Mainstreaming Education for Sustainable Development at a Swiss University: Navigating the Traps of Institutionalization

Sustainability Practices of Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong: A Case Study of a Sustainable Campus Consortium

“…Among the challenges faced by HKSCC, the need for support from the university administrative level is prominent, which also resonates with the literature on the obstacles of sustainability practices in HEIs [6,25,26]. Responding to the call of the UN in promoting SDGs across different parts of the globe, we have witnessed that several HEIs around the world have engaged in sustainable development management practices and have made efforts to integrate sustainability practices into their institutional strategic plans, assessment tools, and reporting schemes.…”

“…Despite the increasing recognition of the role of HEIs in sustainable development and the rapid development of international collaboration, the integration process of sustainability into the curriculum has been criticized as being slow, especially compared with advanced policies [24]. Scholars argued that this is because the current organizational structures of HEIs cannot respond swiftly to dynamic external contexts [25,26]. Therefore, HEIs must establish a clear, stable, and flexible structure with learning practices, transdisciplinary approaches, and effective leadership to adapt to changes regarding sustainability, and integrate sustainability into curriculums [6,25].…”

“…Scholars argued that this is because the current organizational structures of HEIs cannot respond swiftly to dynamic external contexts [25,26]. Therefore, HEIs must establish a clear, stable, and flexible structure with learning practices, transdisciplinary approaches, and effective leadership to adapt to changes regarding sustainability, and integrate sustainability into curriculums [6,25]. Although many HEIs have applied sustainability assessment tools to evaluate their performance in sustainability efforts [27], most sustainability efforts remain internally oriented, focusing on meeting sustainability goals and creating environments for sustainability education with insufficient attention on their external impacts [18].…”

Implementing Competence Orientation: Towards Constructively Aligned Education for Sustainable Development in University-Level Teaching-And-Learning

“…Our experiences also reveal that the current curriculum design policies and teaching practices at HEIs make it difficult to adopt competence-oriented teaching-and-learning practices. Creating coherent and integrated learning opportunities as well as well as dialogue-oriented learning activities challenges the traditional understanding of education in Higher Education institutions [31,41,82]. In addition, learning and assessment settings require more resources because they are action-oriented and not just knowledge-oriented; in particular, formative assessments require more time.…”

“…The need for developing pedagogic and didactic foundations when debating how to implement ESD at tertiary level is also necessary from an institutional point of view: how can competences in tertiary education be fostered in a structural setting that is sceptical of the need to move towards a "great transformation" [40]? Despite the Bologna process, the majority of HEIs still do not see the need for the paradigm change from teaching to learning [16,41]; in addition, the habitus of science shapes teaching, stressing the importance of knowledge generation rather than competence development, and the HEI context is characterized by a primacy of research over teaching [42], leading to low numbers of faculty staff with systematic professional development in didactics and pedagogics, as this is rarely a career incentive [43,44]. Most faculty staff today develop their teaching skills in an autodidactic manner instead of attending professional development programs [5].…”