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Urbanisation and industrialisation have contributed to significant and detrimental changes in the earth's natural environments. The concept of social-ecological resilience can assist this problem, by integrating the consideration of human and ecological systems in decision-making. An implication is that built environment professionals must be competent in social-ecological resilience knowledge and skills to ensure cities are well adapted to current environmental challenges, and do not further contribute to them. Yet the capabilities of built environment professionals to incorporate resilience thinking (theory and knowledge) into their work (skills and practice), is not well understood and is not well addressed in education theory. This paper contributes to this gap by: exploring the social-ecological resilience knowledge, skills, and practical experience of Australian built environment professionals, thereby identifying gaps to address in further and higher education. Results indicate that built environment professionals' know about social-ecological resilience, but they identify their practical experience is low. Additionally, respondents are more confident with their abilities, compared to colleagues, and their profession at large. The results indicate that further and higher education offerings (e.g. university education, continuing professional education, and practice) must assist built environment professionals to further develop social-ecological skills. As one respondent stated -- it will require 'rethinking the way we practice our professions'.

In this paper we examine and critique adaptive management (AM) practices for protected areas (PAs), in pursuit of practices that can account for more-than-human relations. Engaging with empirical research from Australian PAs, we reflect on the formation of PAs as "exceptional places" where Nature is implicitly/explicitly to be controlled. We find that AM practices harness the spatial and temporal characteristics of the PAs to deliberatively construct a static and timeless scene, creating a particular vision of Nature. This metaphoric vision is captured "like a postcard." It reinforces and justifies static protectionism as Nature conservation, arraigning a series of material objects that are meant to assist with maintaining that image: that "reality." Using sentipensar as an exemplar, we explore and highlight relational and everchanging human-nonhuman engagements to contest the ontological dimensions of a static Nature and ideas of control and power associated with the binaries of Nature and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, a study titled "Living in the landscapes of the 21st century" was conducted in 11 high schools in metropolitan and rural Victoria. The research team investigated Year 10 students' conceptions of landscapes in order to explore their understandings of natural resource management (NRM), including agriculture, food, land and water management. The aim of the project was to consider how students' career and future aspirations connected with their understandings of landscape futures. There was no discernible difference in the results for metropolitan and rural students with the majority of students expressing a generalised concern for the environment; however, this concern did not translate into career insights associated with NRM. The researchers concluded that there is a need for a stronger emphasis on NRM education as it relates to essential life-sustaining services for all citizens. In addition, it is suggested that university recruitment strategies utilise word selection/description and visual imagery associated with landscapes in order to engage future managers of our natural resources. (Contains 2 figures, 2 tables, and 2 notes.)

Post-modern theorists have challenged the totalizing and unifying ambitions of change management practices. This paper explores how a narrative action research approach may be used to combine our modernist commitment to facilitate change and collaboration in the land management context with a post-modern sensitivity to complexity and difference. It critically examines the way in which this approach was implemented within a Victorian state government project that attempted to instigate a collaborative approach to land management. The narrative action research approach problematized the project team's representations of the project and brought into view the way in which these erased the space for genuine participation by the broader community. However, while the narrative action research approach highlighted some of the ambiguities that existed within the project, it did very little to change the course of the project. The paper identifies ways in which the approach needs to be modified and concludes that it warrants further research and development.