Sustainability in Higher Education

Abstract

Sustainability describes how a system remains diverse and productive; this is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being having ecological, economic, political, and cultural dimensions. Education for sustainable development (ESD) emphasizes on including the key sustainable development issues into teaching and learning, that is, climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption. This effort requires effective pedagogy to ensure a participatory teaching and learning method that will motivate and empower future leaders to ensure sustainability in their social systems. Malaysia has incorporated the principles of Agenda 21 as one of the important sustainable development documents into its national planning process. However, the effectiveness of these teaching-learning programs, and their effective pedagogical approaches and endpoints are not satisfactorily ensured. Therefore, at first, this article reviews the existing various programs and research activities of public and private higher educational institutions in Malaysia that address sustainability. It then discusses the pedagogical approaches of these programs and how they are related to the key concept of the ESD. Finally, some conclusions and recommendations have been suggested to improve the initiatives to develop a scientifically sound and effective pedagogy for the ESD programs in higher education systems in Malaysia.

Perceptions and Attitudes towards Sustainable Development among Malaysian Undergraduates

“…The studies that are available on ESD in Malaysian higher education institutions concentrate on assessing the level awareness of the undergraduates towards SD that were conducted in studies by Zainordin et al (2017) and Wee (2017). Moreover, Reza (2016) has mentioned that although the current ESD in Malaysia has developed the students' knowledge and responsibilities toward sustainability, this has not been verified in any studies. Thus, with this motivation, we are going to gauge the level of perception and attitude towards sustainability among Malaysian undergraduates.…”

A pilot study on education for sustainable development in the Romanian economic higher education

“…ESD focuses on incorporating sustainable development issues in the teaching and learning process. It aims to motivate future leaders to ensure sustainability in their business and activities (Reza, 2016). Another way of defining ESD is the inclusion of economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability in the teaching content, showing that sustainability problems are connected to the society and to human actions (Sawitri, 2017).…”

Students’ Leadership Competencies at International Islamic University Malaysia

“…Thus, when developing the 21 st century leaders, there is a huge demand for the university to nurture young minds to become holistic self (Gelen, 2018;Ithnin, Sahib, Eng, Sidek, & Harun, 2018;Kumar & Al-Samarraie, 2018;Lee, 2017). Reza (2016), Ithnin et al (2018), Zakariya (2014) and Fahimirad, Idris and Kotamjani (2016) strongly emphasized the need to produce excellent academic leaders with the right blend of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to drive higher education in the right direction to bring sustainable development to any country.…”

“…More specifically, literature on leadership revealed that students from higher education institutions lacked of effective leadership qualities (Lange, 2015;Le, 2016;Mendenhall et al, 2017;Neeley, Clyne, & Resnick-Ault, 2017;Park, Jeong, Jang, Yoon, & Lim, 2018;Skarbaliene, 2018). It is then suggested that human characteristics can be modified through training (Hassanzadeh, Silong, Asmuni, & Abd Wahat, 2015;Mendenhall et al, 2017;Reza, 2016). Therefore, to inculcate university students with effective leadership qualities, they should be trained with the right knowledge, skills and abilities, and other characteristics.…”