JGHE Symposium: The Talessi Project The Talessi Project: Promoting active learning for interdisciplinarity, values awareness and critical thinking in environmental higher education

Abstract

This paper introduces the TALESSI (Teaching and Learning at the Environment-Science-Society Interface) project. It also serves as a point of departure for the remaining contributions in this Symposium, all of which have developed out of papers that were originally presented at a TALESSI conference in April 1998. We principally seek to explain why and how the TALESSI project promotes active learning for interdisciplinarity, values awareness and critical thinking in environmental higher education (including environmental studies, environmental science and geography). We also introduce the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE) Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL), which provides the greater part of TALESSI's financial support, as well as the wider strategic framework within which the project operates. This in turn provides a context for TALESSI's own objectives, which (in summary) are to develop, pilot, evaluate and disseminate teaching and learning resources that promote active learning for interdisciplinarity, values awareness and critical thinking; and to facilitate debate and the sharing of good practice in these aspects of environmental higher education.