The EDINSOST Project: Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals at University Level

This paper explores university discourse as a conceptual-communicative macrostructure that verbally represents international organizations’ and universities’ policies and activities to support youth’s sustainable development to support youth’s sustainable development amidst COVID19. The materials include universities’ official site information and higher education-related data from international organizations regarding universities’ activities during the pandemic. The textual corpus from 172 universities from Africa, Asia, Europe, North and Latin America, Oceania, as well as 164 documents with essential international institutional affiliations, were explored. The methodology combined qualitative and quantitative tools, theoretical, and empirical analysis. Data processing rested on thematic content analysis. Manual and computer-based coding techniques were applied. The analysis made it possible to identify major concepts and their constituents which form a verbally expressed conceptual macrostructure of university knowledge and action in fostering youth’s sustainability during pandemics. The findings revealed some standard features within universities communication dimensions, on the one hand, and some specific to Russian universities on the other. Differences between universities and international organizations concerning communication focus were also identified. The research findings result in tentative recommendations to bridge Academia, University, and Society in efforts to foster youth’s status and sustainability in contemporary civilization.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

University Discourse to Foster Youth’s Sustainability in Society amidst COVID19: International and Russian Features

Atabekova

2020

“…In this sense, one of the proposals to deepen the development of this competence is aimed at preparing sustainability reports for the PPT Dissertation [54], a project that is being developed within the framework of the EDINSOST2 project for future proposals.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the same way that we have adapted the questionnaire to evaluate the proposal, we have adapted the competency map to analyze the data from the questionnaire (sustainability competence assessment rubric). Adaptation from [54] is based on the elimination of the SUST3 competition since it does not proceed in this project and on the adaptation of some of the competence, units focusing on Climate change (see Table 1). The three levels of the table are composed of learning outcome (LO) that are of increasing difficulty and reflect the operations that the subjects learn to handle: knows, knows how, and shows how and does.…”

Section: Description Of the Questionnaire And Rubric On Acquisition Omentioning

confidence: 99%

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How to Improve Sustainability Competences of Teacher Training? Inquiring the Prior Knowledge on Climate Change in Primary School Students

Solís-Espallargas

Morón-Monge

2020

The work is carried out in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goal 13 Climate Action with prospective primary school teachers. The study presented is part of the science education subject at the University of Seville (Spain) during the 2019–2020 academic year. This research has two main goals, on the one hand, to present an innovative educational experience (design and implementation) for teacher training, on the other hand, to assess the educational implication of the experience from the prospective primary school teachers’ self-perception about their level of sustainability competences achieved. The novel educational experience consisted in the inquiry of prior knowledge about climate change in primary school children for the design of a lesson plan. The degree of scope of the educational experience, in particular, the level of sustainability competences achieved was assessed from the self-perception of the participants (Prospective Primary school Teachers) through a Likert-type questionnaire. The results show an improvement in the degree of acquisition of these competences, not only from their self-perception, but also from the investigative process followed through this innovative experience. Likewise, these results indicate the success of the educational proposal as a possible educational strategy for the sustainability of the curriculum in the field of science education.

“…Continuing to assess the effect of learning activities and environments that aim to foster learning for sustainability leads to the concept of key sustainability competencies [23]. Several frameworks for sustainability competencies have been presented such as Albareda-Tiana et al's (2020) recent Sustainability Competency Map of Education Degrees [24]. Another well-known framework is that of Wiek et al (2011), which presents five key sustainability competencies that can be used to guide education in sustainable development [25].…”

Section: Developing a Theoretical Reference Model For Learning And Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Group Model Building to Foster Learning for Strategic Sustainable Development

Watz

2020

Capability for strategic planning and decision-making toward sustainability requires both individuals and organizations from different sectors and disciplines to develop necessary skills and competencies. Therefore, a growing discussion has emerged within academia and practice around how pedagogical methods and tools can be utilized for this purpose. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by asking ‘in which way may group model building be used to foster learning that leads to competency for strategic sustainable development?’. The potential of the group model building (GMB) process’ steps and associated modeling to foster learning for strategic sustainable development (SSD) was analyzed using four case examples. Theory on learning for sustainability and key sustainability competencies were linked to elements of a process for strategic planning toward sustainability within the framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) as a reference model. The results provide a discussion on how GMB can be utilized to foster sustainability competencies and learning for sustainability that can contribute to SSD, hence a basis for continued research and ideas for course and curriculum development.