Three Academics’ Narratives in Transforming Curriculum for Education for Sustainable Development

Wahr, Fiona; Underwood, Jenny; Adams, Luise; Prideaux, Verity

doi:10.1017/aee.2013.21

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This pattern has been confirmed in a number of countries. For example, in Australian universities, sustainability is only rarely integrated into courses across institutions and is more likely to be found within a handful of single disciplines (Christie et al, 2014;Reid and Petocz, 2006;Thomas, 2004;Thomas et al, 2012;Wahr et al, 2013), with a similar pattern noted for the USA (Calder and Clugston, 2003). In the UK, Cotton et al (2007) describe a patchy picture with sustainable development being marginal or non-existent in some key disciplines but increasingly high profile in others (Cotton et al, 2007;Dawe et al, 2005;Jones et al, 2008;Ryan and Tilbury, 2013b;Winter and Cotton, 2012).…”

Section: Sustainability and Disciplinary Challengesmentioning

confidence: 90%

Sustainability champions?

Wood

Cornforth

Beals

et al. 2016

Int J of Sus in Higher Ed

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of academic staff who are committed to embedding sustainability within tertiary curricula and pedagogy. Design/methodology/approach -The focus of this paper is on a New Zealand university. A survey of staff was undertaken and in-depth interviews conducted with 11 sustainability "champions". A narrative variant of thematic analysis was used to examine the ways these sustainability "champions" made sense of the work they do. Through an analysis of their metaphors and metaphorical language, a sense of the identities that they held as educators of sustainability was gained. Findings -Three types of identities emerged -the sustainability "saviour", "nurturer" and "struggler". These identities reflected the champion's experiences, disciplinary affiliations and pedagogical approaches. Interdisciplinarity emerged as a key tenet and challenge for such sustainability champions. Originality/value -This paper provides rare insights into the experiences, identities and teaching approaches of sustainability champions within higher education. It highlights the need for university-wide conversations and cross-discipline support for such academics.

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Section: Sustainability and Disciplinary Challengesmentioning

confidence: 90%

Sustainability champions?

Wood

Cornforth

Beals

et al. 2016

Int J of Sus in Higher Ed

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“…Reflection on process refers to assessing the way learning experiences unfold. Examples include situations in which learners reflect on their participation in a particular individual or group activity (Wahr et al, 2013;Chao, 2017) that involved a form of assessment of their performance and understanding (Quinn and Sinclair, 2016;Piasentin and Roberts, 2017). Finally, reflection on premise is the deepest level of reflection and occurs when learners assess the assumptions that underlie their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, actions and behaviours in the context of higher education (Brunnquell et al, 2015), teacher education (Feriver et al, 2016), resource and environmental management (Sims, 2012) and intercultural exchange (Ritz, 2011;Young and Karme, 2015).…”

Section: Critical Reflectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformative learning in the field of sustainability: a systematic literature review (1999-2019)

Aboytes

Barth

2020

IJSHE

131

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Purpose This study aims to investigate how transformative learning has been conceptualised and operationalised in education for sustainable development (ESD) and sustainability learning and to collect evidence on how to support transformative learning in formal and non-formal environments. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a systematic literature review to provide a structured and replicable search and analysis of the relevant literature to produce a bibliometric overview that combines a quantitative description of the body of literature and qualitative analysis of the learning processes, outcomes and conditions. Findings The convergence between transformative learning and sustainability has become an emerging field of inquiry, despite the superficial use of transformative learning theory in many studies. By examining the learning process, outcomes and conditions in the core sample of studies, this study demonstrates that transformative learning theory – if carefully studied – can contribute to the design and implementation of educational interventions and assessments of learning towards sustainability. Furthermore, the sustainability context provides an empirical grounding that highlights the fact that social learning, the role of experience and the development of sustainability competencies are inherently part of transformative learning. Originality/value To date, few attempts have been made to better understand how transformative learning theory has been used in sustainability learning and ESD research. This systematic review allows for a better comprehension of how concepts and mechanisms elucidated in transformative learning theory are operationalised in sustainability learning and ESD research and serves as a source of inspiration for those researchers and practitioners who aims to make sustainability education, teaching and learning more transformative.

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“…In the literature, curriculum mapping is suggested as the first step in renewing a curriculum (Desha et al, 2009). The purpose of this step is the identification of existing activities (in course content), the logic of the sequence for integration, and the SD content covered by these activities in the undergraduate curriculum being subjected to the integration of SD (Wahr et al, 2013).…”

Section: Mapping the Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Curriculum integration has many clear advantages; however, the goal of incorporating SD concepts into a curriculum, in contrast with teaching it separately as a course by itself (Segalàs and Mulder, 2009;Barth and Rieckmann, 2012), remains a great challenge as it leads to profound changes (Venkataraman, 2009). Additionally, incorporating sustainability in a curriculum requires from the academic staff, their motivation and willingness, SD knowledge and strong pedagogical skills (Boks and Diehl, 2006;McKeown, 2006;Barth and Rieckmann, 2012;Wahr et al, 2013;Restrepo et al, 2017). From this perspective, various curriculum integration efforts have been made in the past (Painter, 2003;Boks and Diehl, 2006;Kumar et al, 2006;Kalla and Brown, 2012;Prevost, 2013;Mintz et al, 2014;Schroer et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic curriculum integration of sustainable development using life cycle approaches

Roure

Anand

Bisaillon

et al. 2018

IJSHE

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a consistent and systematic integration framework of sustainable development (SD) in a civil engineering (CE) curriculum, given the connection between the two. Curriculum integration is a challenging project and requires the development of certain protocols to ensure success. Design/methodology/approach This paper thus proposes a framework for the systematic integration of SD through the lenses of life cycle approach and associated tools to attain effective curriculum integration. The proposed framework suggests the following five steps: mapping the curriculum, setting learning targets, developing an action plan for the assessed program, implementing the action plan and assessing the final performance. Findings This framework was applied to the CE curriculum at Sherbrooke University. To assess its success, a student satisfaction survey was conducted, and teachers’ feedback was obtained; the results showed 85 per cent positive responses. The authors show how this study allowed the CE curriculum to be properly updated and brought in line with today’s engineering profession requirements with regard to SD. Originality/value The integration focuses on the application of life cycle approaches and tools such as environmental life cycle assessment and life cycle costing on CE content. Additionally, the presented approach can be easily adapted to other engineering curriculums and, to a certain extent, to other non-engineering curriculums.

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Three Academics’ Narratives in Transforming Curriculum for Education for Sustainable Development

Cited by 8 publications

References 34 publications

Sustainability champions?

Sustainability champions?

Transformative learning in the field of sustainability: a systematic literature review (1999-2019)

Systematic curriculum integration of sustainable development using life cycle approaches

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