Research into and practice of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD) have been incre... more Research into and practice of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD) have been increasing during the last two decades. These have focused on providing sustainability education to future generations of professionals. In this context, there has been considerable progress in the incorporation of SD in universities' curricula. Most of these efforts have focussed on the design and delivery of sustainability-oriented competences. Some peer-reviewed articles have proposed different pedagogical approaches to better deliver SD in these courses; however, there has been limited research on the connection between how courses are delivered (pedagogical approaches) and how they may affect sustainability competences. This paper analyses competences and pedagogical approaches, using hermeneutics to connect these in a framework based on twelve competences and twelve pedagogical approaches found in the literature. The framework connects the course aims to delivery in HESD by highlighting the connections between pedagogical approaches and competences in a matrix structure. The framework is aimed at helping educators in creating and updating their courses to provide a more complete, holistic, and systemic sustainability education to future leaders, decision makers, educators, and change agents. To better develop mind-sets and actions of future generations, we must provide students with a complete set of sustainability competences.
The Swedish Government appointed the public sector to be a role model in the work for sustainable... more The Swedish Government appointed the public sector to be a role model in the work for sustainable development in the society and has, since 1996, given public agencies, including 35 universities directives to implement environmental management systems. This paper follows the progress of the universities based on their annual environmental reports for 2003 with some comparisons made to studies for 2000 and 2002. The study indicates that there is progress in the environmental management systems process. More than 60% of the universities have made environmental reviews, created environmental policies and defined objectives and targets. Faculty, staff and management are going through environmental training and universities are reaching the stage of having revisions of their environmental management systems, but only a few universities are aiming at an ISO 14001 certification. As universities work with their indirect environmental aspects in education and direct environmental aspects in ...
Enhancing education for sustainable development, ESD, in higher education is a global challenge. ... more Enhancing education for sustainable development, ESD, in higher education is a global challenge. Most countries have national quality assurance demands for higher education that could benefit ESD. This innovative way to develop ESD has not been investigated before. The authors studied how different higher education institutions enhance ESD, in particular with quality, environmental and integrated management systems. The research was done as an exploratory comparative study. The results in earlier research about curriculum development for ESD from the last years were studied. Based on the results a model of a process for enhancing ESD, which can be used in the management systems, was developed. 27 higher education institutions from the Nordic countries answered a survey and eleven institutions wrote reports of how they are enhancing ESD. The results from the research, survey and institutions were presented at a seminar, where the model was further developed. The authors found that in...
ABSTRACT Education for sustainable development creates new challenges for universities where facu... more ABSTRACT Education for sustainable development creates new challenges for universities where faculty and staff are expected to prepare students to meet complexities in society and take responsibility for sustainability, which scientists are urgently calling for today. Few studies exist on how faculty and staff perceive sustainability in their functions at the university based on long-term sustainability implementation and training within a 14001 certified environmental management system. This university case study with data collected by open-ended survey questions explores how faculty and staff express their role in sustainability work within a Swedish university. The authors developed a model to illustrate development of sustainability competence and its institutionalization. Results show a large variation in perceptions of sustainability from waste separation to a complex understanding and integration of issues into education. Integration of sustainable development as a university core competence is difficult for a whole university to reach. Interpretational flexibility provides opportunities for discussing the sustainability concept in diverse academic traditions in different disciplines. Top management inspiration on different university levels is essential for integration. Continuous training and routines contribute to movement towards institutionalization of sustainability activities and to following up the process in universities.
ABSTRACT Sustainability aspects in higher education must be enhanced with more concrete actions. ... more ABSTRACT Sustainability aspects in higher education must be enhanced with more concrete actions. Universities are globally required to have quality assurance to secure and improve teaching and learning, and they use management systems to this aim. Integrating education for sustainable development and management systems are alike in that they are based on continuous improvement and systematic thinking; for both processes all stakeholders need to be involved. Although quality assurance is compulsory for higher education, education for sustainable development has barely been examined or integrated in this context. This article examines how voluntary integration of education for sustainable development into management systems at universities could facilitate a scheme to overcome the challenges to integrating education for sustainable development that were identified in previous research. For this, a process framework for integrating education for sustainable development with management systems was developed in a network of 11 universities in the Nordic countries. The framework included planning, assessment, monitoring, and implementation of education for sustainable development. It was piloted and applied to identify relevant sustainability aspects in different disciplines, examples of which are provided in the article. The framework can be applied to visualize the implementation of education for sustainable development.
ABSTRACT The global goal for education for sustainable development (ESD) is to integrate it at al... more ABSTRACT The global goal for education for sustainable development (ESD) is to integrate it at all levels of education. For ensuring it the change has to be put in practice, by transforming universities. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) strive to be among the regions that lead the way in enhancing ESD, and want to increase cooperation with China. It is therefore interesting to compare the region with China. We compared ESD and quality assurance between these areas at both policy and implementation levels. The former was based on literature, and the latter was studied with specific surveys in academia in both regions; in two provinces in China and in the Nordic countries. We investigated the possibilities to improve ESD in these regions by benefiting from quality assurance requirements. We found that both regions enhance ESD. The rather similar quality assurance requirements do not include ESD. In China, the respondents viewed quality assurance as sustainable development.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2005
Purpose – This study of environment management systems implementation in Swedish universities con... more Purpose – This study of environment management systems implementation in Swedish universities contributes to the dialogue about the role of management systems as tools in developing sustainability in higher education. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study is based on Government directives that make environmental management systems implementation compulsory for all public organisations in Sweden, annual environmental reports of Swedish universities for
Research into and practice of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD) have been incre... more Research into and practice of Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD) have been increasing during the last two decades. These have focused on providing sustainability education to future generations of professionals. In this context, there has been considerable progress in the incorporation of SD in universities' curricula. Most of these efforts have focussed on the design and delivery of sustainability-oriented competences. Some peer-reviewed articles have proposed different pedagogical approaches to better deliver SD in these courses; however, there has been limited research on the connection between how courses are delivered (pedagogical approaches) and how they may affect sustainability competences. This paper analyses competences and pedagogical approaches, using hermeneutics to connect these in a framework based on twelve competences and twelve pedagogical approaches found in the literature. The framework connects the course aims to delivery in HESD by highlighting the connections between pedagogical approaches and competences in a matrix structure. The framework is aimed at helping educators in creating and updating their courses to provide a more complete, holistic, and systemic sustainability education to future leaders, decision makers, educators, and change agents. To better develop mind-sets and actions of future generations, we must provide students with a complete set of sustainability competences.
The Swedish Government appointed the public sector to be a role model in the work for sustainable... more The Swedish Government appointed the public sector to be a role model in the work for sustainable development in the society and has, since 1996, given public agencies, including 35 universities directives to implement environmental management systems. This paper follows the progress of the universities based on their annual environmental reports for 2003 with some comparisons made to studies for 2000 and 2002. The study indicates that there is progress in the environmental management systems process. More than 60% of the universities have made environmental reviews, created environmental policies and defined objectives and targets. Faculty, staff and management are going through environmental training and universities are reaching the stage of having revisions of their environmental management systems, but only a few universities are aiming at an ISO 14001 certification. As universities work with their indirect environmental aspects in education and direct environmental aspects in ...
Enhancing education for sustainable development, ESD, in higher education is a global challenge. ... more Enhancing education for sustainable development, ESD, in higher education is a global challenge. Most countries have national quality assurance demands for higher education that could benefit ESD. This innovative way to develop ESD has not been investigated before. The authors studied how different higher education institutions enhance ESD, in particular with quality, environmental and integrated management systems. The research was done as an exploratory comparative study. The results in earlier research about curriculum development for ESD from the last years were studied. Based on the results a model of a process for enhancing ESD, which can be used in the management systems, was developed. 27 higher education institutions from the Nordic countries answered a survey and eleven institutions wrote reports of how they are enhancing ESD. The results from the research, survey and institutions were presented at a seminar, where the model was further developed. The authors found that in...
ABSTRACT Education for sustainable development creates new challenges for universities where facu... more ABSTRACT Education for sustainable development creates new challenges for universities where faculty and staff are expected to prepare students to meet complexities in society and take responsibility for sustainability, which scientists are urgently calling for today. Few studies exist on how faculty and staff perceive sustainability in their functions at the university based on long-term sustainability implementation and training within a 14001 certified environmental management system. This university case study with data collected by open-ended survey questions explores how faculty and staff express their role in sustainability work within a Swedish university. The authors developed a model to illustrate development of sustainability competence and its institutionalization. Results show a large variation in perceptions of sustainability from waste separation to a complex understanding and integration of issues into education. Integration of sustainable development as a university core competence is difficult for a whole university to reach. Interpretational flexibility provides opportunities for discussing the sustainability concept in diverse academic traditions in different disciplines. Top management inspiration on different university levels is essential for integration. Continuous training and routines contribute to movement towards institutionalization of sustainability activities and to following up the process in universities.
ABSTRACT Sustainability aspects in higher education must be enhanced with more concrete actions. ... more ABSTRACT Sustainability aspects in higher education must be enhanced with more concrete actions. Universities are globally required to have quality assurance to secure and improve teaching and learning, and they use management systems to this aim. Integrating education for sustainable development and management systems are alike in that they are based on continuous improvement and systematic thinking; for both processes all stakeholders need to be involved. Although quality assurance is compulsory for higher education, education for sustainable development has barely been examined or integrated in this context. This article examines how voluntary integration of education for sustainable development into management systems at universities could facilitate a scheme to overcome the challenges to integrating education for sustainable development that were identified in previous research. For this, a process framework for integrating education for sustainable development with management systems was developed in a network of 11 universities in the Nordic countries. The framework included planning, assessment, monitoring, and implementation of education for sustainable development. It was piloted and applied to identify relevant sustainability aspects in different disciplines, examples of which are provided in the article. The framework can be applied to visualize the implementation of education for sustainable development.
ABSTRACT The global goal for education for sustainable development (ESD) is to integrate it at al... more ABSTRACT The global goal for education for sustainable development (ESD) is to integrate it at all levels of education. For ensuring it the change has to be put in practice, by transforming universities. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) strive to be among the regions that lead the way in enhancing ESD, and want to increase cooperation with China. It is therefore interesting to compare the region with China. We compared ESD and quality assurance between these areas at both policy and implementation levels. The former was based on literature, and the latter was studied with specific surveys in academia in both regions; in two provinces in China and in the Nordic countries. We investigated the possibilities to improve ESD in these regions by benefiting from quality assurance requirements. We found that both regions enhance ESD. The rather similar quality assurance requirements do not include ESD. In China, the respondents viewed quality assurance as sustainable development.
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2005
Purpose – This study of environment management systems implementation in Swedish universities con... more Purpose – This study of environment management systems implementation in Swedish universities contributes to the dialogue about the role of management systems as tools in developing sustainability in higher education. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study is based on Government directives that make environmental management systems implementation compulsory for all public organisations in Sweden, annual environmental reports of Swedish universities for
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