NOTE: These notes can be read in conjunction with the pdf of the lecture powerpoint slides.

In this introductory lecture, I wanted to cover four main things:

1. Give students some background on why the material we cover in TBTE is needed NOW.

Reason 1: Growing inequality, which is of concern not just to civic organisations such as the New Economics Foundation (page 2 of slides) to but also mainstream international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (page 3 of slides).

Reason 2: Environmental degradation associated with climate change, which I covered by talking about black coal mining in the Hunter Valley, Australia and how Newcastle is the world’s largest coal port exporting coal primarily to China, India, South Korea and Taiwan (page 3 to 5 of slides). This was a way of locating me (in my current home of Newcastle), locating the connections between places and highlighting how actions in one place have effects across the planet.

2. Give a brief overview of TBTE in terms of the ethical concerns that each main chapter addresses and the way we layout each main chapter (i.e. starting with a discussion of usual concept; using a story that reframes the usual concept; discussing the reframing in more detail; using diagrams, exercises and other visual tools; and finishing with a range of examples from across the globe to show how people are taking action around the reframed concept) (page 5 to 6 of slides, plus showing book).

3. Based on the brief overview, go through the course outline so that the organisation of lectures starts to make sense and so that the case study assessment item has some context (page 6 of slides).

4. Do a workshop activity – in this case, Chapter 1 Tool: Reframing the Economy. This activity served to introduce students to the idea of economic diversity and also became an ice-breaker and way to find out more about the students (by getting them to talk about the diverse economic activities they are involved in). You can see the results of this activity at Our Class Iceberg Economy.