Suchergebnisse

Pursuing a regional approach to history puts twenty-first-century historians in the strange position of unconsciously echoing their nineteenth-century predecessors, though with differing goals. When historian Frederick Jackson Turner pronounced the Mid-Atlantic region "typically American," he was of course intent upon divining an elusive national character, not currently a goal of historians. But Turner's frontier thesis emphasized geography and region in a way that would still be recognizable to environmental historians today. For example, Turner's observations concerning the Mid-Atlantic region hinged upon the physical geography of place, property ownership, and use of land. He noted that the Mid-Atlantic was a doorway for emigrants from all of Europe, who "entered by New York harbor" and were then intermixed; that the residents were "rooted in material prosperity" based on the land; and that the region, "with no barriers to shut out its frontiers from its settled regions, and with a system of connecting waterways," was uniquely situated as a mechanism for the admixture of peoples. In this way, the Mid-Atlantic served as a microcosm of Turner's conception of the frontier as a churning machine that intermingled people from regions and nations to create an essentially American temperament.

In the spring of 1998, I began work on a history of air pollution control policy, focusing on new mechanisms of local control that more actively included representatives of the public. In Pittsburgh, these new possibilities for local activism had contributed to the rise of the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) in 1969. When I went looking for archival documents that could explain the history, demographics, rhetoric, and strategy of this environmental advocacy group three decades later, I found only strangely scattered pieces. By the late 1990s the leadership of GASP did not know if any material had ever been donated to any local archive; they were several generations removed from the original activists, many of whom had passed on, left the cause, or moved to Florida. Over the next twelve years, I attempted to chase down the records of individuals and the group. I swooped in to claim and sort discarded garbage bags full of paper when the group moved offices, and pursued material that some activists had donated to a library (which did not have any provisions for archival storage) without the knowledge of the rest of the group's leaders (who did not know where the records had gone). The only point in time that all of the records I used to write my dissertation came together in one place, with professional archivists assessing, sorting, and organizing the material, was after I had finished the resulting book—thirteen years after the spring of 1998.I take this experience as one piece of evidence that the archival records of environmental activism in the 1960s are only now becoming ripe for historians. After all, with the transformation in the archival status of GASP records over the last decade, I can safely say that the book I have just finished would be a very different one if I were to write it today. Simply acquiring and organizing the materials consumed most of my time in the disserta-tion research. Today, with the same materials now located in professionally managed archives, I could spend more time concentrating on the context in which this organization developed its political responses to changing legal and legislative opportunities. I would also have a significantly different perspective on these materials were I to encounter them as a chronologically or thematically organized set of records inside an archive. While these anecdotal observations feel logical, when I began discussing the point with other schol-ars I became unsatisfied with my own limited viewpoint. This article results from an attempt to test out these assumptions through journalistic interviews with archivists throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. In so doing, I hope to consider the ways that "archival power" has shaped, and will continue to direct, the future of environmental history in the Mid-Atlantic.

The subject of Acid Deposition is one of the most important of our contemporary environmental problems. Presenting and discussing new data on the sources and effects of such deposition, this book seeks to assist in the definition of our future research requirements and policy developments. It is divided into four broad themes: Emissions, Chemistry and Deposition, Ecosystem Effects (freshwater, soils and forest systems) and Effects on Structural Materials, Mitigation, Control and Management

The world of student unions is under-researched, particularly relating to global issues and challenges, despite them holding a large proportion of the future workforce. At present, the European Students Union (ESU) has a duty of care to approximately 15 million European students, with subsequent policies and information. This paper addresses the disparity between these areas, with a specific focus on the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals - in partnership with the UK National Union of Students, under the Dissertations for Good Programme. An innovative web mining method was created and refined over a 10-week data collection period on ESU public web domains using websites from January 2014-18. A pre-determined selection of seventeen key terms were used to quantify the overall knowledge and understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals on a country by country basis, with the UK National Union of Students as a control during the study. This resulted in the successful analysis of 39 ESUs, showing a wide range of keyword abundance, knowledge depth and breadth across member nations. 89% of all key term sites were located within the UK & Switzerland unions, creating 86% of all key terms found – highlighting disparity against developments in European Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). To conclude, this research has highlighted both the lack of visual representation of the Sustainable Development Goals to students and therefore, the variation in education quality across nations, allowing for potential inequality of sustainability skillsets required by graduates on a global scale to tackle global challenges.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the position of education for sustainable development in the UK Higher Education (HE) sector with respect to the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and Higher Education Academy (HEA) Guidance for education for sustainable development (ESD).


Design/methodology/approach
By means of a mixed-method approach underpinned by a concurrent triangulation design strategy, this research presents evidence from an online questionnaire survey and in-depth semi-structured interviews.


Findings
Insights are presented from case studies of a group of UK Higher Education Institute (HEIs) which have made significant progress in embedding ESD in the curricula.


Research limitations/implications
Central to this study is an exploration of the ESD integration process of this group including a description of the approaches to integration, the challenges faced and overcome and the critical success factors. It examines the role of a guidance instrument in simplifying and accelerating the ESD curricular integration process. The results of the study show that there is a multitude of integration approaches applied varying in their emphasis.


Practical implications
The main challenge HEIs face is engaging staff that may question the relevance of the ESD concept, and that lack an understanding regarding its implications for their discipline. Critical success factors identified are institution-wide people support, high-level institutional support and funding. The QAA and HEA guidance has successfully supported HEIs in developing their ESD commitments.


Originality/value
The results of this research can support HEIs in developing their own approach to ESD, as they learn from similar UK HE providers, particularly with respect to overcoming barriers and enhancing critical success factors to ESD curricular integration.