, nor the desire to fully understand what is being argued. Finally, whilst currently the major policy use of economics is that of costbenefit analysis, there is a breed of economists – what one might call ecological economists (e.g. Daly, 1996; Jackson, 2009) – who would argue that it is simply wrong-headed to place a monetary value on things like damage to the natural world. Coral reefs, mountain gorillas and blue whales, they would argue, are simply not things you should try to place a human monetary value on. They are irreplaceable, and their extinction would be examples of absolute losses, the value of which cannot be captured within the logic or lexicon of market exchange. Once again, the argument is being made that economics, like science, is an area of activity with particular assumptions and limits, and when their practitioners stray beyond these,

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they not only damage their own area by exceeding their ‘natural territory’, but they also damage the areas they invade, because they supplant appropriate with inappropriate values, methods and judgements, which then almost inevitably lead to inappropriate actions. Like Procrustes, the ancient Greek inn owner, who put his guests on a rack to stretch them, or cut their feet off, until they fitted their beds, disciplinary areas with imperialist ambitions like economics tend to squeeze or stretch other areas of intellectual activity until they fit their own values and assumptions. The educational leader may then be stretched or squeezed into the role of entrepreneur or civil servant rather than into roles more befitting the term ‘educator’. In terms of climate change, the reality of disciplinary limits means that concerns about biodiversity, stewardship, inter-generational fairness and humanity’s ultimate purposes are not the central subject matter of classical economics, just as they are not that of scientific investigation either. However, they may well be for educators, because they are matters of valuation, of philosophical, ethical and religious discussion, which may be informed by scientific facts and economic considerations, but cannot and should not be decided by them. And so finally, whilst some may still think that the problems of climate change are amenable to solution through a tame strategy of raising awareness by the simple presentation of ‘the facts’, this fails to appreciate the frames that people use in selecting and valuing such facts, and arriving at their chosen conclusions. For the educator, this poses a whole series of questions about how they should approach this issue in their institution. So how should anyone, but particularly educators, go about dealing with this, or indeed any other wicked issue? It cannot be dealt with purely through a process that tamely says ‘these are the facts, so these are the actions that need to be taken’. Any appreciation of the evidence will need to recognize the wicked nature of the problem, the complexity of the interplay between different forces, the roles and limitations of perspectives from areas like science and economics, as well as the frames with which different people come to such issues. For climate change specifically, evidence and information will need this kind of awareness. A good place to start is in tracing the history and science of the concerns about the world’s climate.

Fuel usage, greenhouse gases and climate change Historically the fuels that humanity has used have been either living organic material (like wood), or the fossilized remains of organic material from hundreds of millions of years ago (like coal and oil). In using such fuels in this way, humanity has released back into the atmosphere much of the carbon dioxide stored in them. Whilst there is much debate – some genuine, some manufactured – about the ‘truth’ of particular claims in climate change

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discussions, there are a number of issues about which there is little or no debate, and the science of greenhouse gases is one of them. As far back as 1827, Jean-Baptiste Fourier realized that the planet’s temperature is largely determined by the light it receives from the sun, and by the heat it reflects. His calculations, however, suggested that the earth should be much colder than it actually is, which led him to conclude that the earth must retain some of this heat. This initial conclusion was further developed by John Tyndall, an Englishman who in 1859 discovered that coal gas (methane), carbon dioxide and water vapour were all very effective at preventing heat from escaping – that in effect they were what are now popularly called ‘greenhouse gases’. Further, a Swede, Svate Arhennius, reached the conclusion in 1896 that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the air rises, all things being equal the temperature would rise as well, which would also increase the amount of water vapour held in the air, which would then cause the temperature to rise even further. This was perhaps the first example in climate science of what has come to be called ‘positive feedback’ – where an action has effects feeding back into the original action, causing it to be increased. In 1938, an engineer, Guy Stewart Calendar, argued to members of the Royal Meteorological Society in London that not only was global warming occurring, but that this was man-made, through the burning of fossil fuels at the time. His evidence and arguments were largely ignored (which he personally believed was because the learned gentlemen to whom he put his proposition hadn’t thought of the idea themselves). It was only with a 50-year series of measurements in the 20th century by an American, Dave Keeling (Kunzig and Broeckner, 2008), that Calendar’s thesis was confirmed, and it is now one of the very strongest claims made on climate change, and one of the few that is almost universally accepted. The logic of it is clear: if there is a greater proportion of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere then, other things being equal, the more global temperatures will rise. Following from this, if such global temperatures rise, some of this heat will be absorbed by the oceans, and their temperatures will rise as well. As they do so, ice at the North and the South Poles will melt more quickly, resulting in sea-level rises, as well as producing more extreme variations in weather patterns. The implications of this global change for humanity and other species could then be potentially enormous.

Further confirmatory evidence The work by Keeling and the detailed evaluations by the IPCC have been given a great deal of confirmatory support. One source has been from experiments in Greenland in 1961 and in the Antarctic in 1968 (Weart, 2003), which examined layers of ice laid down tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago. These contain tiny pockets of ancient dust and air, the analysis of which not only supports the idea of large climatic change, but

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also supports the argument for its potential rapidity, as some of the temperature changes between glacial and interglacial periods have been sudden and jagged. If global warming were to occur in the same way in the next few generations, the question is then raised: what would be the global effect? As we shall see, the evidence increasingly suggests that large numbers of humanity and many other species would find adjustment either very difficult or impossible. Another strong piece of confirmatory evidence comes from the work of Broeckner (Kunzig and Broeckner, 2008) on the flow of the oceans’ currents, which seems to demonstrate not only that these constitute a massive engine for conveying warmth and energy around the world, but that any major change in the movement of such currents around the world could have large effects on land surface temperatures and weather. The ice-core sample evidence and this ocean current research, linked together, help to explain why, about 8,200 years ago, temperatures in Northern Europe cooled by 5 °C in a few years. The probable reason, as Linden (2006) points out, is that Lake Agassiz, a huge glacial lake in North America, formed when ice sheets retreated, broke through into the North Atlantic, dumping billions of tons of freshwater there, and lowered the ocean’s salinity. Broeckner (Kunzig and Broeckner, 2008) has argued that this lowered salinity prevented the water from being sufficiently heavy to sink to the ocean floor as it moved northwards, and it thus prevented the surface warm water of the Gulf Steam from also flowing north, resulting in a much colder Northern Hemisphere. Not only does this explanation provide strong confirmatory evidence that climate change can occur very rapidly, but it also suggests that current rises in temperatures might, paradoxically, have a substantial cooling effect on Europe were it to result in the substantial melting of the Greenland ice cap. Once again, the possible timing of such an event is highly uncertain, and the IPCC (2014) report suggests that such an event will probably not happen, if it ever does, until the next century. Nevertheless, if one cares about the lives of future generations, such a possible event is a strong reason for taking future climatic effects very seriously, even if their complete certainty cannot be demonstrated. Humanity may well be faced with a series of climate problems the implications of which may never be either fully predictable or ultimately controllable; yet it would be a foolish person, or one only concerned with the immediate present, who did not take such potential threats seriously.

Prehistory and history Such concerns are given even more solidity when placed in larger historic and prehistoric contexts, as the evidence from these sources suggests that not only has this kind of thing happened in the past, but that such changes have on occasions been very sudden. Now, the claim for abrupt changes

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in climate has been hard for many to accept, in part because the last 10,000 years has been a remarkably benign and stable climate period. As importantly, the Darwinian theory of selection and extinction of species has been understood by many as implying that this is also a gradual process, as species are selected over others through their ability to adapt to particular conditions over a relatively extended period of time. Yet the evidence from prehistory suggests that the length of time to a species’ extinction can be quite short. Five mass extinctions have occurred in the past: at the boundaries of the Ordovician/Silurian geological Periods, in the late Devonian, at the end of the Permian, at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary, and at the Cretaceous/ Tertiary boundary (Benton, 2003; Ward, 2008; Kolbert, 2014). The most publicized was the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, when they and about 50 per cent of all other species died out in, geologically speaking, a short space of time – in thousands, perhaps hundreds, rather than millions of years, almost certainly following the impact of a large asteroid. However, for our purposes, perhaps the more significant is the largest extinction event of all, 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period, when it has been calculated from the fossil record that a staggering 95 per cent of all species became extinct. Benton (2003) argues that the cause – massive and sustained volcanic eruptions in Siberia – caused major climate changes, in particular a large temperature drop through the blanketing of the earth’s atmosphere in ash and clouds of sulphur dioxide, which were then replaced by soaring temperatures as ash and sulphur dioxide clouds were washed out of the atmosphere, to be replaced by long-lasting carbon dioxide emissions, leading to large temperature rises instead. Climate change through temperature variance and the relative rapidity of such events have then both been major factors in previous mass species extinctions; events which many commentators fear may be repeating themselves – but this time primarily through human action. This rapidity of climate change is a major reason why Wilson (2003) claims that a sixth mass species extinction may currently be occurring. He argues that if we continue with current activities, ‘at least a fifth of species of plant and animals [will] be gone or committed to extinction by 2030, and half by the end of the century’ (p.  102). Other evidence (Kolbert, 2014) supports this suggestion, indicating that whilst some species are managing some adaptation, many others – particularly where their travel is increasingly restricted – are not able to adapt sufficiently quickly The impact of climate change is also to be found in archaeological and historical evidence. Gill (2000), Weiss and Bradley (2003), Fagan (2004), Homer-Dixon (2006), and Diamond (2005) all argue that the collapse of a number of early civilizations – as geographically disparate as the Akkadian in the Middle East, the Anasazi of the Southwestern United States, the Maya of Mexico – was generated by the interconnections of climate change and the relatively new human experience of living in static and interdependent

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communities. They suggest that when the global human population was relatively small and consisted of groups of hunter-gatherers, they could adapt to climatic and resource changes through moving to more favourable habitats. However, some 8,000–9,000 years ago, when humanity began to adopt a largely agricultural lifestyle, they became more static. This, it is suggested, made food supply more predictable and higher yielding, initially increasing population size and facilitating the creation of the first city-states. However, the creation of highly interdependent systems of living, combined with a high dependence upon food from limited locations, posed new problems. For as populations grew, movement was made more difficult because food supply was static, and the more fertile areas were increasingly utilized, and sometimes over-utilized. Then when climatic conditions changed for the worse, crop yields were reduced, and not enough food could be grown to feed these expanding populations. The claim then is that failure of a number of significant civilizations is largely to be explained by a sudden variation in climate, by the inability of expanding populations to move, and by the environmental damage produced by an increasing demand upon limited resources. These three threats – expanding and static populations, dependency on reduced land fertility, and climate change – would seem to be potent factors for societal collapse. Whilst this explanation is dominant currently, Cline’s (2014) analysis of the collapse of Middle-Eastern civilizations in the 12th century BC suggests that the dynamics of collapse may well include all three factors, but was not as linear as the story above might suggest. Cline instead invokes complexity theory to explain how highly integrated civilizations, forming complex webs of interdependence, fell apart when unexpected, sudden and unpredictable combinations of stresses produced unforeseen and rapid collapse. There seems much in common between such experiences and the complex pressures faced by many societies today, as both population and consumption increase in large, static and interdependent societies. The situation also seems to have considerable resonance with the current dependency on oil described in the last chapter, as more people require more of a diminishing resource. In addition, if the societies of the Middle East at that time – Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Assyrian and Babylonian – showed great interdependency, that of modern societies is considerably more pronounced, and on this analysis even more easily dislocated. One has only to observe the chaos that ensues when one body of workers withdraws its labour (lorry drivers, public transport workers, power-plant workers), or when one major resource (car fuel) ceases to flow, to appreciate how like a line of dominoes the functions of complex societies seem to be, how vulnerable they are if one domino is pushed over, and how unpredictable are the effects. Much of this then has the characteristics of a wicked problem, as it seems almost impossible for human beings to predict when all of these factors might come together in a manner that precipitates collapse.

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Future climatic effects There are many ‘unknowns’ in climate change, for example, the precise amount and rate of the future burning of fossil fuels, the way in which different effects interact with one other, and both climatic and species sensitivities to increased greenhouse gas emissions. These unknowns, and many others, mean that any precise delineation of future environmental and societal effects from climate change is simply not possible, even if more sophisticated modelling of effects provides better detailed and probably more accurate projections of future events. For example, a report by the World Meteorological Organisation in The Guardian (Goldenberg, 2014) suggests that weather events may well increase in frequency and severity, and the world is nearly five times more prone to disasters than it was in the 1970s, with 743 events reported in that decade, whilst 3,496 were reported in the first decade of the 20th century. Four such future weather events are of particular concern: More storms of hurricane strength and more torrential rain. As seas warm, so does the energy providing the engine for hurricanes. Emanuel (2005) suggests that whilst their number may decline in the future, their length and intensity will likely increase. Hurricanes the size of Katrina may then occur in many more localities if seawater becomes sufficiently warm. There will also likely be greater torrential rainfalls; the latest IPCC report (2014) suggests that events like the 35,000 homes flooded in my home coastal town of Hull, in England, in 2007 may then not be a once-in-a-century occurrence, but much more frequent. 2 Increased heat waves and increased forest fires. Lynas (2008) described how between 22,000 and 35,000 people died across Europe in the summer of 2003 as a result of heatstroke. In Paris alone, 10,000 people died, as daytime temperatures soared above 100 °F (38 °C), but failed to decline sufficiently at night to allow time for recovery. The situation may be getting worse: the World Meteorological Organisation reported in The Guardian (Vaughn, 2014) that 13 of the 14 warmest years on record occurred in this century, whilst the IPCC 5th assessment report (September, 2014) stated that the last three decades had been warmer than any other decade since records started in 1850. The UK Meteorological Office was also suggesting that half the summers by 2040 would be hotter than the hottest of 2003 (Gosden, 2014). By January 2015, Goldenberg (2015) was able to report that 2014 was officially the warmest year since records began. If this does happen, there will almost certainly be increases in heatstroke, forest fires, and additional greenhouse gases from such burning, threatening even more severe effects from positive feedback loops. 1

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3 Glacial retreats and freshwater problems. The IPCC (2014) reported

that glaciers were melting more quickly than previously, as five times more water was being shed in the 2000s than in the 1990s. In places where they have disappeared altogether, the water running off them has declined and may eventually disappear, thus affecting the land supplied by glacial water, particularly during the summer months, as a plant’s growing cycle occurs during this time. However, if temperatures continue to increase, glacial melt and water run-off would occur during the winter months as well, and unless there were adequate storage facilities, water supply would be further reduced when it was most required, threatening domestic consumption, crop growth and food supply. There would then likely be political and military conflict over access to fresh water. Klare (2003) has described potential conflict in the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates and the Indus Valley basins, and along the length of the Jordan, for here glaciers supply rivers which run through and sustain the populations of different nation states, and as water becomes increasingly precious, those nearer the source might attempt to dam or store the remainder. 4 The raising of sea levels. Finally, glacial retreat in Greenland, and

the melting of the Antarctic icecap, both increase the fresh water flowing into the oceans, and will result in a rise in sea levels. It should be noted that the melting of the Arctic icecap does not raise sea levels as it sits on water rather than land, though concerns about the effects of a lowered reflectivity of light and warmth and of increased methane release will still remain. The raising of sea levels – combined with increased storm and rainfall intensity – will all threaten a variety of habitats. Lynas (2004), for instance, describes how rising sea levels rot the roots of crops on tropical islands long before the islands themselves are submerged. In addition, coastal cities may disappear under water, whilst a report by the World Meteorological Organisation (Goldenberg, 2014) suggests that housing located on flood plains will be increasingly threatened, and entire ecosystems may be destroyed. As both Stern (2006) and the IPCC (2014) point out, poorer countries will likely be the ones most to suffer, and if affluent countries adopt the lifeboat mentality (Hardin, 2006), which focuses on their own problems, this could also lead to terrorist attacks on their homelands.

Four potential tipping points Many effects of climate change then already seem to be with us. But there are some events that have not happened yet, which may not occur, but the threat of which is still very worrying. These are tipping points – unpredictable

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and potentially highly dangerous changes in the magnitude of climatic events. Lenton et  al. (2008) argue that climatic tipping points are critical thresholds ‘at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system’ (p. 1786). Their existence stimulates considerable concern and debate, as their very nature means that the science and economics on them is necessarily highly speculative. A major cause of such tipping points would likely be through positive feedback loops – when an event or action generates effects which produce more of the same kind of event, leading to a runaway and potentially highly damaging final result. However, because such systems are so complex, it is almost impossible to monitor the interactions leading to tipping points, as it is also highly difficult to predict the timing of their occurrence. Four examples will be mentioned here. A first has already been noted – the potential closing down of the Gulf Stream through the melting of Greenland and Arctic Ice, though the IPCC (2014) report strongly discounts its likelihood in this century at least. Nevertheless, its impact would be so enormous that continual monitoring would seem very necessary. A second tipping point follows from the different albedo of ice and water. ‘Albedo’ simply means the reflectivity of a particular substance – a high albedo having strong reflectivity, and a low albedo having a poorer reflectivity. This is important because one of the causes of the expansion of ice sheets during previous ice ages was due to ice having a higher albedo than water. Because ice reflects light and heat better than water does, the formation of ice then creates a positive feedback loop – for as more ice is formed, the whiter becomes the earth’s surface, and the more heat and light are reflected back into space. When this happens, the more that temperatures drop, the more that ice is formed, and so on . . . Conversely, when temperatures rise, more ice is melted, and as water has a lower albedo than ice, the less heat is reflected back, the more heat is absorbed, and the more water that remains ice-free at even the coldest times of the year. It would seem to require an extraneous event – like a variation in the earth’s orbital cycle, or a volcanic eruption – to reverse this process. If this doesn’t happen, a runaway cycle of either freezing or melting is then possible. In present times, of course, the concern is with a lower albedo, with higher temperatures, more ice melt, and the damaging consequences that flow (literally) from these. A third potential tipping point lies in the release of carbon dioxide and methane from the Arctic tundra. As temperatures rise, not only is a lower albedo generated from the reduction in ice cover, but a lower albedo is also seen on land, through the melting of the permafrost, the consequent exposure of a darker tundra surface, and the movement northwards of the tree line. Both of these absorb heat more than a white landscape. As this happens, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane frozen in the tundra and at the bottom of glacial lakes are released, leading to a greater greenhouse effect, further global warming, and to the possibility of a runaway effect.

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A final potential tipping point works in the same way, and this is the release of methane hydrates from the sea. Flannery (2005) suggests, mindbogglingly, that there are between 13 and 55 trillion cubic yards of methane hydrates at the bottom of the world’s oceans. These are normally stable because of the combination of low temperatures and high pressure under which they currently exist. The optimum condition for their continued storage is below 1,300 feet and at a temperature of 1–2 °C. In the Arctic Ocean, however, they are found much nearer the surface, though so far temperatures have been sufficiently low to keep them stable. However, if temperatures continue to rise, large quantities may be released, and as methane is twenty times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, this would be very worrying. Indeed, there is some initial evidence of methane release (e.g. Pearce, 2005; Garner, 2010), though there are commentators (e.g. Flannery, 2005) who believe that, like the closing down of the Gulf Stream, this is unlikely to be a threat for another hundred years at least. Once again, monitoring seems imperative. The inherent uncertainties of tipping points are a real cause for concern because of our inability to predict if or when they will occur. This replicates Wilson’s (2003) and Kolbert’s (2014) ‘wicked warnings’ on species extinction, noted above, as here also there are so many interacting causes that it is very difficult to predict the outcome on different species of ecosystem changes. All, one, or a combination of habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, population increase and overharvesting could cause such extinctions, the importance of any particular factor depending upon the species, the ecosystem, and their unique interaction with the threats involved. To then adopt short-term, simplistic linear understandings of impacts – and similar kinds of responses – would be both short-sighted and dangerous. It also suggests the need to exercise caution in provoking such tipping points. As Kunzig (Kunzig and Broeckner, 2008) argued with respect to climate change, if you’re living with an angry beast, you don’t poke it with a sharp stick.

The human response: From Rio de Janeiro to the IPCC reports How has humanity responded to such challenges? The first prompt was the developing concern over the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global climate, and a series of international conferences have been held in the attempt to reach global agreement on effects and their reduction. The first, the 1992 UN conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, is most remembered for two things. One was Principle 15 of its declaration, the Precautionary Principle, which argued, ‘Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall

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not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation’ (UNEP, 1992). In effect, this stated that it is better to be safe than to be sorry, and that the burden of proof lies with those whose actions are likely to cause a worsening of the situation; if they cannot prove that actions such as opening coal-fired power stations will not cause damage, then they shouldn’t open them. This principle coheres well with the kind of ideas on sufficiency already discussed, as both argued for a greater care, a greater caution in how we act. It is essentially an ethical invocation, relying upon disputed methods of risk assessment. Not enough nations were ready to listen to such words of caution, and because of the problems of assessment, it had little impact. Rio then is probably remembered mostly for its ineffectiveness. The conference did little to create a mechanism by which negotiations should take place, and it failed to grasp the nettle of including all polluters in problem solution, arguing that the developed world had been largely responsible for current problems, and they therefore should be the first to make cuts. Yet, irrespective of the adoption of the precautionary principle, this seemed to provide developing countries with carte blanche to adopt dirty technologies as they attempted to match the living standards of rich countries. Progress was also undermined when, as noted earlier, the US president of the time, George Bush Snr., announced that the American way of life was not negotiable. This lack of progress was also seen at the 1997 Kyoto summit. It managed to commit signatories to make reductions of 5.2 per cent in their carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by 2012, but there were crucial problems with it. One was that, whilst the new US president, Bill Clinton, signed the treaty, it was not ratified by a Republican-dominated Senate; then in 2002 the next president, George W. Bush, announced that the United States would take no further part in the negotiations. With US emissions 16 per cent above 1990 levels by 2004, such behaviour by the world’s principal polluter was one cause of the continued heavy pollution by the developing economic giants of China and India, who had not been asked by the treaty for reductions. Chinese emissions rose by a third by 2002, and India’s by a massive 60 per cent. This exacerbated a third problem: that the treaty’s demands were radically insufficient, and that by the time they became legally binding in 2005 the levels of reduction demanded were hopelessly out of date. A final problem, argues Tickell (2008), was that the mechanism used by Kyoto to reduce emissions, one of global carbon trading, allowed richer countries to meet their emissions reduction targets by buying emission reductions or ‘carbon credits’ from elsewhere, which led to widespread abuse of the system by its richer signatories. The subsequent 2005 Montreal conference agreed to attempt further cuts after 2012, and determined that by the end of 2008 an agreement with each country on their specific reductions would be made. This did not happen, and the Nairobi conference of 2006 damaged the process even further by

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agreeing to no major reviews of the Kyoto framework. Nor did the 2007 Bali climate convention help the process: it was not about policy change per se, but mainly about what could be talked about once the initial Kyoto period (until 2012) had expired. Whilst it provided some optimism in managing to reach agreement that talks could begin on helping developing countries with the finance for the use of low-carbon technologies, it continued a period of relative inaction. Perhaps the biggest disappointment, however, was the Copenhagen 2009 summit, of which great things were expected, and for which most of the world’s political leaders turned up. However, it was heavily damaged before it began, when an anonymous hacker stole thousands of emails, some of which suggested academic collusion in favouring the publication of prowarming articles over the publication of others criticizing such findings. At best, the language in these emails was intemperate; at worst it was an incredibly badly timed example of academic bias, and the effect was catastrophic. In addition, the summit seems to have been badly organized, with Leggett (2014) suggesting that the Danish hosts were unable to cope with the enormity of the necessary organization. The result was so embarrassing for world leaders that they didn’t attend the 2012 Rio-plus-20 earth summit in Warsaw, sending only government ministers, and it was such a fractious meeting that Vidal and Harvey (2013) reported that a number of pressure groups walked out in protest at its lack of progress. This has not helped the work of the most authoritative scientific body in this area, the IPCC . Kunzig and Broeckner (2008, p.  13) describe it as a ‘deeply conservative body’, largely because it has tried to present the middle ground of scientific thinking. Yet they also argue that this is why its reports have been so authoritative – as they say, ‘if anything [they] tend to stay behind the science rather than get ahead of it’ (p. 13). In a series of reports from the early 1990s, its warnings of impending man-made climate change have become stronger and stronger. In one of its latest reports (IPCC , 2014, p.  9), it states that ‘the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide [all of which are greenhouse gases] have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years’ and, as noted above with the kind of humility and caution essential here, that ‘it is extremely likely [i.e. 90–100 per cent certainty] that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century’. As this chapter was being completed, the IPCC 5th Assessment Synthesis Report (2014), which pulled together three working group reports on the science, the impacts and the ways to address climate change, moved the human influence up to 95 per cent, that unless action was taken very quickly, there would be a ‘high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally’ by the end of the 21st century. They also argued that to keep global temperature rise below 2 °C was possible, but the world would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40–70 per cent by 2050, and keep doing this until by 2100 they were practically nil. They

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suggested that all of this was possible with a fairly negligible economic investment, though it would also mean the developed countries would need to put in a lot more investment than previously if this were to happen. The argument therefore now seems to be almost overwhelming; the rhetoric very urgent. The subsequent meeting in Peru in December 2014 set up some of the conditions for a new treaty to follow the Kyoto Protocol in Paris in December 2015, though some critics (e.g. Vidal, 2015) were concerned that it was not as strong as was originally hoped. It remains to be seen whether their fears are confirmed. This is then an ongoing and increasingly urgent issue, for whilst climate change is a complex and wicked problem, it is now extremely hard – and potentially highly dangerous – to ignore the amassing of such evidence, which very strongly points towards really serious climatic events happening globally, the future effects of which we may not be able to predict precisely, but which are increasingly threatening in their implications. Nearly a decade ago, the IPCC report (2007), the Stern report (2006), and Lynas (2008) all produced charts indicating how the world was likely to change as global temperatures rose one degree centigrade at a time. All three recognized that there is already a 1 °C rise built into the system. Stern argued that if a 2 °C rise in global warming was to be prevented, the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions would have to be restricted to no more than 450ppm (parts per million), and as Stern noted (2006, p. vi) a 2 °C rise would likely lead to somewhere between 15 and 40 per cent of all species facing extinction. Given that an increase of only 5 °C resulted in aquatic dinosaurs in the Cretaceous Period bathing in waters of tropical temperatures at the North and South Poles, any significantly different rise from present temperatures would highly likely be extremely traumatic to many species, massively raise sea levels, and effectively drown many if not most coastal cities. Scientists, economists and moral leaders may not be able to provide definitive answers to most of the highly wicked problems presented here, but it is difficult not to believe that it would be folly if humanity were not engaged in major efforts to combat such rises, and to prepare with more resilient systems if the worst begins to happen. It is hard to think of a reason why all educational systems and their leaders would not be involved in such efforts.

Conclusion: Certainty, clumsy solutions and the attribution of blame This chapter began by arguing that climate change is a particularly strong example of the kind of problem which, because of its uniqueness, has little with which it can be compared, and which is likely to impact in so many ways that its control and its predictability may not be possible. In addition,

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it is highly possible to view it in different ways through the holding of dissimilar values, different selections of evidence, and dissimilar beliefs in what the problem and therefore its resolutions need to be. Yet there is a real danger here – a card that has been played by a number of ‘spoiler’ organizations wanting to slow or prevent any policy action – that because there are such different points of view and selections of evidence, and because little confidence can be had in any policy in the area, that therefore the only position to adopt is one of no policy. An avoidance of action may sometimes be the most sensible thing to do, but it can also be a counsel for the most extreme form of conservatism, serving only those who profit from inaction. Yet the evidence in this chapter produces an increasingly convincing picture. The combination of physical, chemical, climatological, geological and archaeological evidence over the last 20 to 30 years points very heavily in one direction, strongly suggesting the need to reject the claim that local weather variations explain recent climatic changes, and instead to identify them as symptoms of genuine climate change. Such conclusions are made on the basis of the available evidence, but are not so ideologically rigid as to be incapable of adjustment if and when further evidence arrives. In essence it is the kind of choice in decision making that Popper (1966) argued for earlier, but it is a process transcending pure scientific endeavour. For it argues that complex and wicked problems have little absolute about them, and that understanding must change with any increase or change in the evidence base. And therefore such problems are like buildings erected on piles in a swamp. We drive down as far as we can in our understanding of a particular problem, the evidence for which is gathered from as many sources as possible, until some sort of stability is felt, some sense that a position on a problem is sufficiently firm to support a particular framing of what the problem is, what kind of evidence needs to be sought further, and what kind of solutions should be sought – all the time recognizing the need to keep an open mind about different perspectives, different definitions of the problem, and the possibility of dis-confirmatory evidence. At the moment, the evidence base seems extremely stable, extremely convincing. And whilst, because the swamp is still there, there can be no guarantee of certainty, the evidence points fairly unequivocally towards the need for urgent remedial action. As Popper said, we need to carry on with this hypothesis ‘at least for the time being’. That may well be the nature of much of the human condition, and it is currently the most sustainable position to take on climate change. It is a lesson that approaches to other areas, including that of education, would do well to reflect upon. However, if climate provides a strong example to other areas of wicked problems, those engaged with resolutions in this area also probably need to recognize the need for more clumsy solutions. Verweij (2011), for example, critiques the manner in which climate change has been tackled globally by arguing that really only one kind of solution has been used, an essentially

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hierarchical and top-down approach, which to be successful needs for all the major players to comply, and for there to be enormous amounts of monitoring and paperwork. This, he suggests, is both unambitious and fundamentally impracticable, and has only resulted in ‘protracted diplomatic battles . . . to produce a fragile, inadequate and costly treaty on global warming that is not currently being implemented’ (p.  39). Instead he proposes that different kinds of views – egalitarian, hierarchical, and marketbased – all need to be employed. He personally suggests that the best approach should be upon a hierarchical encouragement of developing lowemission technologies in a market situation, a plan which he claims (p. 43) has a number of virtues: [I]t greatly diminishes the number of states that need to be involved in the struggle against global warming; it avoids making the success of this struggle dependent on the continued support of any of these countries; it provides strong incentives for each of these states to contribute to the struggle, and it reduces the extent to which this struggle needs to be coordinated internationally. Its attractiveness, he argues, then lies not only in its dissolution of impracticable global command and control structures, but in its use of clumsy solutions: ones that can appeal to a variety of different views of what constitutes the problem and how it needs to be solved, in large part by recognizing the levels that different problems sit at, and that such contextual appreciations better permit appropriate solutions. The danger of embracing a single top-down solution instead of recognizing the need for a variety of them is an issue that many educational leaders will readily recognize. One final similarity between different areas and levels of concern and activity stems from the recognition that they are all, to some degree, swamp worlds – ones that have large areas of uncertainty and disagreement, and which can promise no final certainty or agreement. And whilst those engaged in resolutions to wicked problems in these areas should make the most of their abilities and their resources in attempting to provide the best frames for the problem they face, they should do this knowing that their best efforts may not be good enough. When this happens, they should feel no guilt, and they should not be made to feel guilty by others. And perhaps, this is the rub, and not just for education: we live in societies of external accountability, audits, surveillance and high-stakes testing – societies that seem much too keen on attributing blame when a particular solution does not work, when success is not achieved, even when unexpected events occur that impede, or derail, a planned course of action. Policy makers are blamed when they fail to achieve reforms unachievable in an electoral period of time; educational leaders are blamed for failing to achieve standards unachievable in an inspectoral period of time. The result is not only an increased level of threat to their sustainability: it also creates a

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defensive culture of deception, lies and unfair punishments, as individuals at all levels are tempted to fake results, to lie to others, and to deceive themselves about what is actually achievable. And most of this stems from the lack of societal recognition, or the lack of admission, that many complex and wicked issues are neither fully controllable nor fully soluble. In societies that view a public change of mind as an admission of failure, rather than as a maturing of judgement derived from proper reflection, such approaches seem almost inevitable. It would be easy to arrive at a counsel of despair here. Certainly, until societies better recognize the nature of the problems they face, and the complexity of genuine solutions, these issues will likely remain. But there are ways of ameliorating such situations. This will be a subject for the final section of this book. But before this, an issue needs examining which some have claimed increases the magnitude of the problems described in the last three chapters – that of the changing nature of population patterns. It is to this subject that the book now turns.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Emerging Population Patterns: Impacts and Responses

Introduction Population and demographic patterns are normally linked to education and educational leadership because of concerns that changing population patterns are preventing the sufficient replacement of current educators and educational leaders with a new generation. A recent OECD report (2013), for example, noted that across the 31 countries surveyed, only 15 per cent of teachers were less than 30 years of age. Clear links can then be made between an increasingly ageing population and the impact this will likely have upon a profession if skilled and experienced individuals leave without the guarantee of enough new people moving into such positions. The impacts of ageing workforces then require consideration of policies to either retain the best of the workforce, or to attract more of a new generation (e.g. Houses of Parliament Postnote, 2011), and such policies may then include more flexible working, the creation of alternative roles within educational institutions, new routes into the profession, and fast-track training to leadership positions. Such a direct connection between demographic change and education will be recognized by many, and will be considered further in this chapter, as it has direct effects on the sustainability of the profession, which when added to the pressure on those in the role of education leaders may create an untenable situation. Yet demography has major links with education in ways which further develop the call in this book for a re-framing of educational leadership issues. Indeed, in many ways these are more important for the sustainability of educational leadership than issues of recruitment and retention, for they challenge the very basis of the social worlds in which educational leadership is practised. This chapter then needs to detail how 135

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these wider challenges are occurring, and how educational leadership can respond, because if educational responses are not developed to these larger issues, discussions about educational leadership sustainability become interesting but largely peripheral. The concerns raised by demographic change are yet again strong examples of ‘wicked’ problems, in part because no one approach resolves them, and in part because much of the discussion is necessarily about projections into the future, and, as the Royal Society (2012, p. 13) stated, ‘demographic projections are not predictions, and demography is not destiny’. Demographic problems also demonstrate the kinds of complex connections between different forms of sustainability seen with other global issues, and once again lead to questions about the present paradigmatic dominance of neoliberal economic theory, as the combination of rising populations and a societal focus on continued material consumption threatens the world’s resource base and its biodiversity. Finally, the question of global population numbers is a time-dependent choice – for what a population decides to do now not only impacts on the world as it currently is, but also opens up or reduces the choices to future generations. Educators may then see the impact upon themselves and their profession, but they also need to look beyond such concerns to the wider issues that face the future of their society and their world.

A topic much neglected Demography as the study of the change in the nature of populations is a much-neglected topic and is left off many agendas. In the previous chapter it was noted that the first UN conference on the Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was remembered for its precautionary principle, and its general ineffectiveness. A third might also be added – the exclusion of any discussion about population and demographic trends. Such lack of discussion suggests that this is a real unrecognized ‘elephant in the room’. Indeed, when the United Nations announced its eight development goals in 2000, the issue of population change was not among them. When Nicholas Stern (2006) published his influential The Economics of Climate Change, not one of its 692 pages mentioned population. One might have thought that if human activity is a principal contributor to global warming and climate change, an increase in the number of human beings, and therefore in human activity, would merit considerable attention. But it seems not. The exclusion of demography from tables at which it might be thought a principal guest is due to a number of factors. One is a fairly widespread negative perception of family planning, due in part to a Western history of espousing eugenics, which was taught at both Yale and Harvard, and was advocated by, amongst others, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, before Hitler and Nazi ideology gave it a thoroughly bad

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reputation. More recent Chinese and Indian histories of compulsory oneparent families, abortion and sterilization have also helped channel the attention of policy makers and funding bodies to less controversial areas of concern. A second factor lies in the very different demographic trends in developed and developing worlds, as the majority of population increase is occurring in the developing world, and has led to claims (e.g. Turner, 2009) that concerns over ageing populations in richer countries have deflected attention away from the challenge in poorer countries of expanding populations with static or declining resources. Monbiot (2009) put it bluntly when he stated ‘most of those who are obsessed with population growth are postreproductive wealthy white men’, and that the real problem stems not from the high populations of the poor, but from the overconsumption of the rich. There is considerable truth here, and real danger in ignoring the fact that levels of consumption by most wealthy societies matter at least as much as overall population size. As poorer populations quite rightly aspire to the living standards of the rich, discussion and action about both greater global equity and an increased emphasis upon sufficiency become essential in any re-balancing of the human population to match available resources, the natural environment, and the biodiversity of the planet. A third factor has been religious and right-wing ideological opposition to abortion and contraception. This however is not a simple picture: Speidel et  al. (2009) point out that Iran, a strongly Islamic country, not only embraced the need for greater population control, and produced a dramatic decline in its population growth, but did so without any compulsion on its population, even if, as Weisman (2013) notes, the policy now seems to be in reverse. Pope Benedict XVI , on the other hand, announced in 2008 that contraception and abortion were to be viewed as mortal sins, whilst politicians in the United States either embrace such an attitude, or are fearful of crossing an increasingly dominant political consensus. A further factor, as Campbell (2007) pointed out, are policies in both rich and poor countries that restrict the freedom of individual women to make their own decisions on the number of children they bear, a situation exacerbated when they lack access to good education (Lutz, 2009). Finally, commercial concerns generally favour growing populations, as more people means more demand for products. Nonetheless, demography clearly needs to have a place at debates on global change. There is real need to take decisions on such events, the outcomes of which we may not be alive to see. However, living in a world of short-term consumerism and quick-fix policies, it can be very difficult to focus on what may happen in 25 years to the next generation, and even more on the one after that. In addition, the seriousness of population and demography issues is underlined by its strong links to other global concerns such as climate change, the exhaustion of natural resources, and their more equitable distribution, and of women’s role and rights in society. This area then deserves

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to be taken very seriously. Four issues currently seem to form the terms of the debate, with a fifth gathering pace; these will now be discussed in turn.

(1) Expanding populations The first major area of this debate was rehearsed over 200 years ago, in the opposed writings of the Marquis de Condorcet and Thomas Malthus (see Wolf, 2003). Of the two, Condorcet was the more optimistic, arguing that massive improvements in the human condition consequent upon scientific advances would enable humanity to reduce its population growth through birth control and a reduction in fertility generally. Interestingly, a more modern optimist in this area, Julian Simon (1981), came to very different conclusions, arguing that such problems would be resolved by human ingenuity, and that to do so we would need more rather than fewer people, and so advocated increased population growth. But of Condorcet and Malthus, the more remembered is Malthus (1798), who argued that whilst ‘the means for subsistence’ increase arithmetically, population increases geometrically. Starvation and death, he argued, inexorably follow when population demands outstrip an environment’s ability to supply them. Whilst Malthus added a number of caveats to his argument, he remained convinced that starvation was the necessary longterm consequence of his mathematical analysis of population and resources. His concerns about geometrical increases are probably best appreciated through two different stories. The first is when a Chinese emperor granted one of his advisors a wish, and the advisor asked for the number of grains of rice on a chess board, beginning with one grain on the first square, but with the number of grains doubling each time one moved a square, right up to and including the 64th square. This sounds unproblematic: the first square contains only one grain, there are but two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so on. But if the emperor had tried to fulfil the request, by the end of the third row he would have had to supply 32,768 grains, and by the 64th the unimaginable number of 18 quintillion. The other story (Weisman, 2013, pp. 34–6) is one of a species of bacteria that reproduced by dividing into two every minute. The two bacteria then become four, then eight, then 16, and so on. If the first bacterium was placed in the bottle at 11am, and the bottle was full at noon, a first question is: when would it be half full? A little thought will tell you that it is only one minute before noon, at 11.59am. But perhaps the next question (p. 36) is even more thought-provoking and important: ‘If you were a bacterium in the bottle, at what point would you realize you were running out of space . . . At 11.55 a.m., when the bottle is only 1/32 full, and 97 per cent is open space?’ If the story about the grains of rice vividly illustrates how the resources needed for geometric progression can very quickly become impossible to

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supply, the second story makes one acutely aware of how dangerously close human beings can get to a total exhaustion of a resource without realizing it. These two issues are also graphically illustrated in the global rise of human populations over the centuries. Like the bacterium story, one of the most remarkable things about this global rise is how suddenly it has happened. For nearly all of human history, the size of the global human population has never been more than a few tens of millions, exploiting an apparently limitless world of resources. Even in AD 1000, there were only about 250 million people globally, and it took another 500 years to double this. In the middle of the 18th century, however, global populations began to move from a horizontal to a near vertical trajectory. The first time the global population reached one billion was 1804, the second billion was 1927, the third in 1960, the fourth in 1974, the fifth in 1987, the sixth in 1999, and the seventh in 2013. The gaps between such increases then tend to get shorter and shorter, until an extra billion is added every 13–14 years. Even though there is evidence suggesting that the rate is slowing, we are currently on target to add another billion by the mid-2020s, and to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to the UN medium projection variant (UN, 2015). Now most of human history has been characterized by cultures attempting such high fertility rates, largely because so few individuals survived the early years of life, and, of those who did survive, large numbers were needed to work a primarily agrarian economy and to look after those who managed to reach old age. Many, moreover, died young, and so population levels remained fairly static. However, from about 1750 onwards, the European Industrial Revolution gradually introduced better nutrition, better medical care, and better hygiene and sanitation to its populations. It was also underpinned by a readily available source of fuel (coal, and then oil) with a high EROI to make infrastructural investments possible at relatively little cost. The result was, initially, a continuation of traditional levels of high fertility rates but with relatively little die-off of the population. For a generation at least, couples continued to have large families, but within one or two generations family size began to decline as parents became more confident of these fewer offspring surviving. This has come to be known as the theory of demographic transition (Notestein, 1945; Bongaarts, 2009). This, it has been argued, has also been the case for immigration from lessdeveloped to more-developed countries. It might then be argued that Malthus’s predictions were unlikely to occur in societies with high mortality rates, but are much more likely when such mortality rates are lowered. Indeed, this is the kind of argument made by neo-Malthusians over the last half-century (e.g. Hardin, 1968; Ehrlich, 1971; Meadows et  al., 2004). Now whilst technological and agrarian improvements have meant that the Malthusian predictions of the 20th century have failed to materialize, the bones of Malthus’s argument – that

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increased population growth threatens societal sustainability, and by implication environmental sustainability – hasn’t disappeared, and a projected increase of world population to around 9 billion continues to give it real force. Indeed, as Borlaug (in Weisman, 2013, pp. 57–8) argued: [W]e are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction . . . there can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. . . . and this was said by a man at his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech for developing the hybrid cereal grains which initiated the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, supplying many more people with food than previously. This led in 2007 to the United States awarding him the Congressional Gold Medal for having saved more lives than anyone else in human history. Yet both he and Ehrlich described this Green Revolution as little more than a ‘stay of execution’ for a generation. Nevertheless, Condorcet and Simon may also have been right in suggesting that much can be done to ameliorate the situation, largely because of demographic complexities which neither Malthus nor Condorcet were in a position to appreciate. The first and most immediate trend, then, is towards an expanding global population. This rose to 7 billion in November 2011, and is projected to rise to somewhere between 9 and 12 billion by 2050 (Munz and Reiterer, 2009; UN , 2015). This of course says nothing about whether 7, 9, or 12 billion are optimum population sizes; this is a different, but highly relevant, issue, which unfortunately is not amenable to a simple answer. If the most easily acquired natural resources have been extracted (as seems to be the case with fossil fuels), the damage caused by supplying 2 billion extra people with resources will likely be a lot more environmentally damaging than for the previous 2 billion. However, as noted already, even with current levels of population, there are strong claims that present consumption is already unsustainable, and according to some sources (e.g. WWF, 2008; Meadows et al., 2004) has been unsustainable since the 1980s – it’s just that, like the bacterium in the bottle, we haven’t realized this yet. So what does unsustainability mean here? Weisman (2013, p.  380) pointed out that ‘every species in the history of biology that outgrows its resource base suffers a population crash’ and argues that human beings are no different. The Royal Society (2012, p.  83), coming from a similar conclusion, further argued that ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a gradual and equitable decline in numbers will serve humanity best’. Weisman (2013, p. 51) suggests that the best figure for an optimum population size is one able to live without the massive use of artificial fertilizers, which he suggests is somewhere between 2 and 3 billion. For some, consideration of

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such planned reduction may be a startling and highly unpleasant idea, in part because it might be assumed that this is about letting 5–6 billion die of starvation and disease, when it is in fact about planning for long-term reduction in family size globally so that a smaller population can be achieved over several generations. The consideration of such strategies seems essential if planetary sustainability is not to be endangered by default through permitting an even larger human population. It is a subject returned to later in the chapter.

Population increase and total fertility rates A first important qualification to a global population increase is that such expansion is not evenly distributed. Demographers talk in terms of Total Fertility Rates (TFR s): the calculation of the average number of children produced by couples in a particular country. A TFR of slightly over 2 reproduces a population (not exactly 2, because some people don’t have children, and some children sadly die young). Many rich countries now have TFR s well below 2: Russia has one of 1.6; Italy and Germany, 1.4; Poland, 1.3; and Japan, the country with the world’s longest-living people, has a rate of 1.4. A very few economically advanced nations, such as the United States (2.0) and the UK (1.9), have populations projected to increase, in large part because of immigration numbers (UN , 2015). The UK , for example, is projected by 2050 to be the largest country by population in Western Europe, with an anticipated rise to 75 million, outpacing both France (71 million) and Germany (74 million). On the other hand, many poor countries have TFR s well above 2. Thus India has a TFR of 2.5, Egypt one of 2.8, Kenya 4.5, Nigeria 6.0 and Niger 7.6. These trends point to the need for a much greater concern for global equity, and in particular for the need to improve the lives of the world’s poor, and for a number of reasons. A first is an ethical one: rich countries have played the major role historically in depleting the world’s resources, and whilst they currently constitute no more than a quarter of the world’s population, they consume three-quarters of its resources. A second is that if actions to reduce population pressures on the environment are to succeed, then poor countries will need help in doing this. Finally, these demographic projections make it clear that global population increases will be differentially distributed. The picture, for the next 30–50 years, as Demeny (2003) points out, is for richer countries to have declining populations, whilst being surrounded by poorer countries with expanding populations. The developedworld’s population is likely to remain reasonably static at around 1.2 billion, whilst substantial increases from 5.3 to 7.8 billion will largely occur in poorer countries. This will have considerable impact upon relationships between rich and poor countries – with increased migration, both legal and illegal, and a greater demand for a more equitable global distribution of

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resources. If these issues are not recognized and adequately responded to, there will likely be not only increased tensions between rich and poor nations, but also individual acts of violence by members of poorer youthful populations, and by some in richer countries with concerns for and connections with poorer countries. Ageing, declining and conservative wealthy populations will then be faced by poorer expanding populations. This is not a good recipe for world peace. At the same time, as wealthier governments use immigration as a means of reducing skill shortages, they face challenges from far-right groups on either (or both) economic or racist grounds, but fail in many cases to champion the economic and cultural benefits of such immigration. A politics of trying to appear as politically radical (or racist) as such groups is also not a good recipe for political and social sustainability. Up to 2050, then, most experts agree that the world’s population will increase, very likely creating extra pressure on the world’s resources. The demand for more equitable distribution and consumption seems compelling for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. However, raising the living standards of those in the developing world to the standard of the developed world, whilst a highly equitable act, would have serious global consequences, as there are almost certainly insufficient resources to support such expansion. Smith (2011), for instance, points out that raising the consumption level of all the world’s population in this way would require resources, not for the current 7 billion alive today, but for 72 billion. However, this realization must be balanced against the huge injustice in the amount that the developed world consumes relative to the developing world. This suggests the need for solutions which not only address issues of population growth, but which also tackle levels of consumption, and the equity of the levels of such consumption. These are not debates that those working in educational institutions can afford to avoid: not only because the current global situation is likely to become increasingly unsustainable; not only because resource distribution leads to the need to answer compelling ethical questions; but finally because the future orientation of global demographic concerns maps precisely onto the central mission of educational institutions, concerned as they must be with equipping future generations with the skills and values to survive and prosper in an impending world.

(2) Urban–rural transitions The year 2008 was significant demographically because it was the year that the world’s urban populations exceeded those in rural areas. Such urban populations have increasingly moved into ‘megacities’, many of which are coastal. This second demographic transition has been dramatic: in the middle of the 20th century, three-quarters of a billion people lived in cities, whilst, currently, urban populations amount to three and a half billion, the

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large majority of which are located in poorer countries (Munz and Reiterer, 2009). The urbanization process began in medieval Europe, when commercial and administrative demands led to about one-tenth of the population being urbanized. The second phase occurred largely because of industrial growth and the migration from rural areas to urban areas for employment. The 20th century saw a further process of ‘suburbanization’, as, aided by a source of energy with a low EROI , populations spread out to urban peripheries, and then commuted in. In poorer countries, the first and second phases of this process were largely collapsed into the second half of the 20th century. The third stage, in contrast to the earlier European experience, has been largely propelled by internal immigration and high birth rates, but with such speed and lack of resource that many kinds of sustainability are threatened. Nevertheless, for many migrants, the effects have been comparatively beneficial, as the average income of urban dwellers in poorer countries is much higher than that of their counterparts in rural areas, and the TFR s of urban populations tend to be lower (Wattenberg, 2004). Some of the megacities are in rich countries – Tokyo is currently the largest urban agglomeration with a population of 37 million; New York/ Newark has 19 million, and Los Angeles has 13 million. But most megacities are in developing countries: in India, Delhi and Mumbai both have 20 million; whilst Kolkata (Calcutta) has 16 million; in South and Central America, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have 20 million and 12 million respectively; whilst Mexico City has 19 million. In China, Shanghai has 16 million, and Beijing has 12 million. The location of large urban populations in poorer countries raises a number of challenges to social sustainability, such as the provision of health and welfare services, and the containment of high levels of crime and alcoholism. It leads also to acute challenges to educational institutions, as they not only must deal with the educational problems posed by such transitions, but also find themselves a front-line service in wider issues of social sustainability. Indeed, politicians are acutely aware that angry poor urban populations are a much more dangerous threat to political sustainability than those located in rural areas, as they are much easier to mobilize, and much nearer to seats of power. Finally, with a global rise in sea levels a virtual certainty over the next few decades, poorer countries with coastal megacities are in a much worse position than their richer counterparts in preventing or repairing the damage this will likely cause. So, whether educators work in rich or poor countries, an awareness of such trends is important, as many teachers and pupils will themselves be examples of internal or international migration in an increasingly urbanized world. Besides the challenges and opportunities presented by increasingly multicultural populations, a number of other challenges will present themselves: the rising sea levels encountered by populations in coastline cities, the sustainability of an expanding and eroding urban environment, and the challenge of living in a suburban environment as rising energy prices through declining EROI s drive up the cost of transport. Yet perhaps the

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most serious challenge lies in potential resentment from inhabitants of poorer countries, and poorer inhabitants of richer countries, if they see their urban land disappearing beneath the waves, and their rural land poisoned by water tables contaminated by saltwater, and if those better off than themselves offer only inadequate help. Urban–rural transitions then are no longer just national problems, as their effects spill over into international and global arenas.

(3) Ageing populations, and a new focus for education Populations, however, are not only expanding and moving towards urban areas; more of them are living longer. Dychwald’s (1999) figures for 20th century US life expectancy – from 47 years at the beginning of the century to 76 at the end of it – showed how health and medical advances had helped people to live longer than they normally might. Thus the same population is now expected to live to 84 years of age by 2050, and 89 years of age by 2100 (UN , 2015). In Japan, life expectancy in 1950 for women was 61.4 years, and for men 58, and by the end of the century, it was 83 for women and 76 for men. By 2060, more than half of the population will be over 65 (Eberspacher, 2014; UN , 2015). Similar statistics are now increasingly seen in poorer countries as well: whilst only 10.97 per cent of the Chinese population lived beyond 60 in 2004, by 2050 it is projected that 30 per cent will live beyond this age (South China Morning Post, 23/02/06), with a life expectancy of 82.5 years (UN , 2015). China will then have the largest population over that age in the world. As ageing populations become a global phenomenon, they can result in a decreasing percentage of the population in work, and therefore the generation of lower amounts of taxes to sustain core welfare institutions. As Leeson (2009) points out, many governments are now legislating for later retirement ages, inducing their citizens to take out private pensions from an earlier age, at the same time as they reduce the value of state pensions. As he also points out, for individuals there seem two choices only – working longer and/or increasing personal savings. If tax bases decline because of the higher proportion of retired individuals, there will inevitably be pressure on most public spending, including education. When linked to neo-liberal economic agendas, this provides even greater impetus for the tight control of professional work, and the privatization of public sector institutions. The implementation of ‘new public management strategies’ seen over the last 30–40 years will be viewed as ever more urgent, accompanied by Pollitt’s (1993) description of professionals continuing to move from being ‘on top’ in determining agendas and financial priorities, to being ‘on tap’ to the requirements of government policy. Most

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advanced countries are seeing increased longevity now being accompanied by a declining TFR , leading their governments to contemplate an encouragement of youthful immigration. Such immigration can be of mutual benefit, if poorer countries with large youthful populations find it hard to provide them with full employment. However, problems could arise if richer countries are perceived as ‘stealing’ the youthful and economically productive elements of a population. The increased presence of ageing populations also generates new questions about the role of the aged in society. In most cultures, the elderly have traditionally been treated with great respect, but more recently, particularly in Western societies, they have tended to be socially and politically sidelined, seemingly irrelevant to the dominant project of greater economic competitiveness. Yet as Leeson (2009) argues, there are two possible development scenarios for societies to consider. One scenario is a continuation of present trends of age segregation, where senior members of society are largely impecunious, lonely and un-respected. However, a second scenario directly involves education, as Leeson argues that policies of age integration could instead be developed, where ‘education in an ageing society is key to the quality of life of people in later life’ (2009, p. 2). Education would then be seen as increasingly important as retirement ages occur later and later, for older people would need to change or improve their knowledge, skills and abilities. The benefits for many could be enormous: the OECD ’s (2013) review of trends shaping education demonstrates how continued education can improve cognitive skills, as well as provide social and health benefits for the elderly. By stimulating cognitive skills, it could have beneficial effects on further employment opportunities, and therefore on earnings levels. It can also counter the isolation of old age by enabling the establishment of social links through attending courses, and therefore the greater chance of a continued community integration. Education also has very positive impacts on the health of the aged, not only in directly impeding the onset of diseases like dementia, which has now replaced cancer as the disease most people fear, but also in increasing the general health literacy of individuals, which then not only enables them to better access and use information in maintaining their basic health, but also helps them arrive at more appropriate long-term health-related decisions. The OECD (2013) report noted that not only does such education help more elderly individuals take better care of themselves, it can also help them to communicate better with health professionals about issues that concern them, as they note that health literacy tends to decline as age rises. As they say, ‘such literacy is likely to be weakest among those with greatest need’ (p. 9). One particular approach, intergenerational education, could be an enormous boon for both young and elderly alike (see Kaplan et al., 1998; Bostrom, 2003), as it suggests an approach where old and young learn new skills together, rather than the more conventional approach where the old take on mentoring roles or teach out of their experience (which, of course,

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are also very desirable approaches). For the young, such intergenerational learning could be an invaluable source of support, experience and knowledge; for the elderly, it might provide not only extra income, but increased perceptions of worth. Lifelong learning would then be more than a strategy for equipping individuals with different skills for changing employment scenarios; it would also be a means of boosting a society’s social capital, as a wider vision of education would develop – one that recognized that different ages have different personal, social and spiritual needs, which could be met in a mutually supportive manner. Much of the success of such educational programmes will depend upon how well curricula and teaching methods are adapted not only to the needs of cohorts of more mature individuals, but also to more mixed-aged cohorts. Some of this may well come from more relevant and shorter modular courses, and greater flexibility of approach; an approach that needs to be translated into the workplace. As a senior UK government report observes (Padilla, 2011), greater workplace flexibility can lead to more job satisfaction, less absenteeism, and can build better trust relationships between employer and work. There is much research still required here, and much more that educational leaders can do to facilitate such positive social change. As cognitive, social and health education approaches then are better recognized and researched, Leeson’s (2009) scenario of an age of integration becomes increasingly possible, and there are practices in other countries that would further facilitate such a move. Japan, for example, was in 2006 the first country to reach the end of a demographic transition, where more births were recorded than deaths (Akihiko, 2006), yet where both high mortality and high birth-rates had plunged such that, by 2012, its population was 126.5 million and dropping, and is currently projected to total only 87 million by 2060 (Eberspacher, 2014). To cope with an increasingly elderly population, it is having to invent in ways never seen before – from the creation of robots who can pick up the elderly and take them to the bathroom, because of an increasing shortage of geriatric nurses, to the creation of ‘age banks’ into which the able elderly deposit ‘goodwill’ by spending time looking after the infirm elderly, in the expectation that they will be able to ‘withdraw’ such goodwill when they too reach the infirm stage. It could then be a dark future of loneliness, penury and bitterness for the elderly, but it need not be. If the challenges of an elderly population are recognized and planned for properly, the age of formal retirement could be beneficial not only to the aged, but to society as a whole. In this different future, old age could be a time with great potential for spiritual exploration and development. Currently, such debates have limited importance on many educational agendas, as the focus on the young and the short-term hinders debate about visions of society and education systems two or three generations hence. The ageing of populations is a good example of where challenges can become real opportunities for societies – and for their professionals – to rethink educational aims and priorities.

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(4) Epidemiological transition A further challenge is one consequent upon an increase in ageing populations: that of epidemiological transition – the way in which different kinds of populations suffer from different kinds of medical condition. Omran (2005, pp.  737–8) divided such transition in Western countries into a history of three phases of mortality. The first he called the age of pestilence and famine; an age when disease was the major cause of mortality. TFR s tended to be high, but so also did mortality, and as parents calculated that few of their children would live to adulthood to look after them in their old age, so TFR s continued to be high. Population increase was then only spasmodic, and fell back again when another major epidemic swept through a population. In this age, life expectancy was usually little more than 20–40 years. The second, the age of receding pandemics, occurred when epidemics ceased in frequency and there was a gradual rate of increase in population. Life expectancy rose to 30–50. The final phase is that current in Western societies – an age of degeneration and man-made diseases, when mortality from infectious diseases is drastically reduced, and better nutrition, sanitation and health care contribute to an extended average life expectancy of 50–80 years. The primary causes of mortality now are no longer infectious diseases, but ones of lifestyle and diet – heart, stroke and circulatory diseases – closely followed by the diseases of old age – chronic diseases and forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s. Such diseases, it should be noted, require both longer and costlier treatments than the acute diseases of youth, and as the number of cases increases, this will prove to be another strain on national economies, with similar remedies as those in education being sought, including greater economizing on expensive medicines, more control of professional work, and the greater privatization of services. Once again, though, education of the elderly could prove beneficial as a combination of preventative action, self-diagnosis and greater ability to access professional help could prove beneficial to both the aged and society in general. Discussions on epidemiological transitions have generated much debate (e.g. Wahdan, 1996; Caselli et al., 2002), but issues of equity need to have a pivotal role here, for, as Munz and Reiterer (2009, p.  216) point out, ‘the survival rate among infants and young children largely depends upon their place of birth and the social group into which they are born’. Whilst, they suggest, such differences exist within societies, nevertheless ‘the main differences are clearly between richer and poorer countries’. As noted above, analysis of the causes of falling death rates suggests an interaction of a variety of factors, the most important being: (i) an improvement in the quantity and quality of food, and of systems to transport it; (ii) improved sanitation; (iii) improved public health systems, and better medical interventions; and finally (iv) a rise in educational levels generally, but particularly in the understanding and prevention of disease. Education, then, may not be a sufficient condition for combating infectious diseases, in dealing with Western lifestyle diseases,

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or in coping with the challenges of old age, but it remains a very necessary one. Educators will probably focus more upon the diseases of their own country and the particular point of epidemiological transition that is displayed there, but the fact that survival rates are still heavily determined by the class and country into which one happens to be born argues strongly for an increased awareness of such trans-national inequities, and of the need to redress them.

The future terms of the debate: Ageing populations and lower birth rates? There are then many anomalies and cultural variants in demographic transitions, but there also seem to be a number of global trends. One is an expansion of the global population over the next two to three generations, but where population expansion in poor countries significantly overrides a population decline in most rich ones, with consequent attempted economic migration from the poorer to the richer. Another is the movement from rural to more urban-based populations, many located in coastal areas, where not only will there be concerns about health, crime and education provision, but about an increased likelihood of environmental fragility as sea levels rise. A third trend is one where, as fertility rates decline globally, there will be a movement towards populations with increasingly ageing members. A final trend, consequent upon ageing populations, will be one of an epidemiological transition, as ageing populations display fewer of the acute diseases of the young and more of the chronic diseases instead. The phenomenon of increased longevity is also being accompanied in more economically advanced countries by a decline in TFR s and thus creating a world with fewer children. This is potentially very concerning, as the number of employable adults might decline further, whilst the number of those dependent on them rises. Globally, the trend is perhaps even more surprising. Munz and Reiterer (2009) point out that in the 1950s, the global TFR was above 5; by the late 1970s it was 3.9; and by 2008 it was 2.6. New projections (UN , 2015) suggest that the global TFR will be 2.4 by 2025–30, and 2.0 by 2095–2100. At this rate, then, a new period of global transition may be happening, as by the end of the century, the global TFR will be below replacement level, and the world’s population may actually begin to decline. This changes the challenges ahead, but it does not resolve them. Little has yet been written about the situation in the second half of this century, as focus is understandably on the challenges created by expanding populations projected to continue until the middle of the century. However, many countries already face the issue of declining populations, and this may

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well be a global reality in two generations’ time, creating new and unexpected challenges and opportunities for which educators need to be prepared. Whilst problems will be posed by the smaller size of ageing societies consequent upon such change, smaller numbers could produce opportunities as well, not only in the reduced demands upon the environment, but also in the greater attention and education that could be devoted to a smaller youthful population.

Global trends, educational challenges What then, are the coming challenges to which public sector educators in many countries will need to respond? Some of them will be extensions and exacerbations of current concerns. A first will be the need to manage continually reducing revenues. Such reductions are likely to happen for a number of reasons. One reason in many countries will be reduced tax bases due to increasingly elderly populations, as well as a decline in the number of children, thus potentially reducing the number of people in the workforce. Moreover, if such populations are increasingly less youthful, one is likely to see political pressure from an increasing grey power for a redirection of tax revenues towards their concerns. Another challenge stems directly from this development: a greater direction of public sector educational work, as states feel an increasing need to determine and micromanage the use of such revenues. A final challenge is likely to be an attempt to move activities off public sector balance sheets into the private sector, particularly if such financial pressures are accompanied by ideological beliefs in the superiority of private sector performance over public sector provision. This is likely to continue the reduced autonomy and power of public sector professionals identified by Levin (2003) and others over the last few decades. Such challenges will impact directly upon educational practice, but a number of wider societal challenges will probably also occur. One will be the manner in which the global transition to ageing populations changes the complexion of future societies, and Leeson’s (2009) two scenarios of age segregation or age integration are still both possible. One has to hope for a much greater embrace of the latter, as novel forms of education and the empowerment that comes from them could lead to much more integrated cohorts of senior citizens who are valued for their experience, wisdom and advice, and provide them with greater self-respect and self-worth. It could also provide the young with the opportunity to walk in the shoes of people who face very different challenges to the ones they currently encounter, but which they will inevitably face later in life (see, for instance, Santoro et al.’s (2012) discussion on intergenerational learning in teacher education). Such mutual understanding and support could then be of great communal and social benefit.

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A second wider challenge will be developing women’s rights and education in patriarchal countries, and consequent reductions in fertility rates. These would be beneficial, not only for such women and their offspring, leading to greater autonomy, better health and education, but also to their societies, as resources could be spread across smaller populations, and environmental damage would be reduced. The evidence of the benefits from such education is compelling, and suggests that one need not wait generations for a demographic transition to take place: women who have the education, knowledge and greater control over their own destinies not only benefit themselves, but can also have remarkable impacts upon population size, as well as providing wider social, economic health benefits. There is a strong international literature (e.g. Campbell, 2007; DfID, 2006; Cohen, 2008) suggesting that the quickest, safest and most egalitarian way to lower birth rates is to invest in women’s education, as when women have the knowledge and right to determine the size of their families, most choose numbers nearer replacement levels. A critical part of women’s education, then, as Prata (2009) and Campbell and Bedford (2009) contend, is to increase the knowledge and accessibility of family planning, as population transition theories seem to be incorrect in assuming that it takes generations for birth rates to fall. Instead, if there are combined strategies for redressing female poverty, for providing better education, and for improving women’s ability to express their preferences for family size, substantial changes can be made within one or two generations. There is then a beneficial synergy between improved conditions and lower birth rates (Sinding, 2009), as not only do improved conditions lead to lower birth rates, but, in poorer countries, the lower birth rates also permit more time, nutrition, care and education to be spent on the young. A third challenge illustrated both in this chapter and throughout the book are the large disparities of wealth within and between nations. A lack of equity within nations is both an ethical and a practical issue, as the work of Wilkinson (1996) and Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) points to functional disharmonies within societies when this happens, which lead to both rich and poor having lower life-expectancies than their equivalents in countries with narrower income differentials. However the challenge is not only one of intra-generational equity, but of inter-generational equity as well, as equity involves asking not only about the fairness of current resource distribution, but in what condition and who will benefit most when they are passed on to future generations. Both the time-limited policy focus of many governments currently, and a consumerist focus on present well-being derived from such consumption, have reduced the importance of this debate not only for politicians, but for society as a whole. A major educational objective then needs to be a refocusing from a singular concentration on the pressing demands of the next 3–5 years, towards longer-term intergenerational considerations.

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Optimum populations, optimum growth? Perhaps, however, the most problematic challenge has still to be considered. Despite the fact that some individuals like Simon (1981) believe that human ingenuity can provide the resources permitting indefinite expansion beyond present population levels, the current evidence does not support this proposition: the human global population and its level of consumption is probably already too big for an earth of this size and resources. There then is a real need to raise the question: what optimum level of population with an acceptable level of consumption is actually sustainable, and should humanity be trying to work towards this optimum level? There are many problems and questions that need asking about such a proposition. However, a first has to be the ruling out of court of any form of coercion in any proposal. Indeed, the evidence reviewed in this chapter suggests that coercion is unnecessary – a great deal can be done through voluntary action and education. Nevertheless, the concern probably goes deeper than this, stemming from the fear of any attempt to manage a human population, which to many may sound like a dangerous and unwelcome step towards a coercive political authoritarianism. Once again, this is a wicked problem, which cannot be settled by empirical evidence alone, but requires extensive ethical and philosophical argument and discussion. However, if it is accepted that the situation is sufficiently threatening that the basic terms of such a debate need consideration, a first question probably has to be about the meaning of the phrase ‘optimum population’. Most commentators agree that it is a number somewhere between the minimum number of people thought necessary for the human species to be safe from extinction, and the maximum number supportable on currently available resources which would equally provide for future generations. Understandably, given the current situation of rising numbers, discussion about a minimum human population has attracted only limited discussion so far, the focus being much more upon the difference between a maximum ‘battery chicken’ kind of number (how many could be squeezed onto the planet with the given resources?), and a qualitatively more enjoyable optimum. Most debate has unsurprisingly focused on attempting definitions of what a qualitatively enjoyable lifestyle would be, and from there to try and determine an optimum number. Early in this debate, Ehrlich and his colleagues (Daily, Ehrlich, and Ehrlich, 1992) proposed that a number of rich cultural qualitative factors would need to be present for such an optimum population. They suggested, among other things, wide-open spaces, large culturally rich cities, great biodiversity, and access to decent education, health care and sanitation. Clearly there will many cultural and personal differences in any such debate, and indeed, this may be one reason why some would reject the notion outright – the variables are so complex that little or no sense can be made from such an exercise. However, this objection might be countered by acknowledging that whilst this problem is

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undoubtedly at the ‘wicked’ end of any spectrum of problems that human beings have to confront, it still requires engagement because the consequences of non-engagement are so profoundly dangerous. Indeed, it might be argued, as in the previous chapter, that because current threats to sustainability now seem so serious, the onus of responsibility needs to be placed on those who would deny that such actions should be considered. For Smail (2004, p. 1) this would mean asking them: ‘What is the evidence that the Earth can withstand . . . irreparable damage for another two or more centuries, during which global human numbers and per-capita consumption increasingly exceed the Earth’s optimal sustainable carrying capacity?’ If consideration of such policy changes were pursued, one would then need to ask what would constitute an optimum population size. Ehrlich’s first attempt in 1992/3, after considering the kind of factors he thought necessary for a qualitatively pleasant experience, came to a figure of 1.5–2 billion. A slightly higher figure was reached by Smail (2004), of around 2–3 billion – a figure that was similarly reached by Desvaux (2007). Proponents have never claimed any great degree of precision for their calculations, but they all, very uncomfortably, suggest that the current 7 billion global population is not sustainable. It should be noted, however, that the Royal Society (2012) declined to put a figure on an optimum population size, instead recommending the slowing and stabilizing of the current global population, whilst strongly arguing that the sheer number of people present on the planet was not as important as the inequitable distribution of resources between them. The Royal Society’s reluctance to advocate an optimum population figure is perhaps understandable, given their recognition of the slowing of population growth over the next century. However, the fact that they acknowledged that global population is growing and will continue to grow at about 80 million per year through to mid-century, suggests that slowing and stabilizing such a population may not be enough, particularly if, with the economic rise of India and China, consumption levels continue to grow. If most analyses currently believe that the current global number of 7–9 billion people is unsupportable and unsustainable, then a more prudent approach might involve advocating not only the slowing and stabilization of population growth, but also the consideration of measures to actually reduce it. At the very least, the report by the Royal Society does suggest that demographic issues may once more be back on global agendas. Finally, it is important to note the important role that the Royal Society assigns to education in meeting these challenges, as they argue that ‘well educated people tend to live longer healthier lives, are more able to choose the number of children they have, and are more resilient to and capable of change’ (2012, p.  5). The most impactful areas for education as already noted would probably be in terms of women’s education for personal empowerment, the consideration of other ways of embracing measures of well-being besides those of consumerism, and a gradual societal reorientation

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away from present economic growth–consumerist visions towards those that view well-being as predicated more upon the realization of other aspects of the human condition. This could be part of a longer-term project in the changing of social and economic values, and will be discussed in the concluding chapters of this book.

Concluding thoughts: A stronger ethic of equity? If some are worried by the threat to personal freedoms and civil liberties from the consideration of policies lowering population sizes and levels of consumption, there is as much reason to be concerned by the potential development of ‘national fortress’ mentalities, where richer countries attempt to maintain present ways of life and levels of consumption, whilst excluding the populations of other, less-developed countries. This is the ‘Lifeboat Ethics’ approach described by Hardin (2006), where each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat. Outside swim the poor people of the world, who would like to get in. But there are not enough resources to go round. The people in the lifeboat have a duty to their species to be selfish. Whilst a more detailed critique of this approach will be developed in the final chapter, one element needs pointing out here. Demographic issues are not only national concerns: they inevitably spill out of particular locations and into other countries. And a critical message of this chapter is to emphasize the urgency with which the well-being of all in a global commons needs to be taken into account, and that this cannot be realized without being accompanied by an ethic of greater global equity. At a purely human level, such an ethic would involve three different aspects: greater equity within societies, greater equity between societies, and a more central debate about the need for equity between present and future generations. This chapter began with the suggestion that there was an elephant in the room, one of multiple demographic changes, which many hardly see; it needs to be said that this chapter suggests that there is a second elephant in the room: the reluctance by many rich countries to address questions of equity not only within their own societies, but, perhaps more importantly, between different societies, both of which need to be viewed inter-generationally. A critical question for educational leaders and others then is this: how can people’s attention be directed to the challenges from demographic trends, and for the need for greater prominence of an ethic of equity to remedy such challenges? This question has huge importance not only for the present and future sustainability of the human world, but for the entire biosphere as well.

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PART THREE

Towards a Leadership for Sustainability

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CHAPTER NINE

Securing Educational Sustainability in a Wicked World

Introduction This book has traced how a large number of challenges and problems threatening the sustainability of social, economic and environmental areas of activity have many ‘wicked’ qualities about them, and how similar are many threats to the sustainability of educational systems and the people within them. All are located in a world largely characterized, not by linear causation, but by causation within holistic systems, where final effects may be both unpredictable and uncontrollable, and which may not be resolvable in any final or definitive sense. All areas also have problems that are moving targets, with their nature and seriousness changing over time. And finally, in human systems, their sustainability may be threatened by the termination of solutions for reasons of time or finance, rather than because it is felt that the challenge has been satisfactorily resolved. Such systems also contain individuals who, if given responsibility for solving problems and maintaining system sustainability, may have ‘tame’ rather than ‘wicked’ understandings of such problems, and whose mapping of problems may then fail to match their complexity. All systems will also contain individuals who, even if they grasp the wicked nature of problems, may still have different understandings of how each should be defined and resolved. One result is that if people, policies and organizations fail to appreciate such networks of interconnections, their attempts at problem resolution are likely to be less than adequate. For educational leaders, this means appreciating that the range of possible interconnections will extend beyond their own organizations and system, and may indeed be beyond any one of the public, private and civil society sectors, with the result that if the attempted resolution to any wicked problem is restricted to the organization or even sector within which that problem was originally located, it may fail 157

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to have the desired effects. At best, sustainability will not be improved; at worst, it is likely to be damaged. Mapping an inadequate model onto a complex external reality is then unlikely to be successful in addressing many wicked problems, as they will almost certainly transcend bureaucratic boundaries. Yet most institutions and structures, public and private, have not been designed to support and develop the kind of collaborative interorganizational and inter-systemic working required. So any attempt at changing the behaviour of populations, or of changing the behaviour of those lower down in organizational hierarchies, largely needs to begin by changing the thinking, values and practices of those possessing the positions and power to redesign such policies, structures, strategies and implementation. Inadequate or inappropriate initial mapping may then be not only a major cause of problems, but also of solution failure, and continued use of such assumptions will likely produce further threats to system, organizational and personal sustainability. Wicked problems require wicked understandings of the world, and the creation of structures, policies and values recognizing such wickedity. However, as already seen, the issue doesn’t stop there. If complexity theory attempts to describe the nature of interactions in some ‘objective’ external reality, the concept of ‘wicked’ thinking adds further layers to such complexity, incorporating into the picture the problem of human subjectivity. Human beings don’t see all that is in front of them, but use their memories and their values in selecting from what is there. As Carr (1982) noted in discussing the nature of historical ‘facts’, when human beings choose these, they do so like people fishing in a large ocean. They don’t catch every fish in the sea: what they actually ‘catch’ depends on where they choose to fish (assuming they have an option to fish in more than one place), what equipment they choose to use, and what they actually want to catch. There aren’t, then, any simple ‘facts’, but a selection of external events, chosen and interpreted through the use of various personal ‘frames’. The ‘fact’ is not possible without the prior frame. Indeed, as Storr (2014, p. 310) points out, because the world is largely not linear but formed in holistic systems, each fact is connected to other facts and those facts to networks of other facts still. When they are all knitted together, they take the form of an emotional and dramatic plot at the centre of which lives the individual. Even if one might wish that Storr was more epistemologically nuanced in his use of the word ‘fact’, such an ‘emotional and dramatic plot’ leads to further intensive selection, and, as Storr argues, can produce individuals who have views not only widely divergent from mainstream scientific opinion, but also some who have mainstream views, but who are so rigid in their views as to be unable to consider even the slightest deviation from what they regard as the norm within the field. Not only are there, Storr argues, ‘seven

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billion individual worlds living on the surface of this one’ (p. 91), but also ‘intelligence is no inoculation against bias’ (p. 244). Now before one moves to conclude that each person is condemned to some kind of relativistic blindness, Carr (1982) points out that it is possible for individuals to use different frames, but still be able to make comparisons between different frames, by examining the assumptions and values informing such frames. Human beings are then capable of reflecting upon what kinds of frames, conscious and unconscious, are used by themselves and others, and whilst this doesn’t provide any final or ultimate picture of reality for individuals, it does help them to avoid the adoption of epistemologies that are either corrosively relativist (as they can see no reason for valuing one more than another), or deep-seatedly fundamentalist (as they cling tenaciously to the one that gives them the greatest certainty and avoids the challenge of doubt). However, as Barge (2007) argues, inter-frame reflection allows for discussion and debate to continue between those holding such different ways of looking at the world and its problems. This isn’t easy, and it has to be worked on, but it is possible. It points in the end to the need for an epistemology of humility which leads to an ethic of humility, as an open-mindedness to other views needs to be embraced, and an acceptance of one’s own and others’ limitations. Both are going to be essential if such conversations are to take place. They will need to be central traits of educational leaders, and crucial elements in the ethos of educational systems facing wicked challenges

Wicked challenges By engaging in such discussions, by embracing such an ethos, ‘tame’ conceptions of the world are left far behind and one moves into truly ‘wicked’ territory. As this happens, when the non-linearity of much causation, and the ‘framing’ which human beings necessarily use in attempting to make some sense of their world is recognized, new problems, new challenges, are also appreciated. A first, and already mentioned, is that not only will many people view problems in different ways from the way we personally do; but, more than that, they simply may not see some issues as problems, or as problems that are so urgent as needing to be dealt with in the near future. In terms of global warming, for example, the contributors to Lomborg (2004) all share the view that global warming may be occurring, but believe that there are other issues that are more pressing, and upon which humanity should spend more of its time and resources. Similarly, concerns over the sustainability of educational leaders are framed very differently by different parties; whilst some have suggested it stems from a clash of values and a loss of personal autonomy in the role, governments are much more inclined to see it as a function of heavy workload and of people being inadequately equipped to take on the role. Thus issues of personal values and autonomy

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may be seen as a highly urgent issue for some, but for others a less-pressing concern, and for still others one hardly worth addressing. A second challenge stems from the fact that if much organizational and bureaucratic mapping for a wicked problem isn’t adequate to the task, there may exist no adequate set of rules to work through such a problem. Much of a copious critical library on bureaucracy stems precisely from this concern – that bureaucratic rules often don’t map adequately onto problems presented, because the reality encountered is more complex than that suggested by the parcelling up of work into bureaucratic hierarchies and bureaucratic boxes. In similar vein, frustration by implementers of many educational policies may well lie in an apparent lack of appreciation by policy makers of the need to apply these in different ways to individual contexts, rather than through the adoption of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Those having to implement policies may need to be seen much less like package holidaymakers who have known destinations, tour guides and timetables of activities to structure their two weeks in the sun, and more like the explorers of a region, who may have a general knowledge of the territory, and a strong ‘feel’ for the right direction, but who possess neither absolute certainty nor precision in their knowledge of the way forward. Each time they travel, then, some of this travel is into the unknown, even if their previous ‘expeditions’ have provided some skill, some expertise, some tacit knowledge in finding acceptable ways forward, acceptable destinations. Third, because of the complexity encountered, because of the lack of certainty, one might never be sure if a problem has been completely solved, or to use the traveller analogy, if one has actually arrived at a desired destination. A problem may be only partially solved, or perhaps only the current presenting symptoms have been eliminated, whilst many unrecognized symptoms of deeper problems continue to exist. Indeed, by applying particular solutions, by taking particular directions, the nature of the problem may be changed into something else, something perhaps more difficult to resolve. In ecological terms, the introduction of new species to reduce problems with another species may only change the nature of the problem, as this new species may become the alpha predator, and kill not only the intended species, but many others in the process. Similarly, highstakes testing in education may be used to generate higher SAT scores, and to produce an assumed higher national economic competitiveness through a more skilled workforce, but it may instead create deeper stresses within a system, as teachers feel de-professionalized, and students feel pressured and bored, and then lead not only to greater educational unsustainability, but to social and economic unsustainability as well. Fourth, wicked problems are not always static problems. Indeed, because they normally contain so many other issues and challenges, they are more likely to be moving targets, where their intensity or even their nature changes over time. What would be the most appropriate kind of response in such circumstances? If a rapid response is adopted, largely because of a belief in

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the old adage that a stitch in time saves nine, further problems may be created if insufficient time is taken to adequately conceptualize the problem, and sustainability is then threatened in other ways. Organizational change before an organization or its change agents are ready for change is a strong example of this. Finally, what if problem solving is terminated before the problem is fully addressed because action is constrained by policy deadlines; or because resources allocated are used up; or other problems arise that appear to be more pressing; or because policy makers simply needed some kind of policy at that time for public effect, and now they find what they think is a ‘better’ one? A second-class solution fully implemented may achieve more observable results than a first-class solution poorly implemented, but the adoption of either is hardly grounds for optimism in a wicked world.

Wicked approaches to wicked solutions Wicked problems then pose challenges that may not always be amenable to final or ultimate resolutions. And, unsurprisingly, the kinds of resolution required for wicked problems are going to be similarly problematic. This book has already suggested that the resolution of wicked problems will likely be more successful with the use of a broad spectrum of approaches, rather than with the embrace of single ‘silver bullet’ solutions, and such ‘clumsy’ or ‘silver buckshot’ resolutions need examining in a little detail, as, once again, their formulation for threats to issues of large-scale sustainability seems to marry well with the kind best suited to educational systems. Now Rayner (2006) suggests that most problems, in reality, are addressed by a very small number of strategies. A first would be in the adoption of a hierarchical approach, where resolutions are largely dictated by those in positions of power. Those who adopt this approach tend to see problems as the absence of, or lack of enforcement of, appropriate rules. Some of the attempts to resolve issues of global warming have taken this form. Indeed, hierarchists tend to be good at making decisions and enforcing rules, and it tends to be the preferred view of those who see leadership as consisting of individuals having the power and authority to pull the right levers for action. But with wicked problems, if a problem is poorly understood, solutions are more likely to come through developing relationships with both followers and other stakeholders, and so a hierarchic approach may only be appropriate at certain times and with certain parts of wicked problems. Thus, as noted in Chapter Seven, Verweij (2011) argued that the essentially hierarchical imposition of solutions in global warming, requiring all the major nations to comply, has been fundamentally impracticable, and that a more mixed approach, where nations are encouraged to compete in developing markets to produce better low-emission technologies, would probably produce better results. In education, the ‘pulling levers’ analogy has been seen on many

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occasions, and when governments have looked to expert opinion to support its ideas in pushing through their own preferred reforms. Failure to achieve such reforms, because their implementation is largely seen in this lever-pulling way, is then seen as a cause for both blame and punishment. If a first approach to problem-solving is hierarchical and centralized, a second – the collaborative and egalitarian – seems more closely aligned with the kind of approaches suggested by an understanding of wickedity. If better approximations of the framing of problems, and better specifications of their resolutions are more likely when people understand the complex webs of causal interactions that exist in many situations, and that people’s selective framings of situations require an ability to compare and contrast such framings with those of others, whilst recognizing that no one framing is likely to be absolutely right, then a more collaborative and egalitarian approach may be well suited. This approach would seem to welcome the opening up of discussions to a wide variety of stakeholders, who would also be encouraged to voice their understandings and their proposals for resolution. Those who adopt an egalitarian and collaborative approach then tend to see problem solution not as one best progressed through the enforcement of rules, but more as one of stakeholders sufficiently connected to produce communal solutions. In terms of global warming, then, it is not about rules as much as about developing collective ways of living in harmony with more sustainable perspectives. In terms of education, such talk would likely be fronted by assumptions of public and collective goods, and by inclusive rather than exclusive or elitist views of education. Now, I have to confess to a personal liking for this approach, but I am also fully aware of the two major weaknesses in it. One is that those who like to discuss and debate do not always produce decisions at the end of such discussions, and such debates may then delay solutions, and may then contribute to even more unsustainability. Another weakness is that the influence of the group is not always a benign one: as Janis’s (1972) classic account makes clear, ‘groupthink’ can prevent the expression of the truly original and creative voice, and instead favour what the majority prefer. So there may well be a need for an element of hierarchy here, for the kind of person or persons who can push through decisions. Yet hierarchies may, like collectivist approaches, ostracize the independent view. As Grint (2008, p. 21) argues, the problem for leaders dealing with wicked problems is more likely to be what he calls ‘destructive consent’ – of people falling in line because of hierarchic or communal threats. The problem then is ‘not of securing consent, but of securing dissent’. In such circumstance, there is need for a third approach, of creating room for more individualist voices. These may well be voices generated by ethical concern, individual passion, or personal expertise, and may translate into marketized approaches, where individuals and institutions are placed in competition with one another in providing better solutions to problems. In global warming terms, this would result in more individual responses to such problems, particularly in the

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generation of technological developments. In education, depending on the system involved, such individual voices have influenced decisions because of their moral authority (Arnold of Rugby), because of their pedagogical passion (Montessori or Steiner), their academic insights (Piaget or Bruner), or in more recent times though the marketization of services, and the encouragement of the entrepreneurial educational leader. Yet, individualism on its own creates just as many problems as do the other approaches: moral authority can become moral authoritarianism; pedagogical passion can become a blindness to other approaches; academic insight can become academic myopia; and individual entrepreneurialism can lose sight of other educational values. There is therefore just as much need for recourse to other approaches as they have for it. The three areas, then – hierarchic, communal, individual – all have strengths and weaknesses, and each will likely be needed in attempting resolutions to wicked problems, as they balance up the limitations of the others. Now, it would be tempting to ignore a final approach suggested by Verweij et  al. (2011): the fatalistic. Indeed, they suggest (p.  18) that this ‘whatever will be, will be’ approach is life ‘without rhyme or reason’. Grint (2008, p.  16) also dismisses the holders of such an approach as simply having given up. Yet I think this is to seriously underplay the possible strength of such a position. Verweij et  al. (2011) do suggest that some problems are so intractable that any actual attempts at solutions may make the problem worse: in such situations, an acceptance of their inevitability may then provide respite, even a spiritual relief. One might go even further, and argue that accepting that some things are inevitable doesn’t lead to simply giving up, but rather can be a move to the adoption of strategies that don’t change a problem, but do increase the resilience of individuals and organizations in facing it. Whilst some may see this as the strategy of the timid, the weak, or the ineffective, it would be unwise to dispense with such an alternative, as many problems are likely to remain with us, or increase, and we may be unable to do much about their resolution in the short to medium term. A greater emphasis on developing greater resilience into actors and institutions in order to survive the inevitable may then be not only a good option, but the best for that circumstance. Indeed, Taleb (2012) takes this further by arguing for the need to design anti-fragile institutions, and encourage individuals to seek out stressful (but not over-stressful) situations in order to build up their resiliency. The bottom line, however, is that a strategy of accepting what is seen as inevitable, and of preparing to face it in the best way possible, may be a very sensible strategy if and when sustainability as the maintenance of present conditions is no longer possible. By embracing, as Verweij et  al. (2011, p.  19) say, such a ‘vibrant multivocality’, such a variety of views, this approach then probably best displays the need for the kind of humility suggested above, and would seem to be the best initial approach to the framing and resolving of wicked problems. Each variant within it is likely to contribute something to

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resolution, as complex problems are likely to require a complex combination of different kinds of solutions, and the better kinds of responses will probably be predicated upon a coordination of different strategies, meshing together so as better to address the problem. The forms such combinations take will almost certainly be unique to the problem encountered, just as they are likely to be better or worse responses, ones good enough for the present, rather than silver-bullet perfect responses. In a wicked world, then, there will need to be heavy reliance on buckshot solutions. These will not be simple and elegant, but as Verweij et al. argue (2011, p. 19): [W]hat the age calls for is not . . . more faith, or stronger leadership, or more scientific organization. Rather it is the opposite – less Messianic ardour . . . less mechanical, less fanatical application of general principals . . . [but] more enlightened skepticism, more toleration of idiosyncrasies, more frequent ad hoc measures. Solutions may then be more complex and clumsy, but they are highly likely to better match the nature of wicked problems. Finally – and anticipating the final section on the nature of educational leadership in a wicked world – it will not require a leader, primarily analytic and rational, who personally knows what the solution is, who thinks they can start with a clean slate and design the system and solutions from the beginning. Such a leader is likely to exacerbate the problem, because the situation already exists, and it is this situation that needs a response. Instead, as Grint (2008) argues, a leader will be needed who is as much political as scientific or rational, who starts from how the situation presents itself, who knows that the role is more one of asking the right questions than providing the right solutions, and who puts together a solution from what there is – the situation, the stakeholders, the opportunities, and the perceptions of the problem, and makes from that what they can, who creates solutions with what there is. They are then, as Grint suggests, ‘bricoleur’ leaders. This conception of the leader has strong resonances with Lindblom’s (1959) notion of the leader as one performing the art of ‘muddling through’. However, this is not the negative view of muddling through described by Raskin et al. (2002, pp. 17–19). Rather like the negative view of the fatalist described earlier, they think such individuals are ‘a diverse coterie, including the unaware, the unconcerned and the unconvinced’ and are ‘the passive majority on the grand questions of the global future’. Such individuals, they also suggest, tamely adopt a position of ‘que sera, sera . . .’ Instead, the individuals here who ‘muddle through’ are precisely the opposite; they are very aware, they are concerned, they are convinced that too-simple explanations may be given for problems and solutions, and their muddling through is the best approach, they believe, that can be taken, given the wicked nature of the situation.

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Constructing sustainable education systems Many of the problems that educational leaders face then share very similar wicked characteristics to those that larger systems exhibit, just as does the nature of the solutions that they both need to employ. Wicked solutions, whether at policy or implementation levels, require a much greater appreciation of the fact that there are no quick fixes, and that levels of uncertainty and time frames, longer than currently used for solution realization, need to be more than just tolerated – they need to be accepted and embraced as very likely the best way forward. Such solutions also need to be underpinned by an acceptance of human limitations. As Storr (2014, p. 314) argues, ‘[A]s right as I can sometimes feel, there is always the chance that I am wrong . . . happiness lies in humility: in forgiving others, and in forgiving myself.’ This is once again reminiscent of Popper’s (1982) notion of a building erected on a swamp; no matter how far down one goes, there can never be certainty in reaching the bottom. One’s limitations in achieving such ends need to be acknowledged: an epistemology of humility is essential. This is the very opposite of the kinds of assumptions underpinning much current policy making and accompanying demands for implementation. Many systems then may have far to travel if they and their societies are to be made more sustainable. As Plsek (2001) suggests, issues such as leadership challenges and policy implementations need to be seen as more like the throwing of live birds than stones. It is understandable why individuals should want, in times of urgency and turbulence, to see policies and their implementation as having a stone’s rather than a bird’s trajectory, for the stone’s trajectory can be precisely calculated, and also controlled and repeated. But that of the flight of the bird is far more difficult, as there is at least one other party involved in the trajectory – the bird – and it will have its own ideas (to which the thrower is not privy) about what direction, what trajectory it will take. And sometimes the bird itself will not know what direction it will take. So how can others? Indeed, the apparent lack of use of analogies such as those of building on swamps and of birds’ trajectories raises the question of whether the lack of appreciation of the nature of wicked problems by leaders and policy makers is not a wicked problem in itself: what needs to be done, one might ask, to facilitate a better understanding and an embrace of such approaches to policy and implementation in order to boost their sustainability? The orientation then of educational systems, their policies, implementation and stakeholder attitudes will all need to change, and three changes in particular are suggested here: the epistemological and ethical underpinnings of such systems; 2 the accountability frameworks required; and 3 the nature of the students and their learning. 1

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From here, it will be possible to see more clearly the future role of an educational leader which is not only more sustainable in itself, but enhances sustainability within educational systems, and contributes to a much wider sustainability beyond. We will now examine each of these points in turn.

(1) From an epistemology of humility to an ethic of humility Previous discussion has made it clear that the epistemology – the view we take on what we can know – is one suggesting that those working in education systems need to communicate to their charges the large degree of provisionality in both knowledge and expertise that exists, as such systems recognize and vocalize much more clearly the personal, professional and contextual limitations that come from accepting that homo sapiens is a species with only a limited view of the world. Education systems would then be underpinned by an epistemology holding out the possibility of learning more, but also one that cautioned that this amounts to much less than is currently agreed, will ever be fully understood, or in which ultimate purposes may never be completely agreed upon. It would underpin an education arguing that even more restricted is our ability to understand the reasons for what others are doing, and what they are thinking. It would argue that there are some things that we can be fairly certain that we know, but that, beyond the intimately personal, there are so many ways in which so many things interact in unpredictable and unexpected ways, that to expect to control the majority of what happens in our world is hubris in the extreme. It would then argue that there is much more that we need to admit that we don’t know. And finally, it would argue that there is an infinite universe of things that we can be pretty sure that we don’t know that we don’t know. It amounts to an epistemology of humility. This is a perspective that in an educational age of certainty, targets and blame has been heavily neglected, but which if embraced would lead to a very different ethic for education and life in general. As Popper (1966) suggested, a personal embrace of evidence, reason and logic in arriving at decisions is a moral choice, for the alternative is very likely to be one decided on the basis of power and authority. This time, the choice is between an attitude based on the potential arrogance of an ethic of certainty, and that of an ethic of humility. With the first, as Schein (2013) argues, students would be educated into telling others what is the truth, because they have been told that human beings (and particularly their own society) can know what is true and what is false; they will then be confident in supporting a culture that assigns blame for instances of failure because they have been told that we know that we know, and that silver bullets can be found to

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solve problems, and therefore most instances of failure have to come from personal mistakes or limitations. With an ethic of humility, however, students would be educated into listening to others and to their opinions, because they have been taught that others may have truths to complement their own truths; and they will blame other people much less because they have been educated to understand that we know that on so much we don’t know. They will have been educated to appreciate the value of silver buckshot; of the fact that, often, clumsy attempts at solutions get much nearer acceptable solutions than those aiming at elegance and certainty. They will come to recognize that an embrace of ‘wicked’ thinking may be one of the most ethical things they can ever do. A foregrounding of such an epistemology and such an ethic in educational institutions would have large implications for the way in which students were viewed and educated with respect to their future roles as adults and citizens. By accepting that we live in a much more complex, much more ‘wicked’ world than we often care to admit, and that the adoption of an inadequate framing of both problems and solutions can be highly damaging, we not only begin to change notions of education, and of the nature and objectives of the student-hood within its institutions, but also improve the sustainability of the societies within which they are located, as the embrace of such an epistemology and of such an ethic leads to a very different societal outlook, which can only add to environmental sustainability as well. As the pivotal societal institution preparing young people for the taking of responsibilities in later life, education then really begins to add to larger system sustainability.

(2) Changing accountability frameworks If educational systems need to change, so do their accountability frameworks. In many current educational systems, the form that accountability takes, and the things that it examines, are deliberately used to drive changes within the system, through the content of the curriculum, the forms of its ‘delivery’, and the knowledge, values and skills that not only students must demonstrate, but also their teachers and leaders. Indeed, given the fact that many current forms have taken much the same shape and have been aggressively pursued for more than 20 years or so, it is ironically highly possible that the changes proposed in this book would need to be underpinned by a strong advisory but not punitive accountability framework in order to become effective. As Fergusson (1994, p.  213) pointed out over a decade ago, the current educational reality for many is policy socialization of professionals into adopting a limited time-span, low-trust, quick-response persona. For many professionals, a change into something less directive, but epistemologically much more challenging, might be something that they would find great difficulty adjusting to.

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This is because, first, tight specifications of outputs and outcomes would be less than useful if it was accepted that even defining a problem might be problematic. Second, following the recognition of the uniqueness of each wicked concern, it would require an approach that appreciated and examined and helped develop the context-bound nature of each attempt at solution. Moreover, given that a major cause of challenges to sustainability stems from a lack of focus on the longer term, there must also be considerable doubt whether many current accountability frameworks have sufficient flexibility to measure the effectiveness of programmes which need to address outcomes which may not be evident for years to come. Such a temporal reorientation would not only require very different kind of organizations and values for this to be achieved: it would need a very different form of accountability from the low-trust, short-term, high-stakes, punitive forms of accountability many experience currently. Such a reorientation would require systems encouraging more individual context-specific approaches, and the production of longer time-scales for some attempts at solutions. It might also seem to some to require a greater degree of trust in those attempting such solutions. However, such systems would not and could not be lax; they would not and could not be permissive; and they would not and could not allow individuals to do ‘their own thing’. Wicked problems need a thorough appreciation of the nature of wicked issues and solutions, just as they need more intelligent thought about the definitions of problems and their application to particular contexts; they also require more and wider consultation and participation with stakeholders and by others further afield. This cannot then be a license for personal indulgence, and an inspectoral system would need to ensure that it was not. Its functions would then need to be as carefully spelt out as those of more aggressive regimes, and would need to be pursued with a similar degree of rigour, but with a greater emphasis on advice, education and support. Such a body would need to be given a name reflecting this. It would need a name like OFCORE – the Office for Developing Complex Organizational Responses in Education. By adopting the word ‘developing’, it would make clear that its principal functions included not only evaluating current practices, but also performing a coaching function in helping individuals, teams and organizations to appreciate how the identification of wicked problems changes the nature of the work engaged with, as well as how this work needs engaging with differently. It would then also require a very different kind of inspectorate from that which many currently have, for these would have to be as much developers and educators as inspectors. They would require both a high degree of understanding of such issues, as well as a high ability in advising and coaching. Whilst the adoption of the term ‘complex’ in the title OFCORE hardly conveys the nature of the role of helping to tackle wicked issues and solutions, a name like OFCOWL – the office for evaluating complex and wicked learning – is unlikely to be tolerated by official bodies.

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Educational organizations and their leaders would then need to be encouraged by their inspectors to appreciate better the necessarily long-term nature of many of their responses, and to be cautioned against the use of quick fixes, and against an intolerance of uncertainty. It would be a form of accountability which encouraged the individuality of the identification and response to problems – but it would expect a high level of justification, as both identification and response require deep thinking and consultation on a variety of views both within and beyond the educational and public sector. OFCORE would, like most present systems, be a crucial element in changing educational organizations and their cultures; but now it would also be a crucial element in making them more sustainable.

(3) Students and their learning Such accountability systems then would question standard, certain and rather hubristic ways of viewing the world, and challenge them with ones much more complex, and generally much less certain; ones where individuals would be much more guarded in their claims. They would also question the validity of current ‘blame’ cultures, and in so doing make not only institutions but their practitioners more sustainable, as both would be more likely to arrive at a better identification of a problem and its resolutions, as compared with approaches predicated on objectivism, individualism and certainty. Such accountability systems would look to see how and to what extent such values were translated into schools, and in how students’ learning was informed by such awareness. It seems likely that they would gauge this in at the least the following four ways. First, students would need to be given the opportunity to contrast the consequences of holding a predominantly linear causal view of reality, with one predicated upon the kind of network reality suggested by complexity theory, as failing to do so would mean educating towards a disposition for not only linear but ‘tame’ understandings of the way in which many events and much behaviour actually interact. Second, an understanding of the power of framing would come through the highlighting of two issues in particular. One would be in terms of all learners (policy makers, educators, students) asking questions about themselves, and in particular enquiring: are they aware of the principal means, and the values they use, by which they frame issues? The other would be in terms of others’ framings: to what extent are they aware of the framing that other people use in trying to understand the world? If they don’t recognize the mechanisms and values underpinning such processes, and that people may do this differently from themselves, they would not likely recognize that everyone (including themselves) selects and excludes data to fit largely unconscious frames, and that people do this differently, selecting and excluding data to fit their (unconscious) frames. The major realization

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is clearly this: if individuals do not develop both an epistemology and an ethic of humility, they may fail to recognize that other people don’t necessarily select what they select, nor that others very likely don’t see the world as they do. Third, students need to be given both curricular and extra-curricular opportunities to reflect on the extent to which they believe that events – personally, culturally and globally – are predictable and controllable. More than this, they need to be given help in reflecting on why they ascribe the strength they do to such beliefs. If they don’t come to realize that much less is ultimately predictable and controllable than is normally believed, they may grow to adulthood with the Disneyesque view that such comfortable positions exist for most problems in most contexts, and, in doing so, they will not only be surprised by much that happens to them in life, as they will be insufficiently prepared for the unexpected, but they will also not be provided with an education that can help them contribute to the greater sustainability of micro-, meso- and macro-level contexts. Such understandings – appreciating the differences between linear and systemic descriptions of causation, appreciating the nature and universality of human framing, and reflecting upon the degree to which events are predictable and controllable – then provide the groundwork for students’ increasing awareness of the differences in character between ‘tame’ and a ‘wicked’ problems. If they are unaware of these differences, they are likely to inadequately conceptualize the nature of the problems to be faced at personal, communal and global levels, and of the kinds of solutions required. They also need to be given the opportunity to debate and to reflect upon the likelihood of success of silver bullet or silver buckshot solutions to particular problems, because if they fail to see that many problems cannot be resolved in some final definitive sense, they will likely underestimate the complexity of solutions required to address many of the most serious. In addition, they will need to understand the necessity of matching the tameness or wickedity of problems with those of their solutions, as failing to do so will again lead to the application of inappropriate solutions to pressing problems. In developing such understandings, they will crucially develop a final one – the warranted degree of responsibility people should be assigned for their judgements and actions. In a world of the objective, the linear and the tame, the assignation of an exaggerated degree of responsibility is all too easy, as it is assumed that simple understandings, simple causations and simple problems are the order of the day. As long, then, as the individual has a modicum of intelligence and common sense, problem resolution is a matter of choosing and applying the appropriate pre-specified actions. Anyone who fails to do this clearly is to blame for not achieving the desired results. But where resolutions are unique, context-bound, and potentially insoluble in some ultimate sense, an epistemology and ethic of humility counsels much greater caution in attribution of blame. Like other functions of OFCORE , this is not a more lax, permissive approach, but rather a reflection of an

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epistemological reality; and appropriate attribution of praise, blame, or understandable ignorance is actually a matter of validity, and requires at least more, not less, effort in arriving at warrantable judgements. Such validity, such fairness, reflects the epistemology and ethic of humility this section began with – and become crucial to the moral development of future citizens.

Educational leadership change Given such challenges and changes elsewhere, what qualities will such educational leaders then need? This discussion will now be divided into the responses to three questions, which suggest the kind of qualities leaders will require.

(1) What do such leaders need to understand about the wicked situations they face? By now it should be clear that they need to understand the four issues of linear/complex causality; the need for framing; the rather more limited degree of predictability and controllability than is normally assumed; and the greater likelihood of success in wicked situations of silver buckshot rather than silver bullets. There is enough in these issues to challenge the normally defined role of leadership, but such challenges to the conventional role go further. In so doing, they need to understand that their primary core role is not one of deciding on the right answers, and then the right actions, and then pulling the levers of power to effect change – so often the assumed desirable sequence. Instead, they need to understand that their role should be increasingly one of asking the right questions rather than providing the right answers, and of being able to frame the presenting problems in such a way as to suggest that rather than adopting silver-bullet solutions, a combination of hierarchic, egalitarian and individual solutions (with an acknowledgement sometimes of the need for a degree of fatalism) may all be required in making the best sense of what is confronted. Finally, and just as importantly, in a world of uncertainty, they must possess what the poet John Keats called ‘negative capability’ – the ability to remain comfortable with such uncertainty, to provide themselves and others with the space for reflection, the ability to pause, rather than feel they need to rush into action. Far too often, decisiveness is little more than reaction to external pressure; too often, reflection is equated with indecisiveness. In a wicked world characterized by too much concern with acting quickly, the strength and ability to remain comfortable with uncertainty, to resist the temptation to reify initial thoughts until further clarity is acquired, will be a vital quality.

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(2) How do they need to approach their task? It will be clear from the above that a major element of their role has to be, like that of an OFCORE advisor, in helping others to understand the wicked nature of much of the reality they face. However, their role needs to go further than this: as already indicated, this is messy, not elegant, leadership, and such individuals need to possess the qualities facilitating progress towards clumsy solutions through ongoing negotiations with and between stakeholders. In this respect, and as already argued, they cannot begin from a clean sheet and design the perfect response to a problem, but, as bricoleur leaders, they must attempt to develop plans that at the very least respond to the needs of most stakeholders, by innovating, by making previously unexplored links, by seeing opportunities, and by recognizing that a particular hand has been dealt them, and they must work with this hand. In so doing they must therefore recognize that their job is inherently political, and that they must develop the skills to bring as many as possible on board, by working towards an agreed framing, without imposing their own personal frame unilaterally. This is, as stated, messy leadership, as they must recognize that sometimes not all can be brought on board, and they must develop the ability to judge when they need to move. Negative capability will be essential, but they must recognize when this deteriorates into procrastination. Finally, they must recognize that the belief that leadership is executed by select individuals pulling the correct levers of power needs replacing with a metaphor that more clearly describes leadership as a construct between different parties, where change is made more by developing relationships than by assuming that change is made by ordering others around.

(3) What is their leadership for? The leadership role in a wicked world should not then be traditionally transformative; nor should it be one of middle-management implementation. It has to be much more one of helping others to prepare themselves for greater responsibility. It would be real hubris, given the description of wicked problems and wicked resolutions, to suggest that even the best of leaders should see their primary role as providing the vision, the questions and the answers to problems, and that others should follow this path, giving little of their own understandings or views. This does not deny that clumsy solutions do require on occasions a hierarchical lead, for, as noted earlier, good talk does not necessarily translate into good action. But this is but one of a series of strategies for leaders to use. It is not the primary means, for just as wicked problems need wide consultation in their formulation, so do ‘clumsy solutions’ also depend upon wide and egalitarian consultation and participation, and the traditional charismatic view of leadership can prevent

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much of this from happening. At the other end of the spectrum, the notion of leaders as policy implementers is at least as unsatisfactory, as it simply shifts the task of problem specification (and too often solutions as well) to yet another group of stakeholders – those more senior in a hierarchy. Even when leaders are permitted or even encouraged to use charm, charisma, political persuasion, or any number of other techniques in leading others to successful implementation, it will still necessarily exclude many of those who have different understandings of what a ‘local context’ actually is; and this needs to be seen as stretching beyond the educational terrain. In such situations, leadership has to be seen as more about creating the right conditions for dealing with wicked problems, rather than about attempting to solve such problems themselves. Leaders should then be less concerned about being personal creators of developments, and more concerned about being the catalysts for them.

Conclusion: The need for thinking and feeling This chapter has suggested a particular view of human and educational reality, and argued that many of the problems within macro-, meso-, and micro- systems are essentially wicked in character, and that such lack of recognition is one of the major causes of system unsustainability, and that if such unsustainabilities are to be remedied, the people who work systems, institutions and strategies need not only to understand this, but to change the nature of the work, and the nature of their role as well. This change in role, then, is a critical change, but it is only one part of the jigsaw, what one might describe as the epistemological side, which begins by asking ‘what can we know?’ and which moves from there to detail the best solutions for our limited understandings, which ultimately leads to the embrace of an ethic of tolerance as an important means of developing greater sustainability. However, this needs supplementing by asking what such tolerant strategies for sustainability are for, what part education ultimately should play in such a vision, and in particular what role educational leaders should take. This is more about a leadership for wellbeing, and it is to this question that the next chapter is devoted.

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The Leadership of Well-being Introduction The previous chapter argued that a highly important part of understanding what needs to done to increase the sustainability of educational leadership, and the sustainability of larger areas of social, economic and environmental concern, is to understand the wicked nature of the problems often generated within these, and of the need therefore to adopt approaches to solutions that are similarly wicked. These call on different perspectives and inputs, and then form collations of views which use a mixture of hierarchic, egalitarian, individual and fatalist views to create bricolage solutions. The role of educational leadership would then be less about delivering answers, and more about catalysing the right questions and responses, not so much to take sole responsibility, as to help others to take a wider view of shared responsibility. This approach derives ultimately from an appreciation of what human beings can understand, and therefore of what is the likelihood of the attainment of complete solutions, and also in part, what degree of responsibility and blame can be attributed to individuals when plans don’t work out as planned. It suggests that there is considerable need for a greater humility with respect to our understanding of ourselves, the world around us, and therefore of our capacity to fully resolve wicked problems. Such an approach can then provide better ways developing all levels of sustainability. However, the arguments of preceding chapters have also suggested that there are other things that need to be done to achieve greater sustainability. Indeed, as important as understanding our limitations, is in the taking of appropriate action to redress the causes of current unsustainabilities. Previous chapters have also argued that perhaps the major cause of current global unsustainability has been the fixation by many societies upon shortterm consumption, driven in large part by a model of economic functioning, the momentum for which is derived from encouraging increased levels of such consumption. It is then important to contrast this with a very different set of social and economic assumptions – underpinned by ethics of both 175

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sufficiency and equity, and by notions of closed-loop recycling – in order to evaluate the different impacts these might have upon sustainability agendas. As argued above, the widespread adoption of closed-loop recycling provides a better framework in which to preserve current resources by moving away from a linear view of them in economic production, which sees their eventual destination as one of a necessary pollution, and instead focuses on their constant reintegration; the concept of sufficiency in its strongest current formulation also links with this idea by arguing that resources should only be consumed if one can be sure that their quantity and quality will not be depleted. Finally, a greater emphasis on equity helps to ensure that resources are not only divided on a fairer basis, but that more people and more societies in the future benefit from such redistribution. Together, these changes then begin to present a picture of society with a more achievable and sustainable resource base. They also begin to add to a picture of wellbeing, as they suggest that social, economic and environmental sustainability must be based on what promotes the well-being of those living within such systems, both human and non-human. The notion of sufficiency in particular suggests that people are viewed less as human resources, and more as resourceful humans, to be viewed and treated more as ends rather than means, and where the quality of work comes from underpinning values of trust, empowerment and care, and therefore where their well-being is a fundamental concern. One should also invoke the same principle for other living creatures: that whilst we may view many as resources, we should not lose sight of the fact that they have rights to life, and that their well-being needs emphasizing in the human stewardship of the planet. If this is the case – if a picture is being sketched out of a different kind of economic and social functioning – then this picture also begins to point toward the need to reduce consumption as the major focus of well-being, and instead to consider other means of achieving this. Such movement will not be easy, not only because of a culturally ingrained emphasis upon such consumption, but also because the levers of power in most societies are operated by those who have a vested interest in maintaining such levels. Political parties and the media in many countries proclaim that ‘economic growth’ is an unchallengeable good, rather than viewing it as a mechanism within a particular economic system. There is then likely to be much personal and political resistance to any such changes. This is not to discount consumption entirely – a degree of consumption is essential for physical well-being, and can be highly enjoyable without being addictive. Yet, research previously mentioned (e.g. Hamilton, 2004; Haidt, 2007; Layard, 2006) makes it clear that whilst increasing growth and consumption do deliver some measure of well-being, they do not entirely deliver, and need supplementing by other forms of fulfilment, most notably through nurturing relationships with partners, families and communities. Current evidence then suggests that individuals and their societies would be both healthier and more sustainable if, instead of focusing primarily on

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increases in economic growth and consumption, they focused more on the development of social cohesion and connectedness. Indeed, the phenomenon of ‘downshifting’, first coined by Laabs (1996), where people reduce their time at work in order to create a better work/life balance, is a further indication that people increasingly recognize that higher income doesn’t necessarily translate into greater well-being. And interestingly, there are now clear breaks and contradictions within some economic and political cultures. For example, a number of mainstream politicians have come to some perhaps surprising conclusions concerning the development of higher levels of social sustainability. David Cameron, the Conservative UK Prime Minister at the time of this book’s writing, for example, suggested, ‘It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB – general well-being’ (Cameron, 2006). And further that ‘[GDP } measures neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile’ (Cameron, 2011). He hasn’t been the first or only mainstream politician to express interest in a happiness and well-being agenda derived from sources other than money and consumption. The second of his quotes was lifted virtually wordfor-word by his speechwriters from an address given by former US Senator Robert Kennedy. In addition, Tony Blair (2005), when UK Prime Minister, similarly argued, ‘We have failed to see how our economy, our environment and our society are all one. And that delivering the best possible quality of life for us all means more than concentrating solely on economic growth.’ In France, as well, President Nicolas Sarkozy established a commission to report on the reliability of GDP as an indicator of social and economic progress (Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, 2010), which delivered much the same kind of message. It is, of course, questionable how far mainstream politicians would want to go in critiquing GDP and economic growth, for following such concerns through to ultimate causations would mean acknowledging that, most times, social sustainability is dependent upon the sustainability of resources in the natural world, the quantity and quality of which are threatened by assumptions and practices from the current economic model. It is therefore doubtful if such relatively unlikely critics would follow their concerns too far down a sustainability road. Nevertheless, the criticisms, the research and individual downshifting actions all suggest that there is now not only sufficient concern and critique about current lifestyles, but also sufficient suggestions of alternatives to justify consideration of other more sustainable ways of living than those currently practised. For some, this might seem to take the role of the educational leader beyond its proper purview, and towards one of policy critic and constructor. Yet education as an idea and as an activity necessarily embodies particular values and views of what constitutes the ‘good’ society, and any attempts at avoiding questions like this, by their simple inaction, necessarily means the

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adoption of positions in favour of the current political and economic status quo. These issues, at the very least, need debating, and consideration given to what kind of society best addresses the challenges to sustainability discussed in this book. This chapter argues that they point to the need to adopt not only emphases upon humility, sufficiency and equity, but upon an overarching understanding of well-being as well. Now ‘well-being’ has many meanings, and it is therefore important to be aware of and understand current debates on such meanings and purposes. Not only have different words been used to describe the focus of this desirable state (‘happiness’, ‘well-being’, ‘flourishing’, etc.), but the lists of elements that contribute to it have also varied, and it is not clear that the words mean the same thing, or that there is only one meaning to each term. Haybron (2008), for instance, suggests at least five different underlying meanings for the notion of ‘well-being’, and then conflates terms himself when he entitles a section in his article (p. 31) on the assessment of wellbeing ‘Evaluating Theories of Happiness’ (my italics). This, incidentally, points up the long history of different meanings of ‘happiness’ itself (McMahon, 2007), and using the word ‘happy’ has enough problems on its own, as it can suggest a transitory mood of pleasure. Indeed this has been a criticism of one of the procedures used in researching this area, as people are normally asked how they feel at various times of the day, rather than inquiring into some longer-lasting state. One outcome of this kind of criticism has been an increased enthusiasm for words like ‘well-being’ and ‘flourishing’ to describe the focus of the kind of longer-term state with which this chapter is concerned. However, the concern isn’t just about short-term versus long-term meanings. As important is whether an exclusive pursuit of ‘happiness’ can or should be people’s focus. Both J. S. Mill (1863) and Nozick (1974) have frequently been used to critique beliefs in the value of some permanently happy state. Mill for one argued (p. 260) that ‘it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’, whilst Nozick similarly argued that even if one could induce people into some Matrix-like permanent drug- or machine-induced happy state, most people would not want this, but instead would seek a life that was more authentic, more lived, even if it included measures of challenge, pain and disappointment. This chapter will embed such discussions about leadership and well-being in consideration of the claims of a highly influential approach to the study of well-being, that of positive psychology. David Cameron’s talks on wellbeing, for example, have been heavily influenced by writings in this area. It is an approach arguing that it is concerned with ‘the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions’ (Gable and Haidt, 2005, p. 104). As this is a strong and probably preferable alternative to a consumption model of well-being, and as the rhetoric of this approach seems increasingly favoured

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in policy circles, it is important to be clear about the kind of well-being that is being advocated, and whether such advocacy fully describes the canvas upon which educators need to paint a picture of well-being in the achievement of greater sustainability.

Positive psychology and well-being research Positive psychology probably first came to international prominence as a school of thought in 1984, when Diener wrote a groundbreaking article in Psychological Bulletin entitled ‘Subjective Well-Being’. Others might point to the suggested founding of a school of ‘positive psychology’ in Seligman’s 1998 American Psychological Association Presidential Address, when he argued that its members should focus their research upon ‘what makes life worth living, and building the enabling conditions of a life worth living’ (Seligman, 2011, pp. 1–2). This exhortation was deliberately contrasted with what he saw as a historical tradition of ‘understanding misery and undoing the disabling conditions of life’ (pp. 1–2). Whilst the call was not exactly original, having precedents in James’ (1902) writings on ‘healthy mindedness’, and in the approach of humanistic counsellors and psychologists like Rogers and Maslow, Seligman criticized these approaches for lacking the kind of empirical scientific basis upon which he claimed positive psychology was based. Now, whilst there are differences of opinion on what constitute the school’s objectives, there does seem to be general agreement by those working in the field on a number of things: they are concerned with the identification and furtherance of positive subjective experiences or states; they tend to identify these through research and then encourage the development of similar positive individual traits; they advocate the development of organizations fostering such positive experiences and traits; and finally, they use a similar methodological approach when investigating in this area, asking people directly how satisfied they are with their lives, and how pleasant or unpleasant they find particular activities. By then analysing these answers, they arrive at conclusions concerning which activities or experiences contribute most to positive feelings of happiness and well-being. The interesting result here is that there are genuine similarities in the findings of major investigators. Seligman (2011), for instance, suggests that positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment are central in helping an individual to flourish, and his prescription is to focus and develop these, rather than to concentrate on problems and weaknesses, and then remediate these. Rath and Harter (2010) suggest that there are five different elements involved in attempts at cultivating a holistic sense of well-being. These concern career, social life, financial situation, and physical well-being and community links. These authors also provide a variety of prescriptions as to how individuals might increase their strengths in these areas. In like manner, Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008, p. 4) argue that ‘happiness’ is essentially

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concerned with ‘how people evaluate their lives and what is important to them’, and that essential elements of building such happiness (p. 6) are those to do with life satisfaction, spirituality and meaning, positive attitudes and emotions, loving social relationships, engaging activities and work, values and life goals to achieve them, physical and mental health, and material sufficiency to meet one’s needs. Finally, Layard (2006) argues that from his research seven factors seem crucial to happiness: family relationships, financial situation, work, community and friends, health, personal freedom, and personal values. These lists are then quite similar, but not all are identical. Bok (2010, p.  17), for example, argues that there are six factors: ‘marriage, social relationships, employment, perceived health, religion’. But he also suggests that quality of government is an important element, and in so doing becomes an outlier in such descriptions, suggesting the need to adopt a rather wider perspective on what contributes to well-being. Perhaps the best way of viewing these lists is as rather like circles in a Venn diagram, overlapping at some points with other lists, but having individual emphases. Yet perhaps the most interesting and generally accepted set of findings from a school of thought, which originates and is still largely based in one of the most materialistic societies in the world, is that mentioned already: that whilst a reasonable standard of living is important to well-being, beyond a certain point, this fails to satisfy (Seligman, 2011; Layard, 2006). Indeed, Diener and Seligman (2004) argue that whilst material acquisition in developed countries has grown over the last 50 years or so, well-being has remained static or even declined. As Diener and Biswas-Diener (2008) argue, this points to psychological wealth being broader and ultimately far more satisfying than financial wealth, and sacrificing the former in the pursuit of the latter is likely to reduce a person’s overall sense of well-being. In sum, this school of researchers argues that psychological health, and therefore greater personal sustainability, is achieved by cultivating a broad range of things such as better family and communal relationships, achieving and remaining physically healthy, avoiding financial problems, and choosing work and interests that provide a sense of personal purpose and meaning. Moreover, and perhaps understandably, the research is heralded as a way of not only creating more individual well-being but, in so doing, of more sustainable societies as well, and, to this end, major publications in the area (for example, Seligman, 2011; and Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2008) don’t stop at descriptions of findings, but encourage readers to apply the research to themselves, arguing that such usage to individuals and institutions can dramatically improve well-being. This would then seem to have major implications for any consideration of well-being by educational leaders in the promotion of greater personal, institutional and societal sustainability. Now this does seem a major step forward from a well-being based on consumption, and could have the potential to make a real difference in helping people take action to have more rounded and more fulfilled lives.

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Yet whilst many would want to endorse such an objective, a number of questions need raising, because they point to deeper issues which educational leaders need to consider in the adoption of any framing of well-being as a means of achieving greater sustainability. These are: i

Does the focus of this field of research determine its meaning of well-being?

Is this research creating an unhelpful positive/negative division? iii Is there a too-easy move from description to prescription? ii

Each of these questions needs addressing in turn.

(i) Does the focus of this field of research determine its meaning of well-being? A first question arises from the fact that researchers tend to select questions that resonate with their own disciplinary and cultural perspectives. The positive psychology paradigm, for example, is a largely US -based counselling/ psychotherapy approach aiming to ‘treat’ and improve the well-being and sustainability of individuals. Yet, as Suh and Koo (2008) point out, had this kind of research been initially framed by researchers from a less individualistic culture, the focus and questions of the research might have been much more about the well-being and sustainability of communities, and much less about those of individuals, potentially resulting in very different results and prescriptions. If this is the case, then Bok’s (2010, p.  6) rather surprising finding that the growing inequality of incomes in the US has not made people more dissatisfied there might well be explained by the assignation of greater personal responsibility for outcomes in individualistic cultures than in more communal cultures. Combining the effects of a paradigm based on individual psychological functioning, with the influence of its location within an individualistic culture, may then strongly determine focus and prescriptions, and lead to the omission of items important for identifying other causes of well-being and sustainability or of impediments to their achievement. As noted above, Bok’s (2010) citation of the quality of government as an important factor for well-being, whilst much less emphasized in other accounts, seems to be a reflection of a cultural rather than a psychological perspective on the causes of well-being. The selection of individualistic, group, national or global questions may then heavily determine the kinds of causes identified as contributing to different kinds of well-being. However, even if one could rely upon people’s judgements as to what is good for them in the long run, and one could be sure that those devising the research didn’t emphasize a particular cultural standpoint, it seems highly unlikely that a full range of questions would be covered. Take for example

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the issue of global sustainability and well-being. As noted earlier, some writers (e.g. Jackson, 2009) have argued that the long-term sustainability of the planet is best secured by those in the developed world reducing their economic growth and consumption, whilst permitting those in the lessdeveloped world to ‘catch up’. Not only might this area of concern be missing from a questionnaire, but individuals may not feel sufficiently knowledgeable to be capable of making informed judgements here. Finally, even if they were more globally aware, they might want to argue (as does Lomborg, 2004) that issues such as gender, race and inequality are more important candidates for the generation of long-term individual and societal well-being. Even if one disagreed with their views, the point is that none of these concerns figure in any of the questionnaire results or prescriptions from positive psychological findings that I know of. Yet, unless one totally dismisses the idea that societal and global structures affect and shape individual well-being, educational leaders need to consider such elements as potentially critical in generating greater wellbeing.

(ii) Is this research creating an unhelpful positive/negative division? Terms like ‘well-being’ and ‘flourishing’, then, are complex terms, and may include measures of pain, challenge and disappointment over the long term. This not only indicates a movement away from a simple uni-dimensional understanding of well-being but also implicitly acknowledges the need to engage with values from the ‘negative’ side. Indeed, ‘negative’ emotions cannot simply be ignored or rejected: the negative experience can be valuable, and worth examining and cultivating. For example, mistakes and their consequences, loss and grief may be not only valuable experiences but also necessary for a full and rich life. The danger then is that a unidimensional focus may be really quite damaging if it fails to reflect the reality of how we have to deal with this world. Indeed, there may be in human experience a continuous dialectical relationship between positive and negative emotions, which is not captured by concentrating solely on the positive. As Fineman (2006) points out, happiness can be the cause of anxiety, love can be mixed with negative emotions like bitterness and jealousy, pride can be a justified response to accomplishment, but also lead to a blindness to necessary criticism. In sum, as he argues (p. 275), positivity could lead to the closing of ‘important doors’ if this dialectic is ignored. As Aspinwall and Staudinger (2003, pp. 14–15) also comment, ‘a psychology of human strengths should not be the study of how negative experiences may be avoided or ignored, but rather how positive and negative experience may be interrelated’. Sustainability then seems to require both, and educational leaders therefore probably need to embrace an understanding of well-being that does precisely that.

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(iii) Is there a too-easy move from description to prescription? But there is a third issue that needs looking at. As already noted, researchers in the field of positive psychology tend to share a similar investigatory approach: they ask individuals about their short-term feelings concerning current activities, or about their longer-term sense of well-being, and, on the basis of such findings, arrive at conclusions concerning what makes them happy or gives them a sense of well-being. From such findings come recommendations about increasing positive feelings or states of mind. These may be important and praiseworthy consequences of such research, yet there exists here the real danger of an unconscious sleight of hand between what has been found and what is being prescribed, as it seems to be assumed that the latter follows inevitably from the former. Certainly the evidence for some prescriptions can seem so overwhelming that it might be hard to argue against them. For example, if people consistently say that they feel happier when they feel physically well, and that they feel less happy when in pain, it would seem almost self-evident that boosting physical health is a ‘good’ thing to do. Yet, conversely, and as argued above, educational leaders need to be aware that not all pain is ‘bad’ in some absolute sense, and not all situations are quite so simple. We may need to deal with both positive and negative emotions for a fulfilled life. Implicit in this approach is the assertion that one can believe or one should treat as true what people say about the causes of their happiness or well-being. Yet there are strong reasons to doubt this. One is a concern raised earlier: that people may think they know what they know, but they certainly cannot know what they don’t know. How can they know whether they will or will not get both physical and psychological well-being out of playing a game of Kabbadi if they have never heard of it and have never played it? Similarly, how can they know if they would be more or less happy living in a society with a different kind of social and economic functioning unless they have read about this, talked about it with others, and then experienced it? An approach to well-being that focuses only on what people know is a narrow and constricted perspective, which closes off human potentialities probably as much as it opens them up, and the role of the educational leader surely has to be one of the opening up of possibilities to their students rather than the provision of only what students already know. Even then, it is doubtful one can assume that people know what makes them happy even when they think they do. There is a strong body of evidence demonstrating that people are remarkably poor at judging their happiness (e.g. Bok, 2010; Kahneman and Thaler, 2006; Gilbert, 2007). For example, people are rather poor at calculating how long a pleasurable experience will give them a ‘high’; they also tend to not be very good at judging what will make them more happy than they currently are. Moreover, long-term well-being might depend upon accepting and dealing with initially unpleasant

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information or situations, rather than blindly carrying on until the problem becomes irresolvable. If the experience of short-term psychological pain may be necessary for longer-term gain, and if people aren’t very good at knowing what will give them longer-lasting well-being, one has to question the strength of prescriptions built only from research upon people’s perceptions. Finally, even if it were possible to eliminate such values from the process, the kind of recommendations derived from some of these studies would still be highly debatable. One may not wish to argue against the general physical health recommendations described above, but the real problems may begin after this agreement, when such prescriptions require implementation. Societies may leave a person’s physical well-being to that individual, but this is very seldom the case: an individual’s physical well-being has impacts not only on their ability to engage in many activities beneficial to themselves; it also has impacts on partners and family, and society in general, and many members in such societies may feel that such physical well-being is reduced by social inequalities, and that policies therefore need creating that redress these. So if one were to say that such physical health objectives necessitated greater government involvement in this area, this might involve a government role in educating (and even legislating) against the consumption of fast food, alcohol, or tobacco, and educating towards more healthy objectives, and not just for children, but for adults as well. Endorsing such actions would transcend simplistic ‘physical health is good’ statements and move into complex value territory which educational leaders cannot avoid. On its own then this research cannot go far enough to be the whole answer. Indeed, the legitimacy of such prescriptions is highly questionable, as they have all the hallmarks of what philosophers call the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ – the belief that if enough people endorse a statement of fact, one can simply move from it to a statement of value. In other words, if something makes a majority of people happy, then this is something that everyone should do. Yet, how should one react to the possible recommendations coming from a study where a large number of people said that reading the Sun newspaper in the UK , or watching Fox News in the United States, made them happy and gave them a sense of well-being? It would not necessarily follow that educators, or anyone else, should recommend the reading of that newspaper or the watching of that news channel: this would depend upon much more ‘wicked’ debates about the kind of values underpinning the motivations of these media institutions, the messages they are attempting to impart, and the potential consequences for other areas (social, economic, environmental) of the large-scale endorsement and impact of such messages. Indeed, it might be argued that the role of educational leaders should rather be to employ strategies to make people feel more cognitively, affectively and socially challenged, rather than more comfortable and entrenched within present beliefs. What educational prescriptions should follow from the finding that a majority of Nazi sympathizers thought they would be happier by gassing

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Jews? That educators should endorse such views, and show them how to do this, or that they should devise curricula based upon sets of values challenging such beliefs? Knowing what people think makes them happy, or will make them more happy, are only two elements in prescriptions for policy, educational or otherwise, which need to call on a much larger set of other issues and values for educational leaders to consider. Once again, we are in ‘wicked’ territory. Policy prescriptions for generating greater well-being then cannot be based solely on what people think makes them happy or would make them more happy. The preceding discussion makes it clear that meso- and macroperspectives need to be incorporated into any definition of well-being as well. This suggests that a well-being perspective focusing solely on the personal is only a beginning for an educational process developing well-being, because any educative endeavour aiming at greater sustainability needs many more perspectives, much more information, and many more questions.

Can this approach fill gaps in a sustainability agenda? This discussion also and inevitably leads to the question of whether the approach to well-being adopted by positive psychology can completely fill what this book has identified as gaps in sustainability. The answer would seem to be largely negative, as the focus is currently too individualistic, too focused on what individuals can do to correct their own sense of gaps in their feelings of well-being. Whilst the focus of positive psychology is undoubtedly part of what well-being concerns need to embrace, there needs to be much greater attention to larger concerns which frame the lives and in part determine the limits of what individuals can do to change their circumstances. This is not to suggest that people’s lives are totally determined by the structures and values that surround them; but it would be both implausible and unsustainable to argue that individuals have unlimited capacity to change world conditions and individual circumstances. Any focus on the sustainability of well-being then needs to move beyond the personal and examine and critique those structures and values that inhibit such personal well-being. In so doing, it begins to take into account the needs of others, and so moves towards becoming an ethical requirement. Many people then might well move beyond personal consumption, and some beyond the quality of interpersonal relationships, to locate well-being within a framework of societal sustainability, but this might still be insufficiently limiting. There are complex connections between this social area of sustainability and economic and environmental areas, and changes in one are likely to be dependent and impact upon changes in the others. The sustainability of well-being then needs increasingly to be not just a personal

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concern, but a communal, national and global project as well. It is important to recognize therefore how larger perspectives contribute to a better understanding of individual well-being. A greater equity in the global redistribution of wealth and resources, a reduction in the economic growth and consumption habits of the developed world, and the promotion of wellbeing extending beyond the concerns of human beings: all need recognizing as contributing towards not only a much more extended meaning of the term, but to the notion of sustainability as well. Ultimately solutions to global problems may well generate the widest and deepest well-being and sustainability. Indeed, many people may not have considered how the current inequitable global distribution of wealth can be a large contributory factor to terrorist outrages in the developed world, and how economic growth and consumption habits damage the very environment upon which they ultimately depend. Even if they were aware of such challenges, they might well shy away from dealing with them as they would likely fear that attempted resolutions could impact upon their own material well-being in the short term. Yet such policies could in the longer term produce a fairer and safer world, and might lead to a greater sense of well-being, not only of the underprivileged, but of themselves and their successors in the long run. These are perspectives and concerns, I suggest, that educational leaders need to fully consider.

Beyond human well-being In its rudimentary form, then, a focus on individual well-being through forms of consumer gratification is not likely to lead to greater sustainability overall. And just as trust at its most basic level is little more than a ‘calculative’ form of self-protection (see Bottery, 2003a), so this lowest ‘consumer’ level of well-being is little more than a self-interested act for deriving personal pleasure. Similarly, just as only at higher levels of trust do ethics of respect and promise-giving come into play, so only at higher levels does an ethics of well-being take into account the well-being and equitable treatment of others. There are then, I suggest, a number of different levels of well-being (see Figure 10.1), and only as one moves towards the higher levels does wellbeing become an ethical concept, for it is then that it increasingly takes into account ever-wider needs beyond those of oneself, and in doing so also produces a greater degree of sustainability. On this model, then, the lowest level is concerned with individual wellbeing through a simple gratification of personal wants. This is the level at which most consumerism takes place. Yet, as already noted, such consumption not only fails to fully satisfy an individual: through its emphasis on resource consumption, it can also be a major threat to societal and global sustainability. A second and more sustainable personal level is then to be found in the nurturing of things like healthy personal and social relationships, as well as

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Level 5 Well-being as encompassing levels 1–4, but now also taking into account the needs of human beings, other living creatures, and the biosphere in the future. Level 4 Well-being as encompassing levels 1–3, but now also taking into account the needs of other species and the biosphere (e.g. clean air, water and soil). Level 3 Well-being as encompassing levels 1 and 2, but now also taking into account the needs of others through changes in social and economic structures. Level 2 Well-being as encompassing level 1, but also as the entering into meaningful relationships with others.

FIGURE 10.1 Five levels of well-being.

greater spiritual gratification. Whilst this level doesn’t include macro-levels of sustainability, it does suggest a means of developing personal well-being without indulging in excessive resource consumption, through a greater concern for others, and thus can help towards improving social sustainability. A more explicit and positive recognition of larger societal and global concern is to be found at a third level of well-being, where it is recognized that one’s personal well-being is in many cases heavily dependent upon the welfare of others, and that if more equitable societal and global relationships are not realized, through changes to social and economic structures, then personal well-being might well end up as being little more than a kind of ‘fortress’ well-being, devoid of ethical content, where individuals, groups and nations attempt to protect their privileged position from others. This third, more equitable level of well-being – and which therefore develops a more ethical grounding for the term – still needs to be raised to a fourth level, where concern for well-being extends to other species and the biosphere itself, as the existence of these other creatures and an environment for them to thrive in (clean air, water and soil) calls for a duty of stewardship from humanity. A fifth and final level of well-being embraces this extended concern, and now develops an inter-generational commitment, arguing that humanity has a duty to create a form of sustainability which, as Brundtland (1987, p. 8) said, ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. A full understanding of well-being would then ask: what does humanity need to do to ensure that such levels of wellbeing are available to future generations of not only human beings, but of other creatures and the biosphere within which they all will live? A fostering of well-being at this level by educational leaders would then contribute to wider global sustainability not only now but in the future as well. It is the kind of model of well-being that educational leaders, if they are committed to developing genuine sustainability, need to commit themselves to.

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Final thoughts: Into political waters again Current interest in the concept of well-being in political circles seems to be part of a wider movement critiquing the use of GDP as the sole measure for societal well-being, and is probably at bottom a felt need to raise the most basic questions about what life’s purposes are for, and what not only individuals, but organizations, communities and government can do to contribute towards these purposes. But such concerns, unsurprisingly, are not simple, and there now exist different lines of thinking about the meaning, the elements and the prescriptions for action. Positivist psychology is but one, and this chapter has argued that whilst educational leaders need to be aware of its strengths, they also need to be aware of its limitations, for wellbeing cannot be actualized within an individualistic bubble: it depends ultimately upon a concern for the well-being of all those others in society, and around the globe, as well as a concern for the well-being of other creatures, and the environment within which all live. Once more, this takes educational leadership into political waters, for in advocating such higher levels of well-being, difficult questions are being asked about the nature of societies, the nature of relationships between societies, and of their relationship with the environment within which they exist. If they embrace conceptions of well-being beyond those of the purely personal, and instead commit to a more global conception, they cannot evade critical questions about current global inequalities, about the structures and practices that make well-being much more available to some than to others, and of what well-being might mean when applied to other species and the biosphere. Questions of sustainability then entail difficult political questions; and educational leaders cannot avoid asking fundamental questions about the nature of the societies within which they function.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Futures of Educational Leadership Introduction This book has asked questions about what makes educational leaders’ practice more sustainable, and has argued that the challenges they face have much in common with larger global concerns. These challenges all share similar causations, and they all become less sustainable in similar ways. In addition, to be more sustainable they all need to be treated with a greater emphasis upon four particular values – those of equity, sufficiency, humility, and an extended concept of well-being – for the greater practice of these creates a more sustainable ethos not only within educational institutions but beyond them as well. And by educational leaders then helping to spread such emphasis and practice beyond educational systems and into the wider community, they can make a real contribution to remedying threats to sustainability at many different levels. But what kind of futures could humanity encounter? It is important to take a step back and ask this question, because it allows one to examine and reflect upon where humanity might end up. The book began with a quotation by H. L. Mencken, which suggested that to every complex problem there existed a solution which was neat, simple, and wrong: a succinct caution against the temptation to adopt tame solutions for wicked problems. I have another personal favourite, a Chinese quotation, which a little cryptically suggests that people tend to lower their heads to pull their carts, instead of raising their heads to look at the roads ahead. This, like the Mencken quote, is a warning: that those who fail to reflect upon and examine where their actions will take them are likely to end up at undesirable destinations. Fielding (2007, p. 383) has taken this caution into education with his impassioned plea for educators to realize that trying to do the best with current neo-liberal pressures by a mixture of ‘optimism, energy and good will of contemporary approaches’ is highly dangerous, cart-focused behaviour because these are 189

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‘leading us down a road that, albeit unintentionally, is likely to produce a society that diminishes our humanity, destroys much that is of worth, and denies much we seem to desire’. This book argues an even larger picture – that those who do not reflect upon the effects their actions have on others and the world around them are in danger of heading down roads to global unsustainability. So this chapter now steps back and takes a larger and longer view by examining the possible roads, the possible futures, which societies could find themselves travelling down. In so doing, the chapter also asks what more desirable futures would look like, and concludes by examining how they might be reached.

The futures of education As one particular belief system in a society becomes dominant, its major values tend to become the criteria by which people judge ‘the good life’ and the standards by which they wish to live. The kinds of practices, beliefs and values adopted can then make a significant difference to a society’s sustainability, and indeed to the biosphere within which it exists. A society aware of the need to take a long-term view of the consumption of resources, and paying sufficient regard to the sustainability or replacement of those resources, is likely to be sustainable over the longer period; whereas a society focused upon the short-term consumption of such resources, and paying insufficient regard to their sustainability or replacement, is unlikely to remain sustainable. Of course, belief systems and values are not fixed: a society can choose other beliefs, other values, other ways of living and educational institutions, and their leaders can facilitate and promote movement one way or the other. So what future worlds seem possible currently? There are a number of potential scenarios, some more agreeable than others, and, depending upon the kinds of actions taken over the next few years, some will become more likely, others less so. This kind of movement is made abundantly clear in the 2014 IPCC 5th Assessment Synthesis Report, when it argued that changes made in terms of greenhouse gas emissions would be far less costly now than if actioned in the future. The report also made clear the need for a move from carbon-based energy sources to more renewable ones, and investment here, it again suggested, would be both timely and wise. In like manner, moves away from growth-oriented economies and consumerist cultures would make profound differences to both climate change and energy sustainability. As another Chinese proverb says, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the next best time is today. This next best time – the present world – then seems to have very different roads it could travel. One world would be increasingly unpleasant: a world of unsustainable consumption, environmental degradation and species depletion, exacerbated by a globally rising and ageing human population,

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where resources and wealth were distributed inequitably, with rising temperatures, greater weather instability, and where a decline in conventional fossil energy sources was not sufficiently balanced by the development of cleaner sources of energy. A more sustainable world would be its opposite: one where human populations, increasingly aware of such issues, moved beyond national self-interest and sought to find agreements and solutions for global problems, using both values and ingenuity in finding ethical and technological solutions to presenting problems. In this world, leaders would better recognize the limitations and dangers of unfettered national and global free markets, and the unequal impacts they can and do have, and would accept that markets need using, not as unchallengeable motors of economies, but as useful instruments in implementing ‘clumsy’ solutions to sustainability problems. Finally, in such a world, recognition of the nature of ‘wicked’ problems and ‘clumsy solutions’ would have considerable impact in policy circles, and would result in more thought and caution in problem responses. Depending on the actions taken in the next few years, then, different global scenarios are likely to emerge: One set of scenarios is likely to be based upon a ‘business-as-usual’ approach, where some aspects of present practices are extended and change the nature of the present-day activity. These would likely have some elements of sustainability about them, but would also be subject to the continuing damage caused by some current customs. ii A second set, which might be termed ‘dark’ scenarios, describe civilizations whose practices and values were failing. They would not be pleasant worlds in which to live, but seem increasingly plausible if current damaging practices are not remedied. iii A third and final set – ‘developmental’ scenarios – are worlds that might emerge if sustainable agendas were taken seriously. i

These various scenarios, developed from Raskin et al. (2002), then help to develop a better understanding of the likelihood of more and less sustainable kinds of worlds emerging. This examination then begins from where humanity seems currently to be, with ‘business-as-usual’ scenarios. It will then look at how these might develop into much darker forms, and will end by examining kinds that seem the most sustainable.

(i) Business-as-usual scenarios One set of scenarios might well arise if most of today’s practices are not discarded, but where different elements are emphasized. Within such a set of scenarios, one possibility is that of a strong market forces variant, which

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encouraged the greater use of competitive markets in generating more economic growth. Advocates of this scenario, as noted earlier, tend to have a strongly optimistic technological orientation, seeing challenges to sustainability as resolvable through competitive market incentives producing needed solutions. The analysis so far, however, has suggested that markets are probably more useful and less harmful when used as part of broader ‘clumsy’ approaches to sustainability problems, such as in developing mechanisms for carbon capture and storage. On their own, they could instead exacerbate inequalities between individuals and societies, downplay or ignore the need for an ethic of sufficiency, and further promote a societal focus upon consumption as the source of personal well-being, with all the implications this would have for personal and resource sustainability. If then the emphasis was on a more marketized ‘business-as-usual’ approach, problems of sustainability would likely be accentuated rather than reduced. Educational institutions and their leaders intent on promoting an ethics of sustainability in this world would almost certainly find themselves swimming against global and national policy tides rather than with them. The other variant of a business-as-usual scenario would likely be that of a more mixed economy approach. This would also be a world with many of the qualities of the present day, but one where critiques of unfettered markets were taken more seriously, and where markets would then be more directed and steered than currently, being used in the creation of sustainable objectives, such as the setting up of global emissions trading systems, the incentivizing of innovations in greater carbon capture and storage, and in boosting the use of clean forms of energy. Markets would certainly continue as the principal engines of economic growth, but would now have their excesses restrained through national and international legislation. On this scenario, attempts would then be made to more strongly balance the effect of governments and markets in creating and driving through policies. Whilst this may seem a more sustainable variant than more-marketized approaches, its viability is still doubtful. One concern comes from the fact that in this scenario markets are still seen as the engines of growth and progress, and as Raskin et al. (2002, p. 41) have pointed out, ‘the logic of sustainability and the logic of the global market are in tension’ and, in particular, ‘the values of consumerism and individualism undermine support for a politics that prioritizes long-range environmental and social wellbeing’. This kind of scenario then, whilst attempting to address challenges to social and environmental sustainability, is trying to do this without changing those societal mechanisms which in large part caused these problems in the first place. In so doing, its underpinning values would still largely run counter to sustainability ambitions, if a little more slowly than they do in more-marketized scenarios. In addition, the actual history of this ‘businessas-usual’ scenario – and particularly the attempted balance between governments and markets in pursuit of long-term sustainability – has been one in which most nations still seem committed to acting primarily out of

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their own national self-interest rather than out of any acceptance of the need for practice of a more global public good. However, it is not entirely clear how either of these scenarios would develop. If a combination of market mechanisms and national self-interest came to dominate, these might well propel societies from a marketized scenario down more dangerous and unsustainable roads. If, however, markets were increasingly reined in, and used for the kinds of ends described above, and nation states accepted the necessity for a surrender of some selfinterest, more optimistic scenarios seem possible. A mixed economy road might then lead to an increasing synergy between the practice of sustainable values in educational institutions and general societal directions. So, business as usual could lead towards more positive futures, as well as towards darker destinations. Both of these directions then need examining. The bleaker of the two directions will be examined first.

(ii) Dark scenarios The first of the dark scenarios is one that some might already see the beginnings of: it is that of a fortress world alluded to at various points throughout this book, and is based upon the projection that people in the future (and largely in the developed world) come to believe that the world’s problems are simply too big and too difficult for them to resolve any more. National policies then begin to adopt a kind of ‘Lifeboat Ethics’ approach, similar to that suggested by Hardin (2006) and described earlier, where rich nations see themselves as lifeboats, outside of which swim the poorer people of the world. However, instead of stopping to pick these people up, those in the lifeboats now believe that there are not enough lifeboats and resources to support everyone, and so they only try to save themselves. Hardin chillingly describes the reason for this approach as one where ‘[t]he people in the lifeboat have a duty to their species to be selfish’. This is a strange, tangled and twisted ethic, and many will see it as little more than an act of extreme selfishness. Others, however, may perceive a form of duty in such actions, but only to those they love, those they know, or to those with whom they share the same geographical area – a practice that would then be a reversal of Singer’s (1981) call for an expanding circle of ethics. Others are likely to dispense with any claim to ethical concerns, and simply regard a fortress world as the best way to ensure their personal survival. To do this, they would likely agree with the need for their country to invest in a larger military infrastructure, both at home and abroad, in order to secure sufficient energy, food and water supplies; they are also likely to develop increasingly rigorous immigration controls. In the process they would also probably develop an intense xenophobia to anyone inside and outside their own society who seemed different. It is highly doubtful in these conditions whether any attention would be paid to global issues of climate change,

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consumption or demography. The aim would be to sit tight, hold on to what they have got, use physical force to retain this if necessary, and try to ride out the coming global storm. For the vast majority of those living in underdeveloped countries, this will be a truly awful world to live in, for complete societal breakdowns may well occur, with starvation, disease and local conflict rampant. Yet a fortress world would also be highly unpleasant for those living in more economically developed countries, for these countries would very likely become increasingly politically repressive and militaristic, where the threat of terrorism was ever-present, and where educators were seen as little more than functionaries in the delivery of highly disagreeable worldviews. Such systems would also probably be unsustainable in the longer term, for if the previous few decades of globalization have taught anything, it is that the nation-state is a political not a natural construct (Bottery, 2003b), and airborne weapons, bacteria, nuclear contamination, rising temperatures, violent weather patterns and rising sea levels are no respecters of such borders. Nor can national boundaries be made so watertight as to prevent the incursion of terrorist activities, particularly if such terrorists are homegrown. Many will see elements of this scenario increasingly active today, and whilst some may see this as a world between nation states, it could be a fortress world within nation states as well. Over a decade ago, Rifkin (2002) described the US phenomenon of the affluent living in gated communities, separated from the rest of the population, and protected by private security firms: these are increasingly seen in other countries, too, including that former paragon of equality, China (Choon-Piew, 2009). Some might also argue that the expansion of practices such as private education and private medicine tend to develop what Uslaner (2002) describes as ‘thick trust’, where people of like minds, income and values increasingly seek to live together. In so doing, however, they also isolate themselves from other views which might provide them with what Uslaner calls ‘thin trust’ – a wider and more tolerant appreciation of different lifestyles and viewpoints. ‘Thick’ trust practices, in increasingly troubled societies, could then provide the ground for greater differentiation, greater isolation and less communication, where situations progressively worsened until governments represented only one section of a society, and repressed the remainder. The same kind of developments might also be seen if governments were taken over by military force, and fortress states imposed, or if political parties with fortress policies were voted into power by popular mandates. In such worlds, sustainable education agendas would likely come far down any list of state priorities. If a fortress world then emerged, a second dark variant – a breakdown world – might well develop not long afterwards. In such a world, sustainability agendas would be reduced to the lowest common denominators, and the survival of oneself, one’s loved ones, and probably the elevation to power of individuals or groups offering some protection would become the

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primary focus. In this Hobbesian world of the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, authoritarian rulers would be granted virtually unlimited power as long as they preserved some form of personal existence. If sustainability came down to this, issues of climate change, reductions in the use of fossil fuels, changes in consumption habits, and the enactment of demographic policies would be largely irrelevant, unless one wanted to count genocide and ethnic cleansing as examples of managing population concerns. An educational leadership for greater sustainability would be irrelevant. Wellbeing would be the well-being of simple survival; sufficiency would be a survival target rather than an ethical injunction; and equity and epistemological humility would have little or no role to play.

(iii) Developmental scenarios However, there are other more-developmental scenarios, leading down more-sustainable roads. They tend to reflect Keynes’ (1963) view that humanity needs to pursue models of society where ends are valued above means, and where the good is preferred to the merely useful. The first of the two – a rural ecology scenario – is a popular science-fiction scenario, though in this literature, it tends to be realized only after a societal breakdown scenario: either nuclear war, global warming, a virulent disease, or vampires have reduced the world to a few scattered human communities, which then attempt to pick up the pieces through localized and rural political and economic action (e.g. Miller, 2013; King, 1978; Cronin, 2011). Such forms of organization in the science-fiction literature then tend to be adopted out of necessity, as groups slowly recover from their various apocalypses. However, more scholarly advocates like Kunstler (2005) recommend it, or a variant of it, as a rational and ethical response to present-day globalized market systems and consumption-focused societies. Both this scenario and the next variant then tend to seek a deeper meaning for human purpose, achieved in part by human beings becoming more aware of and developing their linkages to webs of well-being which extend outwards to other living creatures and to a more sustainable biosphere. To achieve such purposes, this scenario then argues that humanity needs to begin to downscale – to move to systems based on the growth of foods within relatively small localities, to change from carbon-intensive meat-based diets to more sustainable vegetarian ones, and to create small regional face-to-face democratic polities. Such communities would also take family size seriously, use only clean renewable energy, and view closed-loop recycling as the indisputable means of managing resources sustainably. On the road to this world, international product distribution, mega-cities, and fossil fuel usage would become things of the past. By both positive and negative actions, humanity would dramatically reduce its extraction of the planet’s resources, reduce its size, eliminate most pollution, and learn to live in greater harmony

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with the earth’s ‘natural’ rhythms. In so doing, this scenario also tends to argue that more peaceful societies would be created, as humanity becomes less tempted to plunder other people’s resources. There is something of the pastoral idyll about this rural ecology scenario, and it recalls the kinds of longings for a gentle rural past, which 19thcentury sociological writers like Durkheim thought existed before the evils of industrialism. It envisages a form of well-being that comes from living the simple life, and it tends to be underpinned by a belief in the essential goodness of human beings. Some, however, might be tempted to think well of such ideals, but then dismiss this scenario as being too idealistic, and indeed of it constituting neither an attainable nor a particularly desirable destination. For a start, they might argue, present societies’ structures, rewards, challenges and values would not disappear of their own volition, and this vision doesn’t seem to say a great deal about how the journey to this simpler life would be made. It is difficult to see how maintaining a ‘business-asusual’ approach would result in this scenario, unless the science-fiction scenario of an apocalypse occurred before such change occurred. Global financial institutions, multinational companies, and neo-liberal economic policies, those who hold political power, as well as the many people who actually enjoy a degree of advanced consumption, are not going to change direction by argument alone. Existing practices, it would seem, might need to be managed away, and such a society, rather paradoxically, might need to be enforced into existence. Moreover, even if answers to such critiques could be provided, there would still be large questions about this pastoral idyll, and about the vision of a society built around democratic agricultural communities. Archaeologists would probably point out that, in Europe at least, the practice of marked wealth differentiations, power hierarchies and systematic warfare goes back at least 2,800 years, to the beginning of the Iron Age (Cunliffe, 2012; Oliver, 2012): how far back into the past, they might ask, would a society need to go, and how much invention and development would it need to dispense with, before it reached the preferred state of affairs? To most, then, this might be seen as being little more than a retreat into the past, and one that ignored all the benefits that technology, global communications, medical advances and massive knowledge repositories could provide – benefits that could and should be directed to create a more technologically and socially advanced and more sustainable global civilization. This rural idyll then is not a viable scenario. Yet perhaps it would be a little too quick to dismiss all the elements of this vision out of hand, for there are parts of it that make strong sustainable sense. In a world where the burning of fossil fuels is raising global temperatures and polluting the atmosphere, it might be asked why so many governments do so little to enable clean energy firms to break into the energy market; why so many societies choose personal transport as the main form

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of transport, when public transport systems are much more efficient and friendly to the environment; why most societies continue to create goods designed at the end of their usable lives to be thrown onto rubbish tips. Ultimately, the eco-communal vision contains a number of sustainable practices and values contrasting strongly with those of many current societies which seem more predicated on unsustainable paths of waste, inefficiency and built-in obsolescence. Moreover, this scenario does seem in harmony with the four ethics highlighted in this book, and combining some of its insights with present possibilities, whilst not excluding the undoubted benefits that economically and technological advanced societies do provide, points towards another and less idealistic form of sustainable society – what one might call a global ecology scenario. It would be underpinned by a variety of propositions, argued for throughout this book, the main ones being: ●

societies focusing more on being locally sustainable, because such practices use less energy, and provide a greater appreciation of working in harmony with the rhythms of the natural world;

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an economic paradigm focusing at least as much on sufficiency as on efficiency, as sufficiency is more predicated upon the notion of working within the limits of what is sustainable;

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an extended sense of equity within and between societies, as without its more extensive practice, social and economic sustainability are increasingly threatened, and ultimately so will be environmental sustainability;

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policies with longer timeframes for implementation and evaluation, as they better match the life-cycles of the natural world, better recognize the longer-term nature of the solution to wicked problems, and better help the recognition of the needs of future generations;

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greater individual humility in dealing with most problems, because the wicked nature of many problems requires a framing and a suggestion of solutions which involves as many framing contributions, and therefore as many stakeholders as is feasible;

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linear models of resource consumption replaced by closed loops of recyclability, to prevent the build-up of long-term pollution, and to work more in harmony with natural cycles;

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more time for higher levels of individual and communal well-being, as personal well-being is only realizable within larger webs of concern;

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technological research increasingly directed towards the creation and implementation of projects aimed at greater sustainability in social, economic and environmental terms;

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the potential impacts of changing human population patterns being recognized and planned for, as, without this, environmental resources will be more heavily depleted and polluted, and human well-being will be lessened.

There are many aspects of such a global ecology world that clearly transcend the role that educational systems can play in their development. Nevertheless, education systems can still make strong contributions, primarily seen in the manner in which such systems changed their emphases, and the manner in which the role of educational leadership was framed. It is to these changes then that this final chapter turns.

Changing systemic emphases Educational leaders can swim against policy tides, and some do this rather well, but leaders normally have greater impact when they are swimming with such tides. If they are to lead more sustainable institutions, then the systems within which they function will also need long-term change. A first change would be to their epistemological and ethical foundations, and different terms of reference will need to be used to indicate these new underpinnings. Instead of the centrality of terms such as ‘delivery’, ‘mechanisms’, ‘targets’, ‘quantitative KPI s’ and ‘human resources’, the language of such systems would reflect a much greater awareness of the uncertainty of many outcomes, and of ‘final’ answers to wicked problems nearly always needing to be only provisionally accepted. Different metaphors would also need to be embraced, for instead of policing mechanisms using metaphors to suggest that such policies were delivered through heavily structured, universal, and permanent plans and solutions, metaphors would instead need to describe the nature of educational work as more like the behaviour and actions of emerging organisms, always having to respond to changes, and so always growing and changing; instead of creating policies as if they were buildings with permanent foundations, one would need to talk more of the security and certainty of rafts on swamps; and systemic educational change would need to be conceptualized less like the flight of a bullet and more like the flight of a bird or butterfly: hardly ever linear, seldom predictable, always changing. These would help develop not only a greater humility in personal understandings of better plans and final outcomes, but also of the need for a tolerance of others’ different understandings of the same concerns. The language of systemic planning would also recognize the need for longer time-scales for the specification, execution and evaluation of strategies, just as it would better reflect the individual and context-specific nature of much practice. Once more, such changes would lead away from hasty attributions of responsibility and blame, and more towards a greater acceptance of uncertainty, unpredictability and lack of control.

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The adoption of such epistemological and ethical underpinnings would also lead, as argued earlier, to the adoption of different forms of accountability framework: away from those systems that were punitive, results-driven and blame-laden, and towards more supportive, process-driven OFCORE -type systems, where the long-term solution was favoured over the quick-fix. For those conditioned to more punitive accountability cultures, help would likely be needed in understanding the implications for practice in such new epistemological and ethical frameworks. The implications would include the separation of tame and wicked problems; a leadership focused on constructing and implementing longer-term plans, not tied to political election-timetables; and the development of an educational ethos within which people felt comfortable with uncertainty until the best framing of a problem was identified. However, such systems would not be offering blank cheques to their practitioners, permitting poorly conceptualized or critiqued solutions: levels of accountability would be at least as high as in more punitive forms, but would instead involve greater discussion between different stakeholders in framing problems and solutions, and greater support in developing such capabilities – a key role for OFCORE advisors. At least as high a level of justification for practice would be required as with current systems, but such explanations would ask for more intelligent, thoughtful and longer-term reasons. Such systemic changes would encourage discussion on the best ways for teaching forces to pass on these understandings to future generations, and therefore in contributing to the sustainability of the wider world. Finally, such an accountability framework would change approaches to both teacher education and student learning. Terms like ‘teacher training’ would be dropped, as this implies an unthinking and conformist approach in the application of techniques like behavioural competences, and instead would promote the use of intelligent and thoughtful approaches to forms of reflective practice within individual contexts. Teachers’ and pupils’ contrasting and critiquing of linear views of causality with those of more systemic approaches would become normal, as would a better appreciation of the need for the kind of framing that all human beings carry out in trying to understand the world they face. The need to educate for a greater understanding of the difference between tame and wicked problems and solutions would also be emphasized, as would the need to acknowledge a much greater lack of predictability and control in all systems, not just education, once more leading to more accurate – and therefore much lower – levels of ascription of personal responsibility and blame. By such changes in attitude and practice, blame cultures would be lessened, and greater sustainability would be produced, not only of those with the responsibility for such change, but, as importantly, of the changes themselves.

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The reframing of educational leadership practice Such an approach would help steer systems, institutions, and those within them away from employing standardized practices. For leaders, any ‘tips for leaders’ approaches would be eschewed, as these all too easily become ‘tame’ approaches to leadership practice instead of the necessarily wicked context-based nature of much that needs doing. Developing an approach based upon a particular set of ethical orientations avoids the temptation to micro-manage individual situations and prescribe universal solutions for particular problems. It would instead recognize the need for leaders to be trusted sufficiently and be given sufficient autonomy to choose how and when to apply such orientations. In practice this would say: whenever a difficult problem arises, questions of equity, sufficiency, well-being and humility need asking. In so doing, particular kinds of questions are generated for those in leadership positions to reflect upon, without stipulating precisely what should be done in each situation. A leadership embracing an ethics of greater humility, for example, would have as a primary focus the better appreciation of people needing to use different frames, of most problems being best defined when a variety of viewpoints is used, and of better solutions to wicked issues being more likely when they are created by more than the single individual. They would then ask whether their leadership is one aimed more at facilitating the collective framing and solution of a problem, rather than one more concerned with a personal leadership. Such leaders would also reflect upon whether sufficient time was being taken in using different frames to look at problems and solutions, and whether they were avoiding the temptation, and resisting the pressure, to rush into action too early. They would ask whether they were providing a leadership demonstrating the skills of a bricoleur leader rather than those of a construction engineer, where silver-bullet solutions might not be possible, and clumsier solutions might need to be generated instead. A leadership having a primary focus on higher levels of well-being would frame their work within notions that moved beyond personal satisfaction, and looked to wider conceptions of well-being. They would ask whether their proposed actions simply enhanced performance measures, or in addition improved levels of well-being. Even if actions did so, they would also reflect upon whether this was only individual well-being, or whether wider feelings of well-being were developed, beyond the personal and perhaps even beyond the human. They would consider whether such wellbeing developments were enhanced mostly in the short term, or whether their actions were likely to produce more longer-lasting effects. In similar manner, a leadership having a primary focus on more equitable outcomes would be framed within concerns for personal, institutional and national differences, and of inter-generational and intra-generational equity. They would ask whether their actions maintained inequalities already in existence, exacerbated them, or helped in changing them. They would reflect

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upon whether such actions produced standardized routines, or whether they were sufficiently personalized to allow for an appropriate diversity of thought and action to meet individual needs. They would ask whether such actions boosted equity only for the short term, or whether it was improved over longer time periods, and not just for present generations but for those still to come. Finally, a leadership with a primary focus on greater sufficiency would be framed within notions of resource consumption, system capacity and of long-term sustainability. Such leaders would ask whether such actions replicated the actions of someone who thought they could live like a cowboy with immeasurable resources to exploit, or were more like the actions of someone who realized that they were living on something resembling a spaceship which needed to conserve the resources available. They would consider whether there was sufficient capacity within institutions and systems to implement policies and actions whilst avoiding threats to the sustainability of those implementing it. They would reflect upon whether the implementation of particular actions reduced, permitted, or enhanced the long-term sustainability of the resources in question. As the foci for greater well-being, equity, humility and sufficiency were increasingly adopted in the fulfilment of an educational leader’s role, questions like these would act as stimulants to more sustainable kinds of actions, and would begin to mould the ethos of the institution, and of the system itself. Once again, through applying such frames to real-life situations, more sustainable educational ends would gradually be achieved. Their increased use in individual leaders’ practice, then, could not only change the nature of the leadership role: it has the potential to change the nature of educational systems as well.

Educational leadership: Back to the future This book concludes by reflecting upon four essential questions for educational management and leadership, as answers to them can help considerably in focusing in on the role of such educators in shaping a more sustainable future. These are simple but challenging questions: Where are you? 2 Where do you want to go? 3 How do you want to get there? 1

4

How will you know when you’ve got there?

The first question – Where are you? – is both epistemological and practical. Epistemologically, it suggests that the ‘where’ humanity currently inhabits is much more complex and wicked than many realize, and that the tension between this reality, and the tamer epistemologies and more simplistic

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frames that governments, institutions and individuals can and do place on problems and resolutions, is a large contributory reason to many causes of unsustainability. Many people are then entrapped within systems and institutions whose policies replicate these simplistic, linear and tame causations, and which create greater unsustainability not only for the systems and the institutions, but for these actors as well. Educational leaders are no exception, and their realities can also be poorly framed by others. It is also a world where growth overshadows sufficiency; where in many countries inequality is more noticeable than equality; where the arrogance of certainty and blame can and does trump the humility of provisionality and limited culpability, and where many cultures embrace and practise the well-being of the self rather than addressing higher levels. All of these phenomena lead down roads to greater unsustainability. The first question of Where are you? helps answer the second: Where do you want to go? This destination is clearly different from the place most currently inhabit, as it is a more sustainable place. It better recognizes the complex and wicked, where problem definition and resolution are framed within such understandings, and where policies, strategies and practices are underpinned by the same recognition. It is a world where people practise greater humility and assign less blame, because they understand that the hubris of certainty leads to unsustainable actions and decisions at all levels. It is also a world where people practise greater sufficiency, because they understand how high levels of growth and consumption are not sustainable. It is one where greater equity is practised, not only because this is accepted as a fairer way of treating others, but also because without its practice, little else is ultimately sustainable. And finally, it is a world where levels of wellbeing beyond the well-being of the self are practised because anything less reduces the sustainability of all. If this is where policy and practice need to be, the third question – How do you want to get there? – is again largely satisfied by the answers to the second, because sustainability is attained by the acceptance of wicked epistemologies, and the practice of the four ethics just described. Such sustainability is not attainable by leadership alone: it has to be embedded within systems and cultures as well. But those in leadership positions can introduce values and practices leading to greater sustainability within their own jurisdictions and so can influence others to adopt them as well. This form of leadership can then provide a role model for others that makes clear the foundational values and practices upon which sustainability depends; that ensures that the role is one concerned as much with facilitating the asking of questions as it is with providing the final answers; that recognizes that many solutions are going to be of a bricoleur nature rather than the pre-planned work of a construction engineer; and finally one that, through providing such an example, helps others to better realize the model to be employed, and hence to become similar kinds of leaders. It is a leadership model to be practised at all levels.

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But what of the final question: How will you know when you’ve got there? To my mind, this is the least satisfactory of the four, because it is a question that only really works when applied to simple and tame problems, which are, some might say, the problems of management, not leadership. Indeed it only helps the leader focused on greater sustainability through the working out of why the question needs to be rejected when one is faced with wicked problems. And its rejection is because, as already seen, for a problem to be fully resolved, it has to be sufficiently defined for one to understand what would resolve it: the key in the lock, the destination and the satnav, the engine stripped down. But many more of the problems of this world are wicked, and many of them will therefore remain unresolvable in any final sense. To assume that final solutions can be found for wicked problems – that we will know when we have got there, and in the terms of this book, to know when full sustainability is achieved – assumes that the world can be known well enough to know when this is achieved. This is the road to hubris, for on too many occasions this is unknowable and unachievable. Better is to accept that the nature of the journey is the thing that matters, not the final destination. How you get somewhere, how a problem is tacked is ultimately far more important for the better achievement of sustainability by educational leaders than any desire for the achievement of some ultimate destination. They therefore need to do the best that they can do, and they need to keep on trying. Some will see this as being as pointless as Sisyphus and his boulder, rolling it up a hill, only inevitably to find it rolling down again, for the challenges will change, new problems will arise, and many will feel as if they are constantly in virgin territory. However, it is possible to do better, to institute more sustainable practices, as the values and practices embraced mean that new wicked problems are encountered a little further along a problem road, with a little more experience, and so can be approached with a little more optimism. In many ways, then, the travelling is as important as the destination, the nature of the leading is as important as the leading to, because the form of travel chosen – the form of leadership chosen – in achieving sustainability is in so many ways the best destination that can and should be aspired to, and it is in the educating of leading in such ways that educational leadership for a more sustainable world can be achieved, and sustainability is passed on to future generations.

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Wilkinson, R. (1996) Unhealthy Societies: The Affliction of Inequality. London: Routledge. Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane. Williams, P. (2008) ‘Leading schools in the digital age: A clash of cultures’. School Leadership and Management, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 213–28. Williams, R. (2001) ‘Unrecognised exodus, unaccepted accountability: The looming shortage of principals and vice-principals in Ontario public schools’. Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University School of Policy Studies. Working Paper no. 24. Willetts, D. (2012) UK Houses of Parliament Debate. Available at http://www. publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120911/debtext/120911– 0003.htm. Wilson, E. O. (2003) The Future of Life. London: Abacus. Wolf, C. (2003) ‘Population’. In A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 363–76. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) ‘Our Common Future’. The Brundtland Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press. World Wildlife Fund (WWF ) (2008) Living Planet Report 2008. Available at: http:// www.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report (accessed 16 March 2012). Wright, N. (2002) ‘Leadership, “bastard leadership”, and managerialism: Confronting two paradoxes in the Blair education project’. Educational Management and Administration, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 275–90. Wright, N. (2011) ‘Between “bastard” and “wicked” leadership? School leadership and the emerging policies of the UK coalition government’. Journal of Educational Administration and History, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 345–62. Wrigley, E. A. (1990) ‘Brake or acceleration? Urban growth and population growth before the industrial revolution’. In A. Van Der Woude, A. Hayami, and J. De Vries (eds) Urbanisation in History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 101–12. Yeomans, M. (2004) Oil: Anatomy of an Industry. London: New Press. Young, D. and Szachowicz, P. (2014) ‘Responding to principals’ rising responsibilities’. Education Week, 4 February 2014. Yukl, G. (1999) ‘An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic leadership theories’. Leadership Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 285–305.

INDEX

accountability frameworks 167–9 Adams, W. 21 age segregation and integration 145–6, 149–50 Aitutaki culture 81 Akihiko, M. 146 albedo 127 anti-fragile institutions 163 archaeological evidence 28, 123, 132 Archer, D. 13 Arhennius, S. 121 Asquith, J. 4 Ball, S. 7, 109 Bangs, J. et al. 7, 29, 43 Barber, B. 27 Barge, J. K. 38, 159 Barnett, R. 108 Basel rules 25 Benedick, R. 31, 106 Benton, M. 25, 28, 123 Benyus, J. 66 Berliner, W. 5, 6 Blair, T. 177 blame cultures 43–4, 131–4, 166–7, 169–71, 198–9, 202 Bobbitt, F. 67 Bok, D. 32, 180, 181 Bongaarts, J. 139 Bore, A. and Wright, N. 8, 31 Bostrom, A-K. 145 Bottery, M.: educational ironies 30 humility 62 mediating market reforms 84 nation state as construction 194 oil prices 98, 99 privatization 109 trust 44, 56, 186

Bottery, M. et al.: English headteachers 6, 7, 35 research in England and Hong Kong 5, 26, 86 Boulding, J. 33, 58, 88 Braungart, M. and McDonough, W. 16, 66 breakdown world scenario 194–5 BRIC countries 17 ‘Bricoleur’ leaders 164, 172, 200, 202 Brown, L. 16 Brown, P. and Lauder, H. 26 Brummer, A. 25 Brundtland Report 4, 20–3, 31, 65, 187 buffers 65 bureaucracy 7, 39, 150 Burns, J. M. 17 Bush, George Snr. 118, 129 Bush, T. and Glover, D. 18 Bush, T. and Jackson, D. 5 business-as-usual global scenrio 191–3 business influences 16–18 Cable, V. 25 Calendar, G. S. 121 Campbell, C. 33, 77 Campbell, M. 98, 137, 150 Campbell, M. and Bedford, K. 150 Carr, E. H. 158, 159 Carson, R. 27 Caselli, G. et al. 147 CFC s (chlorofluorocarbons) 31, 115 Chalmers, A. 41, 43, 116 Chang, H-J. 128 Chapman, D. et al. 5 charismatic leadership 5, 18 chess as a fast or tame problem 45 China: ageing population 144 cheap energy 96 219

220

INDEX

climate change commitments 129 gated communities 194 territorial claims 102 urban populations 143 Choon-Piew, P. 194 climate change 8, 12, 13, 28, 47, 63, 105, 136–7, 190 see also chapter seven Cline, E. 124 clumsy solutions 49, 131–3, 161–7, 172, 191–2 clutter 71–2 Cohen, J. 140 complexity 9–11, 15, 22, 34–5, 37–9, 49, 54–5, 79–80, 120, 124, 157–8, 160, 169, 170 Conklin, J. 41 consumption: centrality of 33, 59, 64, 83–4, 86, 191–2 economic growth 77–8, 182, 186 energy consumption 54, 55 see also chapter six environmental stress 21–2, 60–1 excessive 13, 60, 71–2, 137 population 142, 151–3 role of 77–9 threats posed by 47, 87–90, 136 well-being 32, 65, 176–8, 187 Cooper, C. 6 cowboy approaches to economics 33, 58, 63, 191 creative destruction 17 crisis points 24, 28–30 Cronin, J. 185 Cunliffe, B. 206 Daily, G., Ehrlich, A., and Ehrlich, P. 151 Daly, H. 4, 21, 66, 119 dark global scenarios 193–5 Davies, B. 19 Day, C., et al. 4 De Waal, F. 79, 80 Deffeyes, K. 98 definition dementia 15 DeMarco, T. 64 Demeny, P. 141

demographic transition: epidemiological 138–9 Japanese experience 146 possibility of rapid transition 150 theory of 139 urban-rural transition 142 Dennett, D. 76 ‘destructive consent’ 162 DETR (Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions) 21 developmental global scenarios 195–8 Diamond, J. 24, 28, 123 Dick, P. K. 67 Dickens, C. 50 Diener, E. and Biswas-Diener, R. 179, 180 Diener, E. and Seligman, M. 180 Dietz, R. and O’Neil, D. 28, 75, 89 discounting for the future 31 Disney view of life 11, 170 distributed leadership 5, 18, 49 Doyle, D. and Locke, G. 5, 7, 19 Dychwald, K. 144 early civilization collapse 123–4 Eberspacher, S. 144 economic sustainability 73 economics, meaning of 118 Economist, The: subscriptions to 82 educational: entrepreneurs 85 futures 190–8 legislation 5, 7, 66, 74, 192 localization 110–11 pragmatists 85 privatization 109 stressors 23, 26, 27–8 efficiency 6, 27, 31, 33, 41 see also chapter four Ehrlich, P. 12–13, 139–40, 151–2 ‘elephant’ oil fields 102 email and efficiency 54–5 Emanuel, K. 125 Emmott, S. 106 energy security 93, 101–3 England 5, 40, 104, 125

INDEX

environmental: protection world 59–60 stressors 24–5, 26–7, 28–9 sustainability 20–7, 33, 59–60, 73, 87–90, 93, 114 equality 4, 20 Equity: borrower’s 25 global energy solutions 111 income distribution 75 inter-generational 4, 120, 150, 187 intra-generational 4, 150 living standards 137, 141–2, 147, 153, 186 subversion 28 EROI (energy returned on investment) 94–9, 101–3, 139, 143 eugenics 136–7 Evans, R. 18 extinctions of species 25, 26–9, 119, 123, 128, 131 Exxon Valdez disaster 100, 104 Facer, K. 28 Fagan, B. 24, 28, 123 Fairhurst, G. T. 48 Fairhurst, G. T. and Starr, R. A. 47 fast policies 29–30, 44, 60 Ferdig, M. 16 Fergusson, R. 84, 167 Fielding, M. 189 financial autonomy 7, 99, 149 financial stressors 25, 27, 29 Fineman, S. 182 Flannery, T. 128 Forbes 28 fortress world scenario 193–5 Fourier, J-P. 121 fracking 34, 98, 104 framing: inadequate 167 leadership role 5, 13, 31 problems 10, 40, 42–5, 49–50, 162 re-framing viii, 135, 200–1 rushed 29 sharing frames 47–8, 169, 172 Friedman, M. (1962) 72, 77, 79 Friedman, M. and Friedman, R. 86 Friedman, T. 108, 109

221

frontier world 58–60 Fukuyama, F. 27 Fullan, M. 5, 19, 39 Fuller, E. 5, 19 function creep 5, 26 Gable, S. and Haidt, J. 178 Gallie, W. B. 4 Galton, M. and MacBeath, J. 26 Garner, R. 128 Garvey, J. 31 gated communities 194 GDP (Gross Domestic Product) 32, 74–5, 177 Gilbert, D. 183 Gill, R. 29, 123 Gladwell, M. 63 Glatter, R. 7 global ecology scenario 197–8 global financial crisis 2008 25, 82 Gold, A. et al. 4 Goldenberg, S. 125, 126 Gore, A. 117 GPI (General Progress Indicator) 32, 74–5 Grace, G. 27 greedy organizations 26, 60, 65 Greenspan, Alan 34, 82 Greider, W. 66 Grenberg, J. 50, 51 Grint, K. 9, 17, 40, 42, 49, 162, 163, 164 Gronn, P. 5, 26, 60 groupthink 162 guilt 11, 34, 44 Gulf Stream 122, 127 Gunderson, L. and Holling, C. 109 Haidt, J. 8, 32, 90, 176, 178 Hall, C. 99, 101, 104 Hall, C. and Klitgaard, K. 99 Hallett, S. 54, 55, 100 Hamilton, C. 4, 32, 74, 90, 176 Hammersley-Fletcher, L. 7, 26, 34 Handy, C. 38 happiness and well-being 178 Hardin, G. 126, 139, 153, 193 Hargreaves, A. and Fink, D. 19, 32 Harvey, D. 25

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Hawken, P. 16, 66 Hayek, F. 67 Heinberg, R. 21, 25 Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle 43 historical ‘facts’ 158 Hobbesian world 194–5 Hodgen, E. and Wylie, C. 5 Holling, C. and Gunderson, L. 17 Holmgren, D. 24, 66 Homer-Dixon, T. 94, 95, 123 Homo Economicus 74–87 Hong Kong 5, 86 Hove, H. 21 Hoyle, E. and Wallace, M. 6, 56 Hull 40, 125 Hulme, M. 8, 12, 31, 47, 117, 119 Hume, D. 50 Humility: epistemological 50–1, 159, 165–7, 170–1, 195 ethic of 50–1, 62, 159, 166, 170–1 intellectual 116 in leadership 39 Hutchins, G. 66 Independent, The 5 inequality 28, 181, 182, 202 inter-generational education 145–6 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change): confidence levels of statements 116 flooding 125 glacier retreat 126 global temperature rise 13, 47, 100, 105 greenhouse gas emissions 106, 190 ice melt 127 nature of 130–1, 190 species extinctions 28 irony 6, 56 Jackson, T. 4, 21, 66, 71, 119, 182 James, O. 71 James, W. 179 Janis, I. 162 Jevons, W. S. and coal extraction 55 Johnson, N. 37

Kabbadi 183 Kahneman, D. and Thaler, R. 183 Kanter, R. M. 38 Kaplan, M., Kusano, A., Ichiro, T., and Hisamichi, S. 145 Kay, J. and Schneider, E. 39 Keegan, W. 106 Keeling, D. 121 Keynes, J. M. 195 King, S. 195 Klare, M. 24, 99, 101–4, 126 ‘known knowns’ 10 Kolbert, E. 9, 13, 25, 28, 123 Kruk, J. 71 Kuhn, T. S. 41 Kunstler, J. 98, 110, 195 Kunzig, R. and Broeckner, W. 28, 121, 122, 126, 130 Kyoto protocol 21, 106, 118, 129, 130, 131 Laabs, J. 177 Lake Aggassiz 122 Lanchester, J. 27 Lauder, H. et al. 32 Layard, R. 32, 90, 176, 180 leadership sustainability: business literature 17–18 changes needed to achieve this 165–6, 171–3, 200–3 humble leadership 50–1 lessons from other forms 30–5 moral purpose 19 relationship to larger sustainability issues viii–ix, 3–5, 11, 13–14 sufficiency 62–7 threats to 5–7, 18, 26, 56, 107–11 Lebow, V. 78 Leeb, S. 98 Leeson, G. 144, 145, 146, 149 Leggett, J. 82, 99, 100, 103–5, 130 Leithwood, K. et al. vii Lenton, T. et al. 63, 127 Levin, B. 6, 7, 26, 33, 55–6, 149 Levin, K. et al. 46, 105 Levitt, S. and List, J. 82 Levy, S. 38 lifeboat ethics 126, 153, 193 Lindblom, C. 164

INDEX

223

Linden, E. 122 linear understandings: chess 45 civilization collapse 124 early scientific understanding 10 efficiency 54, 56 extinctions 26 from linear to complex causations 31, 34, 42 student learning 169–71 sustainability 59 Lipsky, M. 29, 39 Lomborg, B. 119, 159, 182 Lovelock, J. 12, 106 Lutz, W. 137 Lynas, M. 28, 106, 125–6, 131

Obama, B. 21 OECD (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) 28, 135, 145 OFCORE (The Office for Developing Complex Organizational Responses in Education) 178–80, 182, 199 Ofsted 35 oil prices 97–9 oil remaining 99–101 Oliver, N. 71, 186 Omran, A. 147 Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. 12, 47, 117 Owens, S. 21

McCann, J. and Holt, R. 16 McMahon, D. 178 Malthus, T. R. 138, 139, 140 Marion, R. and Uhl-Bien, M. 38, 49 market forces future scenario 191–3 Marshall, T. H. 84 Meadows, D., Randers, J., and Meadows, D. 49, 139, 140 Mencken, H. L. v, 189 Merton, R. K. 30, 115 methane 121, 126–7 methane hydrates 128 Mill, J. S. 178 Miller, W. 195 mixed economy scenario 192–3 Monbiot, G. 12, 47, 117, 137 Morrison, K. 38 Munz, R. and Reiterer, A. F. 140, 143, 147, 148 Myers, N. 63

Padilla, A. 146 Palmer, B. 72 paradox: ‘better’ leaders 39 central direction 38 changing global practices 196 developing greater sustainability 18 increase in central direction 84 localization of work 110 temperature rises 122 work of educational leaders 6, 56 Partridge, E. 31 Pearce, F. 128 Peters, T. and Waterman, R. 49 physical and social sciences, contrasts 41 Pielke, R. A. 116 Plsek, P. 165 Pollitt, C. 144 Popper, K. 48, 62, 116–17, 132, 165–6 populations: ageing 135, 137, 144–9 epidemiological transition 147–8 expanding 138–42 optimum global 151–3 urban-rural transition 142–4 Porritt, J. 106, 107 positional good 89 positive psychology 179–85 Prata, N. 150 Princen, T. 32 principal sustainability 4–5

Naish, J. 72, 90 NCSL (National College for School Leadership) 18 negative capability 171–2 New Labour 5 New Zealand 5, 21, 26 Newtonian models of science 10 Northern Rock bank 29 Notestein, F. 139 Nozick, R. 178 Nussbaum, M.

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INDEX

Prisoner’s dilemma 80–1 Procrustes 120 pyramid idea of sustainability 88–9 Raskin, P. 164, 191, 192 Rath, T. and Harter, J. 179 Rayner, S. 9, 10, 41, 49, 161 Reames, E. et al. 5, 19, 26 recycling 66–7 Rees, M. 12, 106 resilience 15–17, 20, 22, 163 resourceful humans 32, 61, 176 retirement 19, 26, 30, 89, 144–6 Rhodes, C. and Brundrett, M. 26 Ribbins, P. and Gunter, H. 23 Rifkin, J. 89, 97, 194 Rittell, H. and Webber, M. 8, 39–41 Ritzer, G. 38 Robinson Crusoe 79 Rogers, P., Jalal, K., and Boyd, J. 63, 179 Roscoe, P. 17, 83 Royal Meteorological Society 121, 124 Royal Society 136, 140, 152 Rumsfeld, D. 10 rural ecology scenario 195–7 Sabin, P. 12, 98 Santoro, N. et al. 159 satisficing 9 Schein, E. 166 Schor, J. 71 Schumpeter, J. 17 science, nature of 10, 41, 43, 62, 115–21 scientist-policy maker relationships 116–17 Seligman, M. 179, 180 sense-making 48 Shah, S. 98 Shallcross, A. and Robinson, J. 15 Shepherd, G. 29 short-term gains 31 short-term interests 4 short-term results 8 short-term thinking 30 short-term visions 31–2 short-termism 32, 46, 63, 64 silver buckshot 49–50, 161–3, 170–1

silver bullet 49, 113, 164–6, 170–1 Simon, H. 9 Simon, J. 12, 98, 138, 140, 151 Singer, P. 193 Sisyphus 213 Skidelsky, R. and Skidelsky, E. 72 slack 64–5 Smail, K. 152 Smith, A. 76–7 Smith, L. 24, 25, 142 Social Darwinism 17, 76, 80 spaceship approaches to economics 33, 58–9, 63, 205 Speidel, J. et al. 137 Speth, G. 90 Stager, C. 9 Starr, K. v., 5, 6, 26, 56 Stern Review, The 119, 126, 131, 136 Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., and Fitoussi, J-P. 177 Storr, W. 8, 158, 165 Strahan, D. 24, 98 Strathern, O. 98 street-level bureaucrats 29 stress, individual 6 stress, systemic 23–30 students as consumers 85–6 sufficiency: ethic of 192 global populations 137 Hobbesian world 195 as an imperative value 58–61 movement from efficiency 33–4 as a necessary condition 61–2 Precautionary Principle, The 128–9 and resourceful humans 176 Suh, E. and Koo, J. 181 super-wicked problems 46, 104–5 sustainable development 15, 16, 20, 21, 88 sustainability, meaning of see chapter one sustainability world 59–60 Taleb, N. 163 tame problems: imposition of tame approaches 48–9 leadership 50–1, 199, 200–3

INDEX

meaning 8, 39–40 relationship to wicked 9, 24, 42–3, 45, 157 student understanding 169–70, TFR s (total fertility rates) 141–8 Thatcher, M. 89 thin and thick trust 194 throwing live birds 165 Tickell, O. 139 Times Educational Supplement, The 5, 19 tipping points 63, 67, 126–8 toxic assets and debts 27 Troman, G. and Woods, P. 5 trust: and blame 44 as a core social value 73, 89, 176 between financial institutions 27 forms of 186 low trust accountability 26, 56, 168 low-trust cultures 11, 30 thick and thin trust 110, 194 trust in teaching profession 6, 7 Turner, A. 137 Tyndall, J. 121 UK (United Kingdom): banking behaviour 25, 89 Financial Services Authority 105 government 21 GDP (gross domestic product) 32 leadership college 18 leadership stress in 5, 6 over-consumption 71 population 141 Prime Minister 177 principals 86, 141 Uriah Heep 50 UNEP (The United Nations Environmental Programme) 129 UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) 21 United States: banking regulations 25 bordering the arctic 93 coal as energy source 95 Congressional Gold Medal 140

225

energy security 102 fracking 98 Kyoto Protocol 118, 129 oil as energy source 98 over-consumption 71 population 141 principals’ stress 6 Uslaner, E. 110, 194 Vaughn, A. 125 Venn figure of sustainability 87 Verweij, M. 49, 132, 161, 163–4 Vidal, J. 131 Vidal, J. and Harvey, F. 130 Wahdan, M. 147 Walker, B. and Salt, D. 22, 109 Wall Street Journal, The 88 Wallace, M. and Fertig, M. 29, 38 Ward, P. 28 Washington, H. and Cook, J. 12, 47, 117 Wattenberg, D. 153 Weart, S. 131 Weber, M. 38 Weisman, A. 97, 137, 138 welfare state advocates 84 well-being: business sustainability 16 environmental 59 levels of 66, 90, 186–7, 197–8 long term visions 31–2 nurturing resources 323 physical 71 sufficiency 61–2 wicked problems: challenges 159–61 climate change 113–14, 131–4 conflated with tame 9, 29, 199 contrasted with tame 45 economics 118–19 global energy needs 99, 104–5, 107 leaders’ understandings 171–3, 200–1 meaning 8, 39–44, 161–4 populations 151 species extinctions 26–8, 128 students’ learning 169–71

226

super-wicked 46 tipping points 128 values 184–5 Wilde, Oscar 57 Wile, R. 98 Wilkinson, R. 28, 140 Willetts, D. 85–6 Williams, P. 98 Williams, R. 5 Wilson, E. O. 9, 24–6, 123, 128

INDEX

Wolf, C. 138 women: education 152, 160 freedom 137, 150 Wright, N. 26 Wrigley, E. A. 105 Yeomans, M. 96 Young, D. and Szachowicz, P. 6 Yukl, G. 17

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