a b s t r a c tAlthough teaching sustainability issues is considered a difficult task, teachers are at the centre of curriculum renewal when directing it more towards sustainability. This article presents a teacher's manual and method for the integration of SD in curricula of higher education as well as an evaluation of their use. The manual is a powerful tool that combines a focus on teacher's capacities for SD integration within their discipline with student-activating teaching methods. Even in institutions where management support is low, it is a valuable means. Because of its generality and flexibility, the method appears to be of great potential as a framework for SD integration.

The attention for sustainable development (SD) is ever growing (Van Poeck, Vandenabeele, & Bruyninckx, 2009). Although the importance of SD integration in higher education (HE), both on strategic and operational level, is often stressed, actual measurements of this integration are less frequent. Therefore, a large scale assessment was set up to assess SD integration within 33 professionally and academically oriented programs of applied economics in a total of 22 Flemish HE institutions. The integration of SD in applied economics programs is crucial for society, among others because business students are our future managers (Ceulemans & De Prins, 2010). The interrelations between different SD integration strategies and the barriers to them were also studied in this research, leading us to a new concept, where two different dimensions of SD integration are combined. From the research we can conclude that an SD integration approach that combines horizontal and vertical integration with bottom-up and top-down seems to be the most beneficial for sustained SD integration efforts.

No abstract

The attention for sustainable development (SD) is ever growing (Van Poeck, Vandenabeele, & Bruyninckx, 2009). Although the importance of SD integration in higher education (HE), both on strategic and operational level, is often stressed, actual measurements of this integration are less frequent. Therefore, a large scale assessment was set up to assess SD integration within 33 professionally and academically oriented programs of applied economics in a total of 22 Flemish HE institutions. The integration of SD in applied economics programs is crucial for society, among others because business students are our future managers (Ceulemans & De Prins, 2010). The interrelations between different SD integration strategies and the barriers to them were also studied in this research, leading us to a new concept, where two different dimensions of SD integration are combined. From the research we can conclude that an SD integration approach that combines horizontal and vertical integration with bottom-up and top-down seems to be the most beneficial for sustained SD integration efforts.

No abstract