Infusing the UN Sustainable Development Goals into a global learning initiative

Abstract

The Global Citizens Project (GCP) is a university-wide global learning initiative at the University of South Florida, aimed at enhancing undergraduate students’ global competencies through curricular and co-curricular experiences. The GCP uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework for these experiences. Understanding the SDGs allows students to expand their ideas on issues that exist in the world and how we might respond to the challenges. The purpose of this article is to provide a case study showing how the GCP has introduced students from all disciplines and undergraduate degree programmes to the SDGs through interdisciplinary workshops, with the aim of helping them to better understand the SDGs and connect global issues to their academic goals, professional objectives and everyday experiences. To determine whether the aims of the workshops were met, qualitative content analysis is employed to analyse the constructed responses of students who attended them. The results of the study suggest that the SDGs provide a relevant and sufficiently robust framework for guiding undergraduate students in their thinking about global issues as well as their relationship with these issues.

Framing citizen science and sustainable education development

“…Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are key changes to engage in sustainable development, especially sustainable education development by citizen science, as well as holistic views proposed. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 focuses on the importance of learners acquiring the knowledge and skills they need to promote sustainable development and needs to be considered to be incubated to all people and continuously operationalized (Mitchell et al, 2020).…”

Research in Global Learning: Methodologies for global citizenship and sustainable development education

“…There seems to be a trend, however, that this is dominantly used within the higher education setting to reflect on how globalisation and internationalisation have affected the higher education curricula (Zhou 2022). For instance, in one case, researchers discuss how reflection on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could enable undergraduate students to engage with global issues and develop a better understanding about our world's interconnectedness and the competencies that one should acquire in today's globalised context (Mitchell et al 2020). Nevertheless, global learning in this chapter is not understood as simply learning about the world, which focuses on skills and competencies needed in a global society, nor as a framework solely relating to global themes informing curricula design.…”

Experiential learning… remotely: Study abroad, global citizenship and NGO management

“…The current study addresses some tensions between typical characterizations of study abroad as globetrotting dilettantes rather than learners engaged in meaningful experiences towards thick and potentially critical senses of global citizenship (de Andreotti, 2014;Tiessen & Huish, 2014). Encouragingly, a recent study in which researchers analysed the content of undergraduate students' constructed responses after they engaged in global education workshops meant to supplement traditional study-abroad opportunities found evidence of increased global awareness and connections to cultural systems and issues (Mitchell et al, 2020). Kurt et al (2013) found that short-term study abroad programmes could lead to successful student outcomes in measures of global awareness, and a second study-abroad opportunity could increase the impact.…”