Bureaucratic exercise? Education for sustainable development in Taiwan through the stories of policy implementers

Huang, Ying-Syuan; Harvey, Blane; Asghar, Anila

doi:10.1080/13504622.2021.1926431

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…A recent study by Huang et al (2021) concludes that the Taiwanese government promote ESD initiatives and program as a way to achieve other political gains other than an actual implementation of ESD. The case may be the same here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education for Sustainable Development in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Media and Government Policy Documents

Essa

Harvey

2022

INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED

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This qualitative study examines the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's policy of integrating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into the Saudi education system under the country's Vision 2030 sustainable development strategy. The study specifically asks: how is the policy of integrating ESD in the Saudi education system presented in the discourses of the Saudi government policy documents and the written media? The study examines two types of documents, namely official policy documents published by the governmental entities involved in the planning and/or the execution of the ESD integration policy, and newspaper articles collected from the three topranked Saudi newspapers (Arab News, Asharq Al-Awsat, and Al Riyadh). Thematic coding was used to identify themes and sub-themes in the collected documents. In addition, Fairclough's model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was employed to offer a deeper understanding of whether Saudi Arabia meaningfully aims at integrating sustainable development into its education planning in Vision 2030. Results suggest that Vision 2030 does not consider ESD as a main tool to achieve sustainability and preserve the environment. The analysis reveals that there are very limited discussion of ESD integration in Vision 2030, both in the media coverage as well as the government official documents. Moreover, the CDA of the collected data shows there is a great generalism in the language used in presenting the road map to implementing ESD, and considerable vagueness on the proposed procedures for integrating ESD into the Saudi education system. Consequently, there is a lack of a comprehensive strategic plan with pre-determined steps. The findings of the study suggest that despite statements to the contrary, the Saudi government is not taking the plan of ESD integration into education seriously.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education for Sustainable Development in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Media and Government Policy Documents

Essa

Harvey

2022

INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED

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“…However, studies on the effectiveness of these programs paint a less optimistic picture. Huang et al (2021aHuang et al ( , 2021b argue that there is a gap between national policy goals and their implementation as the nationwide ESD initiatives fail to prompt meaningful actions. And if we only focus on higher education, there is also much room for improvement.…”

Section: Taiwan's Higher Education Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Meanwhile, although Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations, the country’s education system is heavily influenced by the UN’s Sustainable Development discourses (Chang and Hsy, 2010; Yeh, 2017). Wang (2016) notes that Taiwan’s ESD efforts have been more focused on the environmental dimension and less on the social dimension. More recently, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been crucial in promoting relevant ESD programs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comprehensive review of environmental, sustainability and climate change curriculum in Taiwan’s higher education institutions

Liu,

Kan

2023

IJSHE

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Purpose This study aims to evaluate the current situation of education for sustainable development, climate change education and environmental education in a nationwide context. Methodologically, this study calls for more research to go beyond case studies and take a similar approach to examine university curricula and facilitate cross-country comparisons. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the status of climate and sustainability curricula in Taiwan’s higher education system. Using the course catalog for the 2020–2021 academic year, the authors constructed a unique data set that includes 1,827 courses at 29 major universities in Taiwan. In each institution, the authors search for course titles that include “climate,” “sustainable/sustainability” and “environment/environmental” as keywords and code the courses according to their disciplines. Findings The finding highlights the variations across institutional types and subject matters. Public universities have an average of 4.94 related courses per 1,000 students, whereas private universities have only 3.13. In general, the relevant courses are more concentrated in the STEM and bioscience fields. The curricula, however, are seriously constrained by the disciplinary structure and foster few transdisciplinary perspectives. Originality/value The authors seek to go beyond case studies and offer one of the most comprehensive curricula samples at the national level. Taiwan adds an important data point, as the current literature focuses heavily on the USA and Europe.

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“…Taiwan is no exception in facing time pressure to achieve the goals within the Agenda, with less than seven years remaining. The government has spent considerable resources aggressively enhancing public awareness by employing social media to distribute relevant information and embedding concepts in education courses to accelerate the agenda's progress (Huang et al, 2021). The Taiwanese public believes in developing a sustainable society that needs to rely on a good health system and conditions of well‐being to attract talent in innovative industries, advance infrastructure and ensure economic growth simultaneously.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The coherence between resource investment and performance for sustainable development goals in Taiwan cities: A hybrid influence analysis

Chan

et al. 2023

Sustainable Development

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This study contributes to visualizing the complicated interrelationships among the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Taiwanese cities' resource investment and performance under uncertainties. Taiwan faces bottlenecks and uncertainties in pursuing the SDGs due to the complex interrelationships among the SDGs. In particular, the lack of a comprehensive approach causes problems for governments in identifying whether resource investment and performance reach a coherent situation. To address this issue, this study proposes to use secondary data normalization, factor analysis and reliability testing for the validity and reliability of measures, performance‐resource analysis and the fuzzy synthetic method to translate qualitative information, as well as the decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory to visualize the relationships. The study (1) establishes validation measures for resource investment and performance; (2) combines qualitative information and secondary data to understand the causal effects of the SDGs; and (3) provides directions for the government to improve the coherence of resource investment and performance. The findings show that SDG 3 has a strong effect on SDGs 11 and 9 and a moderate effect on SDG 8 to achieve the agenda. Guidelines are provided for resource‐poor counties/regions that could invest resources to achieve SDG 3. Many cities and counties are underperforming.

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Bureaucratic exercise? Education for sustainable development in Taiwan through the stories of policy implementers

Cited by 9 publications

References 38 publications

Education for Sustainable Development in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Media and Government Policy Documents

Education for Sustainable Development in Saudi Arabia: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Media and Government Policy Documents

A comprehensive review of environmental, sustainability and climate change curriculum in Taiwan’s higher education institutions

The coherence between resource investment and performance for sustainable development goals in Taiwan cities: A hybrid influence analysis

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