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Assignment brief (covering both the formative
and summative assessment)
• Formative assignment: summarise your chosen issue in an introductory
positioning statement of a maximum of 500 words. Your IPS should include
key salient points of debate specific to your chosen issue; your emerging
critical understanding of how this issue is entangled with and/or related to
systems of racial, patriarchal, and/or globalised capitalism; and your
considered reflections on your own positionality in relation to these.
You will need to undertake independent research drawing on academic
sources on the issue, as well as reports prepared by NGOs, think tanks, and
more reputable media outlets, where appropriate and relevant.
Please note: As you will know, the mark you earn on your formative assessment is
for indicative feedback purposes only, and does NOT form part of your summative,
overall mark for the unit. The key purpose of this assignment is to give you an
opportunity to receive feedback which will help in the development of your final,
assessed piece of work, i.e., the summative assessment.
Additional formative tasks which help you learn
and prepare you for summative assessment
Regular attendance in class, consistent engagement wit the core course material
and further reading, and comprehensive preparation for lectures and tutorials will
help you to learn and prepare for summative tasks.
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In addition to the formative feedback you will receive on your formative assignment,
and the general and specific guidance which we will give throughout the unit,
Assignment Advice Clinics will be scheduled prior to submission of your summative
assignment (during week 24).
To ensure that the teaching team can give all students fair and reasonably equal
support, each student is permitted one brief meeting within the Assignment Advice
Clinics with one member of the teaching team specifically to discuss the summative
assignment and essay plan. Beyond this assignment-focused meeting and
accompanying 2-hour Q&A lecture session on assignment guidance, the team will be
available during their feedback and advice hours (and at other times by appointment)
to advise on any other aspect of the unit as is usual practice.
Tasks which count towards your unit mark
(summative)
The summative assessment consists of two parts: a 2000-word essay, plus a 500-
word personal reflective summary.
1 An individual essay (of 2000 words maximum), responding to the
following question:
Albert Einstein famously stated that we cannot solve problems by using the same
kind of thinking that was used when we created them. The world (encompassing
humans, plants, animals and the wider biosphere) faces huge environmental, social
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and economic challenges. How can these be understood (and potentially addressed)
in new ways by drawing on the critical lenses introduced through the unit?
To engage with this question, you must:
• Choose ONE issue related to CSR and sustainability (e.g., carbon
emissions/footprint, fair wages, fair trade, workers’ rights, community
engagement and wider social responsibilities, use of ‘natural resources’,
pollution, ‘green’ certification schemes, legislation and policy, etc.). You will
find it helpful to select something focused – so, for example, a specific
environmental issue such as palm oil production, or universal basic income as
an aspect of fair wages, or the tax status and tax evasion practices of
multinational companies. For other examples of issues chosen by
previous students, please see a detailed list and further guidance on
topic choice at the end of this document. Your chosen issue does not
have to be something that we have directly covered in class. It will help
sustain your in-depth engagement with this issue if you choose something
about which you care, or in which you are genuinely interested.
• Summarise the issue in an introductory positioning statement, to include
salient points of debate; your emerging critical understanding of how this
issue is entangled with and/or related to systems of racial, patriarchal, and/or
globalised capitalism; and your own positionality in relation to these. You will
need to undertake independent research drawing on academic sources on the
issue, as well as reports prepared by NGOs, think tanks, and more reputable
EFIM30012 Unit Handbook CSR & Sustainability
26
media outlets, where appropriate and relevant. This introductory
positioning statement is also the formative assessment and should total
a maximum of 500 words. (You are encouraged to use the formative
feedback you receive to revise and strengthen your IPS before submitting a
final version within your summative assignment. Remember that the mark you
earn on your formative assessment is for indicative feedback purposes only,
and does NOT form part of your summative, overall mark for the unit. The
key purpose of the formative assignment is to give you an opportunity to
receive feedback which will help in the development of your final, assessed
piece of work, i.e., the summative assessment.)
• Analyse the issue through TWO of the theoretical radical lenses outlined in
Part Two of the Unit (i.e., deep ecological perspectives and/or Indigenous
wisdom/traditional ecological knowledges; (eco)feminism and/or feminist
ethics of care; systems and systemic thinking, e.g., circular economy). This
analysis is an opportunity for you to demonstrate both your critical and
personal, reflexive engagement with the material.
• Synthesise the key insights (and any questions or avenues for further inquiry)
you have developed through exploring your chosen issue through your two
chosen lenses. Make sure that you directly answer the question in the
assignment brief (above) by explicitly drawing out the key implications for
framing (and potentially addressing) contemporary challenges in new ways –
again, we look forward to seeing you position yourselves within this learning
(not outside of it), which means that here we would expect to see you
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engaging reflexively with implications as they relate to your own practice, and
your own being and participation in the world.
This piece of work should be a maximum of 2,000 words long.
2 Personal reflection summary (of 500 words)
In addition to the above, you are required to include a personal reflection summary,
or a representative sample of your learning log, as an Appendix to your summative
assignment. This might take several forms, and you will be given further details and
advice on the process of keeping a learning log, and preparing this reflective piece,
as we go through the unit (see Blackboard). Your reflective piece should summarise
or showcase what you understand to be key moments or elements of your learning
journey, and your personal, holistic engagement with key themes, questions, and/or
challenges. We would expect this reflective piece to be in the region of 500 words,
or equivalent (if you are including non-verbal presentational forms, such as artwork,
photography, poetry, etc., alongside text). To clarify: this is in addition to the 2,000-
word essay which forms the main part of this assignment.
Please note the following:
• The word count does NOT include the bibliography.
• The 2,500 total word count does NOT include any appendices EXCEPT the
personal reflection summary. Aside from the personal reflective piece which
you must include as an appendix, any other appendix you choose to include
is exclusively for material that supports and is supplementary to the main
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body of the writing, but not strictly necessary to it. In other words, please do
not attempt to offload into an appendix anything that is key to the argument
you present in the main essay. If you do put material into an appendix that is
not discussed or which should appear in the main essay, it will be
disregarded.
• The word count DOES include any tables and endnotes which form part of
your main argument (again, please don’t try to get around this by including
these as appendices).
The assignment should be written as an academic essay and not as a report. We
require the essay to be prepared in Word or as a pdf, double-spaced and with
margins of at least 2.5cm.
We would expect the structure and word breakdown to be approximately as follows:
• Readers’ guide to the whole piece: this should provide a brief ‘road map’ for
the reader, and briefly summarise the key points of the argument you will
develop through the piece: 100 words
• Introductory positioning statement: in which you introduce and position
your chosen issue, drawing on critiques of racial, patriarchal, and/or
globalised capitalism: 500 words
• Analysis of and reflection on your chosen issue drawing on your two
chosen critical/radical lenses: 500 words each, totalling 1000 words
• Synthesis of the key insights (and any questions or avenues for further
inquiry) you have developed through exploring your chosen issue through
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your two chosen lenses, along with your answer to the central question posed
in the assignment brief: 400 words
• A final personal reflective piece to be included as an appendix,
summarising or showcasing your learning and drawing from the learning log
you are encouraged to keep for this unit: approximately 500 words.
Assignment advice clinics
To ensure that the teaching team can give all students fair and reasonably equal
support, each student is permitted one brief meeting with one member of the
teaching team specifically to discuss the summative assignment and essay plan.
These Assignment Advice Clinics will be scheduled to take place during Week
24. Beyond this assignment-focused meeting, the team will be available during their
feedback and advice hours to advise on any other aspect of the unit as is usual
practice.
Tips for success
• Students who engage critically and reflexively with the material, rather than
just describe it, will be awarded the highest marks.
• You are expected to read widely around all elements of the assignment.
• You are expected to write to a high academic standard. This means properly
referencing your work and constructing a bibliography.
• Given the nature of the critical and reflexive engagement we are inviting, you
are encouraged to use the first-person active voice in your writing, wherever
appropriate. The key point to remember here is that we are asking you to
position yourselves reflexively within this learning (not outside of it).
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• There is no set minimum number of expected references. We will judge your
work by the relevance of your reading and the extent to which it supports your
argument, not by counting how many references you have used. However,
please see above regarding reading widely.
• Do not think that you can get around the word count by putting additional
material in an appendix. Appendices are strictly for supplementary materials
which support something you have discussed in the main essay, but which
are not strictly necessary for your argument. You will not gain extra marks by
loading the appendices with extra material.
• DON’T copy ready-made materials from the internet or any other source, and
DON’T use AI to generate any part of your text. It will be found easily by
Turnitin.
When assessment does not go to plan
For students who are unable to submit or pass their summative assessment for this
unit, the re-assessment arrangements will be exactly the same as above: i.e.,
students in this position will be asked to submit for re-assessment a (revised) piece
that follows the same brief as did the original assessment (as described above).
Avoiding academic misconduct
The lack of a proper reference list or appropriate in-text referencing will affect your
mark and may be considered plagiarism, which is a serious offence.
There are different acceptable referencing styles; however, we recommend the
Harvard referencing technique. More information is available here:
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/subject-support/referencing/
