Do we teach our students to share and to care?

ABSTRACT

We explored how academic departments, university teachers and students in one research-led university in New Zealand identified and addressed challenges in achieving three particular graduate attributes. These attributes (global perspective, environmental literacy and those aspect of ethics that involve personal social responsibility) are distinctive in that they may encompass values, attitudes and future behaviours, in addition to knowledge and skills. We documented formal processes in each participating department; interviewed university teachers to understand how they conceptualised these attributes and the processes of teaching them; explored student perspectives via individual and group interviews and written responses to verbal questions in groups; held project-based and departmental discussions to help us understand how the diversity of perspectives and processes extant in this institution were understood; and developed resources to explore and support future academic engagement with the issues that have arisen in this research. We discuss a potential mismatch between what this institution’s strategic documentation aspires to and how departments and their teachers are managing these expectations, and we link this concern to the academic discourse on roles, responsibilities and capabilities of higher education. Our research has implications for all higher education institutions that express their aspirations or intentions for the values that their students will learn and we propose a research agenda to address our concerns.

KEYWORDS:

• Values education
• education for sustainability
• teaching ethics
• global citizenship
• civic values
• academic freedom
• learning experience

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of all members of the research group who contributed to this project. We also thank all of the students and teachers who contributed as research participants and the departments that supported our discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kim Brown

Kim Brown was a research assistant on this project. Kim is currently a professional practice fellow in graduate education. Kim’s research interests include doctoral education and developing student metacognition in undergraduate education.

Sean Connelly

Sean Connelly is a geographer with teaching and research interests in sustainable communities, alternative food systems and rural / regional development.

Brent Lovelock

Brent Lovelock’s research area is sustainable tourism. His work focuses on tourism planning and policy, tourism behaviour, and ethical tourism. Brent’s work on education for sustainability links with his desire to help bring about positive change in tourism, the world’s largest industry.

Louise Mainvil

Louise Mainvil is a Senior Lecturer in public health nutrition and nutrition communication. Her research-led teaching explores psychosocial, cultural, environmental and economic factors influencing food intake.

Damien Mather

Damien Mather’s research aim is to study decision-making processes that affect national, regional and global markets, international business and trade policy decisions so as to improve the success rate of businesses, regional organisations and governments when making decisions. To achieve this Damien applies advanced quantitative methods, empirical generalisations and understanding of consumer behaviour, heuristic decisions, decision framing and uncertainty to add to marketing knowledge in branding, pricing and corporate communications.

Helen Roberts

Dr Helen Roberts has research interests related to executive compensation, firm performance, governance, gender and pay equity. She also investigates factors that affect tertiary student performance.

Sheila Skeaff

Sheila Skeaff, Academic with expertise in human nutrition, both basic and applied, and a keen interest in tertiary teaching.

Kerry Shephard

Kerry Shephard is professor of higher education development and interested in how students develop their values, attitudes and dispositions, and what higher education teachers do to influence these and other aspects of student learning. Kerry has particular interests in education for sustainability and for integrity. Kerry was PI on this project.