How can university staff, across the full range of subjects, embed sustainable development into learning and teaching? A research project conducted at the University of Brighton in 2007-2008 aimed to identify, share and encourage the uptake of successful models and strategies for embedding sustainable development into the higher education curriculum. This site gathers together the series of case studies of successful models from that project, with other useful resources and links.
Recently added resources:
- Engaging in the debates, making the changes: Taking Sustainable Development further forward in the curricula of the Faculty of Science and Engineering
Jenny Elliott, SET, May 2009. - Sorted (Sustainability Online resources and Toolkit for Education) is a new website developed by the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) in conjunction with the Learning & Skills Council. Two useful downloadable documents are:
Creating the Conditions for Embedding Sustainable Development in the Curriculum and
- The new Handbook of Sustainability Literacy, launched September 2009, is also available online at www.sustainability-literacy.org The authors include leading sustainability educators as well as specialists from a wide range of disciplines from engineering to art, and the resource will be useful for lecturers, teachers and students across all study areas. The project was funded by the Higher Education Academy Education for Sustainable Development Project and conducted by the Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges in partnership with the University of Gloucestershire Centre for Active Learning, the University of Brighton and the UNU RCE (Severn). The paperback book is edited by Arran Stibbe from the University of Gloucestershire and the multimedia version, by Arran Stibbe and Poppy Villiers-Stuart (of the University of Brighton ESD group) is available at www.sustainability-literacy.org
Education for Sustainable Development Conference, October 2008
This conference, held on 17th October, 2008, was for all those interested in education for community development, sustainability, social justice, wellbeing, participative democracy, corporate responsibility, ecological balance, citizenship, social cohesion, holistic thinking… It explored how these areas coalesce under the banner More...
Ecological Economics: Masters level module
This module is offered by the Department of Anthropology in the University of Vienna, and is taken by Masters Students of many different backgrounds from economics to medicine. It is run as an intensive one-week module. More...
Sport: Football for Peace
Lecturer Gary Stidder demonstrates how students from Sports Education degrees can graduate with an understanding not just of sport itself but of the power of sports to catalyse social change. Although not a formal part of the Sports Studies degree, each year a number of Gary’s students choose to take part in this optional summer project as a supplement to their formal studies and as a way to gain some real-life experience of being a sports trainer. More...
Geography: the Ethical Geographer
Lecture and creator of this module, Martin Haigh, considers education for sustainable development to be ‘a very personal issue’. He views it as a move away from the traditional higher educational learning format of impartiality and detached observation. More...
English Language: Discourse and Sustainability
Discourse and Sustainability is a level one module introducing a key skill for working in a globalised world; sustainability literacy. The basis of this skill is the acquisition of a critical understanding of the values and world views fostered by dominant cultural discourses, and the effects of these values on people and planet. More...
Product Design with Professional Experience BSc Hons: Design Projects
This module is part of a degree that makes sustainability considerations integral to product design learning. They have five areas of assessment: Human factors, Technicality, Communication, Commercial and Integration. Sustainability is imbedded explicitly into 'Human factors' and Technicality. More...
Primary Education BA
Kevin Fossey teaches on a Primary Education BA and even though time is tight and often he only gets to spend three hours on each subject, he makes a concerted effort to bring the principles of sustainable development into his teaching. He places significant emphasis on the importance of teachers as role models in the class room and feeds this directly into training for citizenship teaching: 'I think with my citizenship stuff... More...
Media Studies BA Hons: Community Project
This level three module provides media students with the opportunity to use their PR, marketing, Photoshop and website building skills for the benefit of the local community. More...
MDes Textiles with Business Studies: level two project
Sustainability as a Way of Thinking 'It becomes part of the way they think, the same way as they think about designing in a colour range' This unit of study is part of a wider fashion degree in which considerations of ethics, social justice and ecological factors are as automatic as other considerations such as colour range or customer profile. More...
MA Creative Media: Mediating the Environment
This module explores the environment as a contested area, asking students what is meant by the term 'environment'? Lecturer Julie Doyle aims to cultivate an understanding of how the language of the media defines our perceptions and our relationship with the environment, exploring questions such as Where do our understandings come from? What are the political and social forces constructing these understandings? More...
MA Applied Ethics
This master's course aims to enable students to critically analyse life around them and make clearer judgements. It explores moral objectivity and ethics in different areas of life such as media or education. It is taught mainly through seminar discussion, and the first core course develops the student's ability to philosophise and to differentiate between a valid argument and an invalid argument, equipping them basic philosophical skills. More...
Geology: Environmental geology/professional practice, Level 3
When originally set up, this intensive one week module was considered quite a radical idea. Moving away from pure science and technicality, it aims to develop the 'soft skills' that students will need when working with geology in the real world; communication, team working, community consultation, sustainability; fitting the science and technicalities of Geology into 'the bigger picture' as course designer Norman Moles put it. More...
Design Technology PGCE
Dean Hackett runs a project module covering two areas: technical drawing skills and manual workshop skills, using technology such as computer aided design. Students are introduced to these two areas and then given an entire semester to develop relevant skills and competencies. More...
Creative Writing
Jess runs a creative writing module in which she encourages her students to become more socially conscious as writers. She says 'university should not be about just ticking boxes, so that they get their English degree, but [about producing] ... More...
Community Participation and Development
This module is available to students from a variety of different degrees spanning the School of Applied Social Science, the School of Environment and Technology and the School of Pharmacy. It is an optional module in which they choose a local community organisation relevant to their own discipline, and spend a certain amount of hours volunteering there, reflecting and reporting on their experience with the aid of individual tutorials. More...
BA International Tourism Management: Tourism, Planning and Development, level 3
The aim of this module is to enable students to understand a tourism plan, including both traditional factors such as markets, access, customer base, and also more recent trends such as the involvement of local people and environmental sustainability. Taking it a step further, lecturer Pete Burns encourages his students to think of how tourism can be used as a tool for achieving sustainability. More...
BA Business Studies, BA Business Management and BA International Business: Climate Change and Global Business Operations
This module introduces students to the relationship between climate change and global business operations. Lecturer Kevin Turner uses PowerPoint presentations taken from the IPCC reports to help his students get to grips with the science of climate change. These cover basic themes such as where CO2 comes from, where does green house gas come from and energy production methods. More...
Architecture and Design BA: A lecture from the History and Theory course
Karin Jascke takes a phenomenological approach, looking at architecture 'as a body that is engaged with every other thing that is in the world, and every other being'. More...
Student Learning in the Community
This CUPP guide explains student learning in the community (SLIC) and gives examples from around the university. SLIC “relates to a practical task or project carried out either for or with a community organisation. Projects are either suggested by local groups or identified by students through established volunteering networks. More...
EAUC Green Gown awards: case studies
The Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges presents several Green Gown awards each year. The following courses won awards for course content in 2006/07: More...
Sustainable Development Research Forum, July 2007
19th and 20th July 2007 After a keynote presentation by Stuart Laing, Andrew Miller gave an overview of the conference structure. More...