Researching Environmental and Sustainability Education Policy: Slumbers and Awakenings

This article offers a series of reflections based on a recent edited collection, Environmental and Sustainability Education Policy: International Trends, Priorities and Challenges. As one of its editors, here I bring together key features of the collection and themes pertinent to this emerging field of scholarship, to offer some way-markers for possible future research avenues. Taken together, I trust these observations might help others navigate what we encountered in policy studies and practice development, and illuminate various blank, blind, bald and bright spots for research and policy in both environmental and sustainability education, and related fields of inquiry.     

Quality Through Robust Design

The programme in quality improvement and engineering design at City University, London is presented. Interdisciplinary design and quality are linked in a number of ways from case-studies in experimental design methods to statistical simulation linked to computer aided design. The new Engineering Design Centre and Quality Unit collaborate with several departments within the School of Engineering where quality and reliability are real issues: civil engineering (structures) and electrical engineering (instrumentation) provide examples. The Engineering Design Centre and Quality Unit undertake work with industry and examples of these are given in the paper.