A tale of two cities: urban regeneration in Reading and Luton.

By Alina Congreve (University of Hertfordshire)

When I started work at Reading University, I took over the urban regeneration module that urgently needed refreshing. Coursework involved students writing essays to answer questions such as ‘Shall we build the channel tunnel rail link?’. The course was run twice with quite small numbers, in one term for third-year undergraduate students and in the other for MSc students. Most of the students who selected the option did so because it had a reputation for being easy. I took a decisions to run the module once and run it well, combining the third-year and MSc groups.

In trying to design new, engaging coursework I set up a meeting with the head of regeneration at the Borough Council. After a very shaky start to our meeting he mentioned two projects that he was thinking of paying commercial consultants to do with a budget of about £30,000. I offered to do them both for £7,000 with my students. The projects involved students working in two low-income neighbourhoods, collecting information and ideas from local residents to support neighbourhood plans. Once someone is paying you for work you have to do it, so I used the money to pay a regeneration practitioner to mentor the students. They were expected to complete stages of work by set milestones and the regeneration practitioner met with them several times as they reported back on progress.

Community facilities at Amersham Road

The students worked in teams and when in the community they were always in groups of two or more. Within their teams they had their own specific brief, to minimize the risk of a student free riding on others efforts. Students liked the combination of team-work and individual effort being rewarded. They learnt a lot about young people in those neighbourhoods who had very different experiences from them, including those who had turned down training and apprenticeship because their family needed them to earn money. They ran focus groups, talking to older people who travelled into the city centre to get groceries because they were intimidated at their local shopping parade with fears about their safety.

The students identified the way youth provision did not cater for 8-12 year olds, leading to them being drawn into trouble at an early age. They also provided innovative solutions and came up with fresh ideas to draw in private sector support. They approached large Reading based employers based in the town and suggested schemes where staff working in IT could volunteer one day a month to help older residents improve their skills. They also suggested improved timings to local bus services so residents were not so cut off from employment. These were were taken up by the bus operator. Students presented their findings at the end of the module to the Council and community representatives.

Starting at Hertfordshire with a new MSc planning course, only a small number of students signed up to the regeneration optional module. Concerned the group was too small for the students to have a good learning experience, I approached a colleague who ran the Tourism and Hospitality Management MSc After some discussion she allowed the regeneration module as an option on her programme. It took time to build up contacts and networks that I had developed at Reading. Hatfield has been subject to an excessive number of student projects that have added little value to the problems of the town. Looking a bit further afield I heard about the work of Luton Culture, a third sector organization that runs that arts, museums and community facilities. In the town centre an arts venue, the library theatre, had been almost unused for 18 months. There were ambitious plans to re-open the venue with a lively programme of theatre, comedy and music. There were a number of ideas Luton Culture staff would like to explore, but were stretched for time. These included: creating links between users of the library and the theatre; introducing a loyalty card; working with schools; and creating a volunteering programme for young people. The students carried out desk research and contacted other arts venues by phone and email. Whilst half the lecture content was delivered by a regeneration practitioner and half by me, there was no budget this time for practitioner mentoring. With the smaller group (15 students) this was feasible but it would be much more challenging with two or three times that number.

A key feature to the success of both projects was the commitment and support of staff at Reading Borough Council and Luton Culture. They were able to provide information, contacts and other practical support, such as local venues for meetings, that meant the students could get off to a quick start. They also provided an enthusiastic audience for the students work, ensuring that their first experience of delivering work to a client was a positive one.

So, was is the benefit for the University? Or to put it another way, how can you persuade your head of department you should be spending time on this? A key hook is positive local press coverage. In many university towns there is a lot of negative publicity about students, often focused on rowdy behavior and untidy front gardens. To have a story in the local media about students making a positive contribution to the town can start to change that. Some universities have community awards for students who make a significant contribution to the community, and winning or being shortlisted for awards is good for the department. Professional bodies are keen for both staff and students to be engaged with real world problems and this type of project can provide evidence of that engagement. From a personal point of view it can also help your own career development, engaging with senior figures in local government and giving interviews to the media.

So what are the challenges? Surprisingly, few come from the students. A few students are initially skeptical, but this can be largely overcome if you open the module in the right way. This is going to be challenging but it is going to be interesting and it will look great on your CV. One challenge is time pressure, and while English universities have professional staff whose role includes engagement or work placements, the scope varies widely. You will get very different levels of practical assistance depending on where you are. Local authority budget cuts have put pressure on funds and getting even small amounts of money to pay for additional support is more challenging than five years ago. The biggest barrier I currently face is the university ethics procedures. This can take 6-8 weeks for even a simple questionnaire or focus group with residents to be approved. As a result I have had to adapt so that the projects are carried out without the need for ethics approval. We still have quite a bit to learn in making these kind of projects a regular part of students learning rather than the exception.

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Ethics workshops for BSc students

by Julie Peacock (University of Leeds)

Where to start when teaching ethics to science students? Launch into a contrast of the theories of Bentham and Kant and your students may well think they’ve come to the wrong session; ignore these theories completely and you’re not giving students the tools to fully evaluate an ethical issue be it re-wilding of Scotland, GM crops, alien species, hunting and conservation or another issue.

For the last three years I have run a two hour workshop introducing research and environmental ethics to Foundation Level students. These intense sessions are just long enough to cover the basics and get students enthused about the subject, which they could then cover more fully at a higher level.

I find it’s useful to start to explain why we are looking at ethics – they are scientists not philosophers after all. For this I give several reasons: as scientists they need to understand what is acceptable practice; for their dissertations they will need to include a section on the ethical implications of their work; if they apply for grants in the future they are likely to have to address the ethics of their proposed project; as a science student friends and family may ask their opinion on a controversial environmental subject discussed in the news and it’s important they can give careful consideration to it. In addition to these reasons the QAA benchmark for Geography mentions ethics several times.

As a way into studying ethics I give students a handout based on an activity described in Matthews (2010). This is a philosophical thought experiment where student have to rank entities in order of their perceived value. The task starts with an opening paragraph, ‘Imagine a scenario in which a large container ship is rapidly sinking with only one remaining lifeboat. Nearby, certainly in range of the lifeboat, is a large forested island with a small human settlement. Your task is to decide in which order to place the following on the lifeboat…..’

Students work individually at first, and then discuss their rankings in small groups before a lively class debate follows on whether ‘a collie with a lame leg’ should be saved before ‘ten chickens’. Students discover there are a wide range of opinions in class even if individuals cannot explain fully the reasons for their rankings. With more time this could be extended and philosophical ideas drawn out see Matthews (2010) for ideas. We then look at another, more realistic scenario – ideas for these scenarios were originally taken from Downie (2010). With the scenarios I tell the students whether they are to think about reasons for or against the situation (rather than what their reaction is to it). This is to try and get students to think about ethical issues from another’s point of view.   I then get all the students arguing ‘for’ the issue to form a circle (or several circles depending on the number of students and the space available) facing outwards and all the students arguing ‘against’ the issue to form a circle around them, so each student is facing another ready to debate. Those arguing ‘for’ get 30 seconds to put down their main points and those against get the next 30 seconds to reply with their main points, followed by one minute of dialogue. Another scenario is then introduced and one circle moves to the left so students have a new partner for discussion.

After a few scenario based discussions we pull out some of the arguments for and against, ‘they have a right to..’, ‘we ought to…’ and ‘the outcome will be better if….’ I use these arguments to introduce deontology and consequentialism and their strengths and weaknesses.

The whistle stop tour of ethics usually results in a buzz around the class room and hopefully ensures the students have grounding in ethical thought, are more able to consider ethical issues from a different view point and will have inspired some to study it further.

If you are just beginning to get into teaching ethics to BSc students I would recommend Willmott, C.J.R (2011) Bioethics. In: Adams, D.J. Effective Learning in the Life Sciences. Chichester. Wiley-Blackwell, as a starting point. It’s actually written for bioscience students(!) but it’s ideas are adaptable to Physical Geography. Also, https://bioethicsbytes.wordpress.com/about/ a site which hosts a collection of resources to assist in the teaching of bioethics and for research misconduct see http://bioethicsbytes.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/examplesofresearchmisconduct.pdf

References:

Downie, R. (2010) Environmental Ethics: a Scenario-Based Approach. UK Centre for Bioscience Bulletin. 29, p3

Matthews, I. (2010) Articulating Values in Environmental Ethics. UK Centre for Bioscience Bulletin. 29, p2.