Abstract

Sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs) has attracted much attention. For example, researchers propose the Whole Institution Approaches (WIAs) to sustainability emphasizing that all learning is embedded within its socio-physical contexts. Research suggests that the moral enthusiasm for teaching in the sustainability domain must not take away from precise analysis of problems, solutions, their implantability and their interconnected complexity. However, there is insufficient attention in the extant literature to what actions need to be taken and what critical factors that could enable the actions in HEIs. Addressing this gap, our research used bibliometric analysis (R Biblioshiny) to examine the main themes, contexts, trends and methodological approaches in sustainability research in HEIs, and identifies potential future directions for scholars to advance this field. The methodological steps involved selection of the top 100 frequent keywords and calculation of the TF-KAI values. We decided to improve our theoretical relevance by the creation of a domain-specific corpus, which comprised 18,793 articles containing the keyword “sustainability” in the domain corpus. Using these articles, we conducted a second word frequency analysis and selected the top 100 frequent words and calculated the TF-KAI values, resulting in top 24 keywords and analyses of 12,405 records. The initial findings show that the most frequent occurring themes are sustainability, performance, management and impact. The analysis has found low representation of the themes of education, higher education and policy. We propose new research directions highlighting factors and actions enabling holistic approaches to assessing and policy development in HEIs.

Presenters

Charles Chi Cui
Professor of Marketing, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, United Kingdom

Christa Sathish
Lecturer, Management and Marketing, University of Westminster, United Kingdom

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Education, Assessment and Policy

KEYWORDS

SUSTAINABILITY, HIGHER EDUCATION, WHOLE INSTITUTION APPROACH, BIBLIOMETRICS, SUSTAINABLE ACTIONS

Digital Media

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