Critical Reflective Essay: Evolving Perceptions of Sustainable Development

In Week 1, we read Robert Chamber’s critical reflective piece on perspectives and agendas for development. For your final assessment you are asked to engage your evolving understanding of development in practice to write a critically reflective, theoretically and empirically grounded essay that outlines your personal agenda for development.

This is your final piece of work in the sustainability and development capstone subject. It is expected that your level of critical thinking, reflexivity and conceptual understanding has reached a level where freedom is valued. For this reason, I have not set an essay question. Instead, I provide a broad aim for this critical reflective essay:

Drawing only on the materials provided in this subject including readings, lectures, guest lectures and the grant proposal, outline how your perception of development has evolved. You can focus on what interests you, for example, the week on gender and development. Use at least 5 readings from the course for this task (this could include the recommended readings rather than the compulsory readings and at least three of the guest lecturers case studies.

Look at Chambers article for guidance and inspiration. You are welcome to reference it. You’ll notice there is a kind of pattern to Chamber’s article. He begins by making a statement about development for example look at the section, whose reality counts? After making an initial statement about how the poor and marginalised are ignored and misread (you would need references to asset this), he talks about how this problem could be addressed - he suggests PRA (obviously more controversial than he realises!). Chamber’s then draws on evidence from the literature to support his proposal. He cites sources from Jamaica, Gambia, Guinea, India and Pakistan. The article continues this way until he comes to define good development which he calls “responsible wellbeing”. I don’t expect you will have your own model, but you might cobble together elements from the course and your own experiences to formulate desirable attributes.

Duncan Green’s Chapter 12 uses a power and systems approach which you might find inspiring and helpful in this regard.

Below is a list of Do’s and Don’ts that you might find useful:

Do:

1. Write a plan in dot points.
2. A good paragraph structure is: 1) a topic sentence (statement about what paragraph is about), followed by 2) your own reflection and then 3) supporting literature.
3. Use credible scholarly literature from a peer-reviewed journal thoughtfully– at least 5 for this task, but at least three of the guest lecturers case studies and at least three readings from this subject’s compulsory readings.
4. Get your APA referencing right! Easy way marks are lost. Check LMS link to library. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/library/assignment-thesis-support
5. Keep on task. Respond to the aim I’ve stated above.
6. Focus on what interests you.
7. Use the spell checker – again, easy to lose marks here.
8. Proof read (read it aloud or get a friend or relative to read it).
9. Use short succinct sentences with simple vocabulary.
10. Look at the marking Rubric! Link on LMS.

Don’t:

1. Use Chat GTP or other AI software to write your essay.
2. Just start writing!
3. Write paragraphs without a point or supporting evidence.
4. Use scholarly literature where it doesn’t support the argument.
5. Write aimlessly without a plan.
6. Assume there are no mistakes.
7. Use slang, sexist language e.g. “man-made” or jargon without definition.
8. Try to sound clever by writing long sentences with big words.
9. Use sweeping generalisations without evidence, “the majority of people think that development is a good thing” instead “According to Chamber (1997, p. 16) there is a popular perception that development is a good thing”.

I hope you enjoy this final assessment task. I’m so looking forward to hearing about how your understanding of development has changed over the last three or more years. Congratulations on reaching this milestone