Introducing sustainability into business education contexts using active learning

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore how active learning may help address the legitimacy and practicability issues inherent in introducing education for sustainability into business-related degree programs. Design/methodology/approach -The focus of this study is the experience of the authors in the development and implementation of education for sustainability within their business-related higher education programs. To address the inherent challenges of the task, they apply the principles of active learning, with substantial use of problem-based learning, in the classroom and engage in a process of staff development in their personal time. The method used is a simplified version of action research where the authors worked together over two years and then reflected on the experience through interviews and extensive discussions with each other, with their respective teaching teams, and with sustainability educators from outside of their programs. Findings -The findings suggest that active learning approaches move learners away from dependence on (possibly illegitimate and unprepared) educators and towards a personal responsibility approach. This also means accepting that learners are free to understand sustainability in a "global" sense or instead choose only its "business as usual" applications. Originality/value -The paper provides a useful insight into the practical value of active learning for educators grappling with the dilemma of delivering globally responsible business and/or management-related education programs.

Greening the Ivory Tower: A Review of Educational Research on Sustainability in Post-Secondary Education

“…McKeown [21], for example, researched the level of integration of sustainability into education curricula over the last two decades, noting the growing number of PSE institutions offering training in sustainability education across the globe. Recently, there has also been an increase of research on how sustainability is integrated into business curricula of different institutions [22,23]. One reason for the lack of research on sustainability uptake in broader disciplines may be the lack of professional development training in PSE institutions designed to facilitate faculty integrating sustainability concepts into their curricula.…”

The Development of Public Relations and E-Book Protocol Based on Active Learning Approach to Improve Learning Motivation and Outcome of Vocational Middle School Students

“…Module is a teaching material organized systematically and attractively involving material content, method, and evaluation that can be used independently to achieve the intended competency. Meanwhile, module is defined as a book containing at least all basic components of teaching material aiming to enable the students to learn independently without or with teachers' guidance [13]. A module should represent basic competency to be achieved by students thereby enabling the students with high learning ability to achieve basic competency more quickly than other students.…”

“…In addition, active learning is also intended to maintain the students' attention or to keep the students focusing their attention to the learning process. The assumption of active learning states that students should process information actively to achieve the meaningful learning [13,21]. The active cognitive process involves selecting relevant information from words and picture.…”

“…It is argued that the use of book can improve quality, function, and help students and teachers in teaching-learning process [10,13]. The application of e-learning can improve the students' understanding on the material taught; in addition the quality of learning can also be improved [15][16].…”

CSR education in the light of active pedagogy. Research results

“…Therefore, a natural consequence seems to be to introduce the courses dealing with corporate social responsibility into teaching programs at universities (Sobczak et al 2006). This issue is an argument for discussion for many researchers (MacVaugh, Norton 2012;Stubbs 2013;Savelyeva, McKenna 2011).…”