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Over recent years, universities have been incorporating sustainable development (SD) into their systems, including their curricula. This article analyses the incorporation of SD into the curricula of chemical and environmental engineering or technology bachelor degrees at universities in the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states. Available textbooks of some courses were analysed regarding their content and pedagogical-didactical perspectives based on a revised Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive domains. The research showed that both the universities and textbooks reviewed have room for improvement regarding SD incorporation into their curricula. (Contains 11 tables and 3 figures.)

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been incorporating sustainability into education and curricula, where recent research has focussed on sustainability competences, pedagogical approaches, and how to connect them, generally on a single HEI. The process of integrating sustainability into education based on curricula assessment has been explained using adoption of innovations; and has the potential to explain the process of developing competences through pedagogical approaches. The aim of this paper is to investigate this process at academic discipline level. An online survey was developed to investigate teaching sustainability competences in 13 HEIs, from which 678 responses from educators were obtained. The competences and pedagogical approaches from the responses were ranked, and then the connections between the competences and pedagogical approaches per discipline were analysed using a correlations‐based framework, from which three disciplines groups were created. The groups were categorised using diffusion of innovations theory, which indicated that some disciplines are more innovative than others in adopting sustainability competence‐based teaching. The results are used to propose two frameworks to better understand the adoption of sustainability competence‐based teaching: (a) the D‐RAPID framework; and (b) the Disciplinary Multi‐dimensional Sustainability Influence Change for Academia (D‐MuSICA) memework. The adoption of sustainability competence‐base education must expand from a single HEI perspective to a disciplinary collaborative one spanning many HEIs, where academic disciplines should learn from each other's insights and mistakes and provide students with more transdisciplinary skillsets to make societies more sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increase in sustainable development (SD) integration into Higher Education Institutions' (HEIs) curricula. Several tools have been developed to assess SD in HEIs; however, only a few have focussed on curricula assessment, such as the "Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities' Curricula Holistically." Curricula assessment can provide an overview on how courses and programmes incorporate SD. This paper analyses the factors affecting the incorporation of SD in curricula using a survey sent to a database of 4,099 European contacts, with a response rate of 9.85%. The responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, t test, ANOVA, and correlations. The analyses showed that (a) teaching in European courses covers many issues of sustainability in a fairly good balance, with the exception of social issues that are the least addressed; (b) there are correlations between the economic, environmental, social, and cross‐cutting themes; (c) females tend to teach SD in a more balanced way than men; (d) the HEIs types have no influence on how SD is being taught, but the education level has; and (e) some countries, in the case of this research, Italy and Spain, may show more interest, yet the average results tended to be lower than those others, in this research, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Curricula assessment provides a diagnostic of SD incorporation and the factors that affect it. This can help educators improve their courses and provide students with better SD skills and insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of universities worldwide have created new courses and degrees or modified existing ones, as a response to the increasing interest by companies to hire sustainability literate graduates. However, many of such courses have been developed with a focus on ‘hard’ technocentric or managerial issues. The examples that have been published in academic journal have tended to be descriptive, and in only a limited number of cases have they been based on theories of teaching and learning. This paper presents the process of designing and delivering a new course on organisational change management for sustainability for the BA Environment and Business degree at the University of Leeds. The course was developed based on holism and a constructivist position to help deal with the complexities of sustainability and organisational change management. The course objective was to educate students as sustainability change agents by dealing with the complexities of sustainability and ‘soft’ issues in organisational change management. The process had three key elements: (1) the learning outcomes; (2) the course delivery; and (3) the course assessment (including feedback). During the process a number of challenges had to be overcome. The paper provides a more complete, systematic, robust, and focused approach to education for sustainable development, specifically on course design and delivery, by using theories of teaching and learning and linking the course aims, delivery, and assessment. The paper integrates education for sustainability development and corporate sustainability into a relatively new discipline, organisational change management for sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With a growing interest in sustainability, a number of universities have engaged in educating the future leaders, decision makers, scientists, and engineers on how their decisions can help societies become more sustainable. This paper presents the process for developing the Bachelor's degree curriculum in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. The process was initiated in response to a request from top management of the university to a small committee of faculty members to prepare a draft of the degree's curriculum structure. Subsequently, a wider committee was appointed to design the courses' content and to refine the degree's structure. The process of developing a new degree posed a number of challenges, such as connectivity of courses and the curricular contribution to sustainability. These challenges were overcome by: using Concept Maps to help characterise and to overcome the challenges of inter-connecting courses by providing a systemic framework through a qualitative graphical tool titled, the ‘Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities’ Curricula Holistically’ (STAUNCH®). This tool helped the faculty team to develop a quasi-quantitative approach to the courses' coverage and their individual and collective contribution to education of their students for sustainability. The two methods provided a broader, more holistic, and systemic approach when developing a degree, because it allowed assessing the needed connectivity among curriculum courses from a systemic perspective, as well as evaluating the contribution of environmental, economic, and social issues in the degree. The systematic process followed in developing this degree curriculum can help other institutions to design and implement their own sustainability curricula. This can ensure that they develop sustainability-educated and empowered students, who can be change agents in making societies more sustainable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There has been a rapid increase on the number of engineering schools in higher educational institutions that have incorporated sustainability into their teaching. Nonetheless, curricula reforms are still needed to better educate engineers on the implications that their work has on the environment and societies in this generation and future ones. A step to facilitate this is assessing the contribution of engineering curricula to sustainability. This assessment can provide a starting point on how sustainability is being taught, and how this can be improved. This paper presents the results from the assessment of the sustainability content of the Civil and Environmental Engineering curriculum at the Georgia Institute of Technology using two complementary approaches: the Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversity's Curricula Holistically system and two students' perceptions surveys. The results from the curriculum assessment indicated that the courses addressed mainly environmental issues, and that the depth of coverage could be improved. The results from the students' surveys concurred with the curriculum assessment, although there were some differences in regard to social issues. Using both approaches provides a more holistic overview of the contribution of engineering courses and degrees to sustainability, and it allows detecting discrepancies between sustainability content in the syllabus and sustainability teaching in the classroom. The approaches can help to foster educational changes by: guiding university leaders in devising curricula reforms to promote sustainability learning; providing students with opportunities to reflect upon the topic; and bridging the gap between the activities being done at the university to foster sustainability and student perception of what needs to be achieved. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: As more universities become interested in, and engaged with, sustainability, there has been a growing need to assess how their curricula addresses sustainable development and its myriad issues. Different tools and assessment exercises have looked at course descriptors; however, the influence of the number of students enrolled on courses, or the relative weight in credits of the courses in respect of the degrees, has not been explored. The paper compares, with the help of t-tests, three hypotheses developed to investigate the effect of these two influences. The analysis was done using the results from an updated version of the Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities’ Curricula Holistically (STAUNCH®) for the Bachelor and Master programmes from the Faculty of Business and the Faculty of Environment of the University of Leeds. The analysis shows that the results are not statistically dissimilar. Nonetheless, the curricula assessment (including the number of students enrolled and the number of credits) can help to better understand where the university’s courses and programmes are, and how they could be changed to become more sustainability oriented, and, ultimately, to have the greatest impact to help make societies more sustainable. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that environmental literacy, in the early stages of education, can provide a strong foundation for future environmental behaviours, as well as help in the transition towards more sustainable societies. This paper is based upon an evaluation of the environmental attitudes of students in a primary school in rural Slovenia. The attitudes were assessed according to the students’ behaviours in their family (primary) and school (secondary) and family contexts. The results show that traditional teaching, in this school, accounts for only one-third of the recognised factors that influence the students’ environmental behaviours. The other factors that foster environmental behaviours include the primary and secondary social environments, the structural and infrastructural condition in the school, and gender, where emotional attitudes play a key role. The authors suggest that, in order to more adequately address the gap between learning and acting, school administrators, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders should integrate an array of sustainability issues throughout formal and informal efforts so as to more effectively encourage the development of positive environmental attitudes, and behaviours among their youth and among themselves as role models. Additionally, school principals are urged to improve infrastructural and structural, attitudinal and procedural parameters at the schools, and to change the curricula in order to foster pro-environmental behaviours. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Historically, universities have played many roles in transforming societies, by educating decision-makers, leaders, entrepreneurs, and academics. However, education and research on sustainability in universities is at an early stage in many institutions. This introduction highlights findings from articles, most of which were presented at the Environmental Management for Sustainable Universities (EMSU) 2010 conference, held at Delft, the Netherlands. The articles contribute to answering the questions: 1. Are universities leading in the development of sustainable development mental models and paradigms and in transferring the related sustainable development memes to their students or are they reacting to stimuli from society and thus the sustainable development memes are being transferred to the universities from the society? 2. What can university leaders and their faculty do to ensure that sustainable development becomes an integral part of the University's culture? The starting point of this special volume is a paper on declarations and initiatives for Education for Sustainable Development which is complemented by a paper on inter-linking the declarations to the university's commitment and policies. Two papers explore campus operations and greenhouse gases, whilst three papers focus on curricula for sustainable development. Then two papers are included, which address multi-stakeholder regional collaboration, via linking the university to small and medium size enterprises through sustainable development initiatives. They are complemented with new perspectives on attitudes and perceptions of students to environmental and sustainability issues. The final two papers focus on transdisciplinary research and on a new metaphor designed to help faculty, students and societal members work is harmony with our eco-system. Collectively, these articles provide an encouraging, holistic and trans-disciplinary perspective on higher education for sustainable development via articles that provide critical reflections on methodological perspectives where ‘the sciences meet the arts’. The articles were selected to encourage educators, globally to engage in sustainable development initiatives within and outside their universities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]