Enlarging sustainability learning through integrative thinking with a focus on cultivating virtues

Purpose In the African context of business practice, the authors face two interrelated challenges. First, executives need to deal strategically and sustainably with growing levels of inequality, under-employment and declining levels of wellness and safety. Second, executive development needs to develop virtues to help executives to address these problems. This paper aims to articulate an integrated, sustainable business education approach that aims to prepare executives to practice integrative thinking while simultaneously cultivating virtues that enhance their lives, thereby enabling them to make ongoing sustainable impacts to their worlds. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a mixed method analysis including both quantitative and qualitative data from student course feedback evaluations from Business Model Innovation (BMI) and Phronesis Development Practice courses run over four consecutive years between 2018 and 2021 at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business as part of the Executive Masters of Business Administration degree. Findings The program’s pedagogical approach integrates a philosophical habituation process with a core course on BMI practice. This philosophical integration is one in which there is a sustainable focus on cultivating specific “process” and “practice” virtues which foster awareness amongst executives of their everyday mundane skilful coping in the world. This leads to candidates becoming attuned to ways, in which they can strive for more authenticity and to step into newer ways of being, that allow them to reflect their values and evolve cultural practices. Originality/value As the first business school in Africa to base a BMI course on the affordances of the phenomenon of being-in-the-world and a philosophical habituation process, the authors hope to inspire more business schools to adopt holistic, sustainable approaches to executive development that goes beyond the competence paradigm.

Active learning as enabler of sustainability learning outcomes: Capturing the perceptions of learners during a materials education workshop

Active learning is a promising teaching approach that can develop sustainability competences in learners. In this paper, we investigate the potential of active-learning pedagogies such as serious games and active-learning toolkits to deliver sustainability knowledge and skills in materials education. We organised a workshop for 20 participants from UK Universities where they played the serious game In the Loop around critical materials and circular economy and engaged in the Active-Learning ToolKit Sustainable Development (Granta Design/now Ansys UK Ltd.) to assess the sustainability of a proposed policy intervention around the use of electric cars. We used a self-assessment questionnaire and reflection sessions to deduce the level of sustainability skill developed by the participants as well as importance and performance analysis (IPA) to help the educators understand crucial components they should concentrate their teaching and learning efforts on in the future. Finally, we provide recommendations for educators on how to implement active learning in materials education in order to empower students with skills for sustainability. Graphical abstract

Competencies for Advancing Transformations Towards Sustainability

Advancing transformations towards sustainability calls for change agents equipped with a new set of competencies. Such sustainability competencies have been articulated with multiplicity and ambiguity, which is counterproductive to joint and accelerated progress. A unified framework of sustainability learning objectives would provide guidance to students, educators, and administrators of sustainability programs. To this end, we carried out a systematic review of the relevant literature. After scanning thousands of publications, we identified over 270 peer-reviewed articles of highest relevance, spanning two decades. Despite appearance otherwise, we found that there is a high level of agreement among scholars over the sustainability competencies that students should be trained in. Expanding on the five key competencies, namely, systems-thinking, anticipatory, normative, strategic, and interpersonal competence, that have gained widespread use, this article synthesizes the new suggestions made over the past decade into a unified framework. It centers on 8 key competencies in sustainability (the 5 established and 3 emerging—intrapersonal, implementation, and integration competence), which are complemented by separate disciplinary, general, and other professional competencies. This comprehensive framework of key competencies in sustainability is applicable across disciplines and can guide faculty, students, and practitioners in their joint efforts to advance transformations towards sustainability.

University Leadership for Sustainability: an Active Dendritic Framework for Enabling Connection and Collaboration

<p>In a world with increasing environmental and social problems, education is widely accepted as being critical for meeting current and predicted sustainable development issues. This thesis explores possible reasons for the relatively low levels of education-for-sustainability programmes in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand, compared to selected international universities with coherent inter-disciplinary sustainability programmes of learning. The research involved qualitative in-depth interviews with two sub-sets of academic participants teaching in universities, twenty from selected international universities and ten from universities in Aotearoa New Zealand. A grounded theory methodology approach was chosen to analyse the extensive range of qualitative data. Analysis revealed generic essential themes underlying the experiences of the two sets of participants. Key themes included the importance of building connections between distributed sustainability leaders and the need for support from hierarchical university leadership for developing substantive sustainability learning initiatives. A theoretical model is proposed: an active dendritic framework for university leadership for sustainability, for improving collaborative learning within and across disciplinary areas, and building capacity for university-wide learning, leading to establishing coherent sustainability initiatives. Recommendations are offered for improving the uptake of education-forsustainability in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand, based on the research findings and the potential for using the dendritic framework for assisting connection and collaboration between transformational sustainability leaders within the university.</p>

University Leadership for Sustainability: an Active Dendritic Framework for Enabling Connection and Collaboration

<p>In a world with increasing environmental and social problems, education is widely accepted as being critical for meeting current and predicted sustainable development issues. This thesis explores possible reasons for the relatively low levels of education-for-sustainability programmes in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand, compared to selected international universities with coherent inter-disciplinary sustainability programmes of learning. The research involved qualitative in-depth interviews with two sub-sets of academic participants teaching in universities, twenty from selected international universities and ten from universities in Aotearoa New Zealand. A grounded theory methodology approach was chosen to analyse the extensive range of qualitative data. Analysis revealed generic essential themes underlying the experiences of the two sets of participants. Key themes included the importance of building connections between distributed sustainability leaders and the need for support from hierarchical university leadership for developing substantive sustainability learning initiatives. A theoretical model is proposed: an active dendritic framework for university leadership for sustainability, for improving collaborative learning within and across disciplinary areas, and building capacity for university-wide learning, leading to establishing coherent sustainability initiatives. Recommendations are offered for improving the uptake of education-forsustainability in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand, based on the research findings and the potential for using the dendritic framework for assisting connection and collaboration between transformational sustainability leaders within the university.</p>

Instructor–Student Mentoring: Strengths of Transformative Sustainability Learning and Its Direct Application to Impact Industry and Curricular Refinement

There is a growing need to educate students about the applications of environmental sustainability to current and future jobs. One method that has emerged to teach this application is transformative sustainable learning (TSL). Instructors can use TSL to understand better how to integrate sustainability topics into seemingly unrelated course topics. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a series of TSL courses in a graduate sport management program. To this end, a collaborative reflection guided the data collection from weekly one-on-one conversations between the researchers (i.e., instructor, student). Results aligned with TSL themes (i.e., head, heart, hands) and suggested that the intentional TSL course design and scheduled conversations benefited both the instructor and student. The student experienced an in-depth experience to understand and apply course concepts. The instructor was able to gain better insights to structure the class and create assignments adapted to meet student needs through collaborative reflection during mentoring sessions.

Learning for Sustainability in Horticultural Production in Arctic Norway

Sustainability learning is gaining popularity as an important field within sustainability research, where farm sustainability can be understood as a learning process. In this study, we seek to reveal the sustainability learning process of farmers, utilizing a framework distinguishing contextual factors (where? and when?), knowledge (what?), motivation (why?), and process (how?). The article presents a participatory inquiry mixed-methods approach, utilizing results from sustainability assessments on five farms with the SMART-farm tool as a unifying starting point for further discussions on sustainability learning in farmers' interviews and stakeholder workshops. Empirically the study is set in the horticultural production in Arctic Norway, where few studies on sustainability have been undertaken. The study shows how both the complexity of the concept of farm sustainability and contextual factors influence the sustainability learning process, for instance by giving rise to a vast number of conflicting issues while working toward farm sustainability. The sustainability learning process is found to be predominantly a social learning process. The theoretic contribution of the study lies in its novel framework that can be used to reveal important aspects of the sustainability learning process, as well as to contribute to the literature on how to proceed from sustainability assessments to implementation. A key finding from the study is that farmers will require continuous assistance in their processes toward farm sustainability, but for this to be possible, knowledge, sources of knowledge, and learning platforms for holistic sustainability need to be established.

“We Can’t Wait Anymore”: Young Professionals Engaging in Education for Sustainability

Sustainability-minded young professionals are needed to facilitate movement toward a sustainable planet. Their development has largely been left to Higher Education Institutions charged with equipping future generations of professionals to address current and future intractable problems, with limited research on how they perform in these important roles upon entering professional careers. This study documents how sustainability-minded young professionals engage in education for sustainability, the process by which humans will learn to live sustainably. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze interview and focus group data collected from 10 sustainability-minded young professionals who participated in sustainable energy research experiences as undergraduates. Findings indicate sustainability-minded young professionals engaging in education for sustainability navigate sustainability identities, which is a fluid, contextual process; participate in lifelong sustainability learning; serve as sustainability educators; and adopt a positive stance toward our ability to achieve sustainability.