Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

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.