Environmental Education for Sustainability: A Force for Change in Higher Education

Author(s):  
Daniella Tilbury
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7129
Author(s):  
María Delfina Luna-Krauletz ◽  
Luis Gibran Juárez-Hernández ◽  
Ricardo Clark-Tapia ◽  
Shafía Teresa Súcar-Súccar ◽  
Cecilia Alfonso-Corrado

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) play a fundamental role in the transition towards Environmental Education for Sustainability (EES). As a consequence, one of the most critical challenges is the need to know their level of incorporation into the environmental agenda. Therefore, an instrument was made and validated to determine the level of incorporation of Environmental Education for Sustainability into the environmental agenda of HEIs. For its construction, the dimensions of Institutional Identity, Teaching, Research, Extension/dissemination, and Linkage were considered, relying on a total of 17 items. Its validation was carried out through an expert review and expert judgment, and a pilot test was carried out to adapt it to the target population. The main result was an instrument that integrates the substantive and procedural functions of HEIs. Following the expert review, the instrument was improved according to their suggestions. The expert judgment showed an adequate content validity (Aiken’s V > 0.80; LL > 0.60). The pilot test also suggested that the understanding of instructions and items was adequate with an optimal value of internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.862). An instrument that determines the level of incorporation of the EES in the substantive and procedural functions of HEIs is presented, valid in content, and with adequate levels of clarity and understanding of the target population.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Noy ◽  
Teresa Capetola ◽  
Rebecca Patrick

Purpose Education for Sustainability in Higher Education (ESHE) sits within and across disciplinary settings that share the need for a framework that provides a basis for pedagogy, assessment and learning outcomes (Kalsoom, 2019). ESHE strives to create transformative learning spaces that help students gain the knowledge and skills they need to understand and contribute to shaping a world based on communities living within the limits of earth’s resources. This paper aims to offer a novel solution to the challenge of teaching students from different disciplines struggling with the complexity of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The paper explores the development of an interdisciplinary subject designed for undergraduate students from four faculties. It presents a case study of pedagogy that moves away from three pillars/concentric circles approaches towards practices based in systems thinking and interactive transformative learning. It describes the iterative process of developing and implementing an infographic: the “Sustainability Wheel of Fortune” (Wheel), to support constructive alignment of content, assessment tasks and learning outcomes. Findings The Wheel provides a holistic, interconnected and dynamic focus for framing content and teaching. The pedagogy aligns with sustainability competencies, builds in flexibility in response to changing times and student experiences and provides teachers and students with a common framework for interrogating the possibilities for sustainable futures. Originality/value The Wheel is a novel learning tool for contemporary sustainability education. It captures key elements of approaches to and concepts about sustainability, visually reinforces the idea of a holistic interconnected approach and provides a framework that supports the constructive pedagogy of an interdisciplinary sustainability subject.


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