About the project
The original case studies on this website came from a research project carried out in 2007 at the University of Brighton and funded by the Higher Education Academy Education Subject Centre (ESCalate). The project, carried out jointly by the School of the Environment and Technology and the Centre for Learning and Teaching, aimed to identify, share and encourage the uptake of successful models and strategies for embedding sustainable development into the HE curriculum and addresses learning outcomes, assessment and learning and teaching practices.
It investigated
- The criteria, definitions, examples and models of effective and sustainable development in the HE curriculum
- How HE student SD learning outcomes can be achieved, expressed and embedded through different disciplines and across disciplines, and via community and volunteering opportunities
- How effective models of SD learning can be shared locally and with the HE sectors
Rationale
The UK government is beginning to acknowledge the importance of mainstreaming sustainable development in the higher education sector. In its sustainable development strategy ‘Securing the Future’, (HM government, 2005) the government states that ‘we need to make sustainability literacy a core competency for professional graduates’ (p.39). This statement highlights the importance of preparing graduates for a complex global context in which the broad, holistic understanding developed through ESD will become increasingly valuable to graduates and the world at large. The current UNESCO Decade of Education for Sustainable Development reinforces this perspective, defining ESD as a catalyst for social change. It calls for an education the enables individuals to make decisions that balance and integrate the long term needs of the economy, the natural environment and the societies across the world.
However, many subject departments remain relatively unfamiliar with sustainable development and the concept of ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (Magnier, 2006) and the Dawe report of 2005 found that this lack of familiarity is a barrier as staff do not therefore perceive it as relevant to their subject area. Furthermore, education for sustainable development (ESD) is still a nascent concept – most subject centres consider it as an open ended and contested area (Dawe et al, 2005), and thus with little solid guidance on what it is, even those who think it might be relevant find it difficult to acquire the information they need to begin embedding it in their subject area.
There is much discussion and debate about the pedagogies and content that are relevant to ESD in higher education (Huckle, 2005). There is a strong perception that work-based learning – interactive, participatory and experiential, is an important pedagogical approach to ESD. It enables students to relate to their discipline in a holistic way, exploring its wider dimensions and understanding it as part of a complex real-life system (Selby, 2006). However, little research has taken place to identify and analyse already existing models and strategies for embedding this type of active learning into the curriculum (Kagawa et al, 2006). Even less research has taken place into how to engage and enable lecturers to adopt and adapt ESD pedagogies for their own teaching.
Thus this research project has addressed two key areas of need: collecting and analysing examples of active and community volunteer based learning, and exploring ways of disseminating these examples so that more subject centres can see how it works in their discipline.
Bibliography
- Dawe, G, Jucker, R, Martin, S (2005) Sustainable Development in Higher Education: Current
Practice and Future Developments, A report for the Higher Education Academy.
- Huckle, J. (2005) Education for Sustainable Development: a briefing paper for the Teacher Training Agency
- Kagawa, K., Selby, D., and Trier, C., (2006) Exploring Student perceptions of interactive pedagogies in education for sustainable development, Planet No.15 p 53-56
- Magnier, K., (2006) Sustainability as a troublesome concept in the GEES disciplines, Planet No 17, p 32-33
- Selby, D. (2006 The Catalyst that is sustainability: bringing permeability to disciplinary boundaries, Planet No.17 p 57 – 59
- UK Government, (2005) Securing the Future, The Stationery Office