Purpose Since 2006, higher education institutions (HEIs) in Sweden, should according to the Higher Education Act, promote sustainable development (SD). In 2016, the Swedish Government asked the Swedish higher education authority to evaluate how this study is proceeding. The authority chose to focus on education. This paper aims to produce a report on this evaluation. Design/methodology/approach All 47 HEIs in Sweden were asked to write a self-evaluation report based on certain evaluation criteria. A panel was appointed consisting of academics and representatives for students and working life. The panel wrote an evaluation of each HEI, a report on general findings and recommendations, and gave an overall judgement of each HEI in two classes as follows: the HEI has well-developed processes for integration of SD in education or the HEI needs to develop their processes. Findings Overall, a mixed picture developed. Most HEIs could give examples of programmes or courses where SD was integrated. However, less than half of the HEIs had overarching goals for integration of SD in education or had a systematic follow-up of these goals. Even fewer worked specifically with pedagogy and didactics, teaching and learning methods and environments, sustainability competences or other characters of education for SD. Overall, only 12 out of 47 got a higher judgement. Originality/value This is a unique study in which all HEIs in a country are evaluated. This provides unique possibilities for identifying success factors and barriers. The importance of the leadership of the HEIs became clear.
This reflective paper surveys the lessons learnt and challenges faced by the Mistra Urban Futures (MUF) research centre and its research platforms in Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Kenya in developing and deploying different forms of transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. Considerable experience with a distinctive portfolio of such methods has been gained and reflective evaluation is now under way. While it is important to understand the local context within which each method has evolved, we seek to explain the potential for adaptation in diverse contexts so that such knowledge co-production methods can be more widely utilized. Furthermore, the current phase of MUF's work is undertaking innovative comparative transdisciplinary co-production research across its research platforms. Since the specific local projects differ, systematic thematic comparison requires great care and methodological rigour. Transdisciplinary co-production is inherently complex, time consuming and often unpredictable in terms of outcomes, and these challenges are intensified when it is undertaken comparatively. Keywords comparative urban research / co-production / Mistra Urban Futures / transdisciplinarity / transdisciplinary urban co-production I. InTroducTIon: From unIlocAl To compArATIve TrAnsdIscIplInAry co-producTIon oF Knowledge Co-production (also known as co-creation or co-design (1)) as an approach has evolved since the 1980s. The objective has been to bring different stakeholder groups together in an attempt to overcome often-longstanding antagonisms and wide asymmetries of power by working or researching together to improve outcomes, whether of services or research, and their legitimacy. (2) Essentially, the many modes of co-production constitute more sustained and coherent forms of the diverse participatory research and consultation methods developed to engage with local communities, research subjects, or the intended beneficiaries of development or service investments. There is no clear boundary between co-production and participation-when the intention is to increase diverse stakeholders' power. Indeed, for instance, participatory budgeting, of the kind initiated in Porto Alegre (Brazil) and subsequently applied in diverse cities, (3) has many attributes of co-production. david simon is director of mistra urban Futures and professor of development geography, royal Holloway, university of london.
As widely attested in the literature, the evaluation of co-production is complex and unsuited to the use of conventional quality, monitoring and evaluation indicators. This reflects the uncertainties, co-contributory factors and time lags involved, particularly when seeking to assess institutional and wider societal effects of multistakeholder participatory processes and deliberative fora. The most widely assessed effects include the immediate outputs and outcomes of a project or activity (socalled first order effects) while wider societal or third order effects continue to be the most difficult to capture and, consequently, are the least well studied. Because of this difficulty, the intermediate, second order effects of organisational transformation and policy implementation constitute a growing challenge for evaluation. This is our focus here. After 10 years of transdisciplinary co-productive research practice, Mistra Urban Futures, as an interstitial research space bridging academia and practice working through city-based institutional partnerships called platforms, has reached a phase where some of these effects are becoming distinguishable. Accordingly, we discuss the prerequisites for co-production practitioners, including policy makers, to engage their respective organisations in transitional and incremental experimentation in order to achieve relevant institutional changes. This requires enabling infrastructures that support training, facilitation and the creation of 'safe' spaces to promote trust and legitimacy. These are needed to underpin the longlasting personal and organisational commitments which are crucial to achieve transformative organisational effects.
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