Eco-educational Approaches
Taking Stock of Sustainable Development in Swedish Higher Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Björn Hassler
Integration of sustainable development, Agenda 2030, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into higher education curricula is becoming mainstream worldwide. Furthermore, the research field of ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) is rapidly expanding. The academic corpus of case studies on sustainability integration in university curricula is growing fast. However, few studies systematically analyse variation in integration strategies within countries. This study takes stock of how sustainable development is integrated into higher education curricula in Sweden, based on self-evaluation material collected in 2017 from all Swedish universities and colleges (N=49). While the Swedish Higher Education Authority collected this material for assessing compliance with national learning objectives, this study draws on this material to scientifically analyse how integration strategies, contents and didactic perspectives are portrayed in the self-evaluations. Tentative results show a substantial variation in areas such as top-down versus bottom-up implementation, preference given to systemic or unidimensional perspectives of sustainable development, and whether the SDGs and Agenda 2030 are explicitly referred to in the curricula. Moreover, quite different views are adopted concerning whether knowledge or political change ought to be prioritised. This diversity in how sustainable development is integrated into higher education curricula seems to at least partly depend on whether natural science, technology studies, social science or the humanities dominates teaching and research at the particular university or college. However, factors such as pressures from state authorities, student opinions and views from within academia about the proper role of higher education seem to play important roles as well.
Contribution of 'Sustainability Cluster' to Teacher-Training Students' Subjective Knowledge for Sustainability Concepts and Environmental Topics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sara Pe'er, Michal Gross
Teachers have an important role in promoting environmental sustainability to their students. To train primary student teachers to teach sustainability, a 'sustainability cluster' of courses were conducted (introduction for sustainability, integrative teaching designing, computer integration in teaching, and practice teaching of integrative sustainable unite) in Oranim College of Education. This study explored the question does learning and teaching sustainability in the 'sustainability cluster' revile a change in students' feeling about their knowledge and understanding of sustainability concept and environmental topics? Thirty-three primary student teachers in their second year participated in a pre-post intervention study that conducted in a mixed method. The subjective knowledge (i.e. what the participants feel they know) of 13 sustainability concepts and environmental topics was investigated with a close-ended and open-ended questionnaire. In the pre-test the students reported a low to moderate subjective knowledge that significantly raised in the post-test. However, the qualitative analysis revealed that the learning didn’t lead to deep understanding and part of the misconceptions remained stable. The improvement of subjective knowledge score after learning, provides the understanding that it is important to teach sustainability to all student teachers. In contrast to that, the findings of misconception in environmental topics and sustainability concept after learning, require seeking of teaching strategy that will lead to scientific understanding.
Infusing Permaculture into the Curriculum: A Partnership between the Adrian Dominican Sisters and the Siena Heights University Honors Program
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Julieanna Frost
Siena Heights University is a Roman Catholic liberal arts university affiliated with the Adrian Dominican Sisters (ADS) and located in rural southeast Michigan. In 2017, a new Honors Program was instituted at the university and took inspiration from ADS Permaculture Center in the development of its Honors seminars. This paper reviews the process used to implement this innovative approach to sustainability education.
