Sustainability Education

Perspectives and Practice across Higher Education

Stephen Sterling, Stephen Sterling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136531583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

How do we equip learners with the values, knowledge, skills, and motivation to help achieve economic, social and ecological well-being? How can universities make a major contribution towards a more sustainable future? Amid rising expectations on HE from professional associations, funders, policy makers, and undergraduates, and increasing interest amongst academics and senior management, a growing number of higher education institutions are taking the lead in embracing sustainability. This response does not only include greening the campus but also transforming curricula and teaching and learning.

This book explains why this is necessary and - crucially - how to do it. Bringing together the experience of the HEFCE funded Centre for Sustainable Futures (CSF) at the University of Plymouth and the Higher Education Academy's Education for Sustainable Development Project, the book distills out the curriculum contributions of a wide range of disciplinary areas to sustainability.

The first part of the book provides background on the current status of sustainability within higher education, including chapters discussing interdisciplinarity, international perspectives and pedagogy. The second part features 13 chapter case studies from teachers and lecturers in diverse disciplines, describing what has worked, how and why - and what hasn't. Whilst the book is organised by traditional disciplines, the authors and editors emphasise transferable lessons and interdisciplinarity so that readers can learn from examples outside their own area to embed sustainability within their own curricula and teaching.

Subject areas covered include:
geography, environmental and Earth Sciences, nursing/health, law, dance, drama, music, engineering, media and cultural studies, art and design, theology, social work, economics, languages, education, business and built environment.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Foreword by Peter Blaze Corcoran
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. More than the Sum of their Parts? Interdisciplinarity and Sustainability
• Chapter 3. ‘It’s Not Just Bits of Paper and Light Bulbs’: A Review of Sustainability Pedagogies and their Potential for Use in Higher Education
• Chapter 4. Third-wave Sustainability in Higher Education: Some (Inter)national Trends and Developments
• Chapter 5. Education for Sustainability in the Business Studies Curriculum: Ideological Struggle
• Chapter 6. Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences: A Suitable Home for ESD?
• Chapter 7. Climate Change, Sustainability and Health in UK Higher Education: The Challenges for Nursing
• Chapter 8. Sustainability – Is It Legal? The Benefits and Challenges of Introducing Sustainability into the Law Curriculum
• Chapter 9. Staging Sustainability: Making Sense of Sustainability in HE Dance, Drama and Music
• Chapter 10. Engineering our World Towards a Sustainable Future
• Chapter 11. Developing Critical Faculties: Environmental Sustainability in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies in Higher Education
• Chapter 12. Sustainability in the Theology Curriculum
• Chapter 13. Sustaining Communities: Sustainability in the Social Work Curriculum
• Chapter 14. Sustainability and Built Environment Professionals: A Shifting Paradigm
• Chapter 15. Costing the Earth:The Economics of Sustainability in the Curriculum
• Chapter 16. Translating Words into Action and Actions into Words: Sustainability in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies Curricula
• Chapter 17. If Sustainability Needs New Values, Whose Values? Initial Teacher Training and the Transition to Sustainability
• Endword
• List of Contributors
• Recommended Publications and Websites
• Index