Intercultural Communication and Sustainable Leadership

The environmental, economic, and social crises we are increasingly confronted with locally and globally, including climate change, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, and also economic and social issues, such as poverty, social inequalities, violation of human rights, gender inequalities, loss of indigenous knowledge, etc. call for changes in the ways we think, work, and act. In this context, a course dealing with intercultural communication and sustainable leadership that is part of a M.Sc. programme on ICT in Education for Sustainable Development has been developed and is studied in this chapter. The course puts emphasis on the most urgent and critical social, environmental, and economic challenges facing the world and explores how leaders from education, business, government and civil society are responding to global/local sustainability challenges. In particular, it elaborates on the nature of sustainability leadership and how it can contribute to transformational change. It does this by locating sustainability within the leadership literature and presenting a model of sustainability leadership that integrates three complementary types of leadership, namely: distributed; entrepreneurial and transformational. The course also examines the importance of sustainable leadership practices within organisations (e.g. schools, business, NGOs, public) and assess the potential benefits if institutions are more actively engaged in sustainable leadership practices. It explores how intercultural communication can contribute to positive change for sustainability and discusses that new theoretical frameworks are needed to better understand effective transformational leadership. It also elaborates how cultural orientations and intercultural communication competence affect the full range leadership framework and transformational leadership dimensions. This course is delivered through a Virtual Learning Management System (VLMS) based on Moodle open LMS.

‘Growing Oak Trees' - Education for Sustainable Design

Designers and engineers seem finally to be awakening to the challenge that sustainable development presents. Educators and students alike are keenly aware of the need to become more effective in the training and practice of their specific disciplines with respect to sustainability (Mulder, Segalas-Coral, & Ferrer- Balas, 2010). This chapter illustrates and animates a number of critical themes in education for sustainable design that have been developed within the Irish context. However, these are scalable within the international context for training and ‘up skilling' of product designers, engineers and other design professionals. The chapter focuses on the co-design, development, validation and piloting over two years of a CPD (Continuing Professional Development) course for Design Professionals in Sustainable Design. The research outlined in this work also qualitatively assesses appropriate models for educating for sustainable design thinking with design professionals, small to medium enterprise (SME) employees and undergraduate design students. The educational methodologies that were developed were evaluated over an eight year period with case study groups including: Industrial and Product Design undergraduate students at the Institute of Technology, Carlow (IT Carlow) and Professional designers taking the SDI (Sustainable Design Innovation) Certificate at IT Carlow. A parallel program (Winnovate) which aimed to up skill SME's in the South East of Ireland was also developed as a separate case study. All the case studies were benchmarked against initiatives in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Wales and Australia as well as collaboration with the University of Limerick, Ireland as a means of establishing current best practice.

Growing PEAS at the Duke Campus Farm

This chapter explains a study designed to create a guide to aid the Duke Campus Farm (DCF) in developing an educational program on sustainable agriculture. Currently, many such education programs exist, but they are very different in their content, tools and approaches. Qualitative analysis of 58 syllabi from 30 post-secondary educational institutions was used to understand frequent practices in the field of sustainable agriculture education (SAE). The analysis showed consistency for 14 content areas that appeared in 93% to 26% of all syllabi, 10 tools that appeared in 93% to 14% of all syllabi, and 10 approaches that appeared in 86% to 7% of all syllabi. A gap in SAE was also discovered in that most educators use only one of the four phases of Experiential Learning (EL) theory when implementing EL. This information was then used to create an education program for the DCF. Studies such as this seem useful in compiling and codifying new innovations in education about sustainable development.

Sustainability, Ethics and Education

Accounting education has faced limitations as a highly technical and discipline-specific body of knowledge. The case presented in this chapter demonstrates and reflects on an attempt at incorporating the study of sustainability-related accounting knowledge through multiple forms of delivery and assessment. Sustainability-related material that draws from business, accounting and ethics' perspectives was included in an accounting ethics course for accounting majors at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University in Melbourne, Australia. This pedagogy has encouraged the development of students' soft skills including their emotional intelligence. Sustainability education has been found as engaging and thought provoking, albeit involving a steep learning curve for students as far as knowledge and awareness are concerned. It has allowed for the promotion of multiple and broader perspectives and education on key sustainability-related concerns, from a range of angles including ethics and accounting frameworks for sustainability as well as multidisciplinary approaches to sustainability and business.

Teaching of Sustainability

Following a discussion of the means of introducing sustainability and sustainable design into the engineering curriculum, this chapter provides examples of the approach taken when teaching these subjects through the use of case studies at a traditional research-intensive higher education institution in the UK: Newcastle University. This chapter demonstrates the range of topics that have been addressed through examples of case studies and discusses the methods of delivery and assessment within the curriculum. The result of a cross-curriculum mapping exercise is presented, showing how sustainability teaching can be incorporated into a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

Teaching about Sustainability

This chapter offers concrete recommendations for teaching a capstone course in sustainability to upper level undergraduates minoring in sustainability studies. Given the multifaceted nature of sustainability, the authors use a strong interdisciplinary framework. Because the two instructors are senior faculty from a scientific/technical field and a liberal arts perspective; the course is overseen by the university's academic sustainability program director, adding further breadth of input into student projects. This course comprises three distinct but interconnected components: (1) a theoretical element, i.e., reading and discussion that raises students' consciousness about advanced issues in sustainability and encourages critical thinking; (2) the use of cooperative learning teams in which students choose to solve a practical, real-world problem dealing with sustainability that forces them to be active learners; and (3) ten pedagogical strategies that are effective in motivating students to put forth their best efforts in working on their team projects dealing with sustainability.

Pass, Fail, or Incomplete?

This chapter investigates the presence and status of environmental education principles, as well as factors for encouraging positive environmental behaviour in students, within three sixth-grade curricula in Nova Scotia, Canada: science, social studies, and health education. The results of the research show a strong reliance on knowledge-based connections to the environment and less importance shown to experiential learning, attitudes, and values. The results also reveal a significant decline in the time and resources allotted to environmentally focused education of these subjects. The effect is a diminished and marginalized environmental education presence in sixth-grade education in Nova Scotia within the context of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

Sustainability in Photography Can Change the World

Photography plays important, but undervalued and misunderstood, roles in how modern urban humans relate to nature and how nature is mediated to us, forming our perceptions and national identity. Typically landscape photography depicts nature aesthetically as sublime, picturesque and beautiful. Photographs have been powerful raising awareness of sustainability and communicating political messages. The chapter reviews the influence of two great Australian wilderness photographers, Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis, as well as Edith Cowan University's (ECU) Photography for Environmental Sustainability Competition. In conjunction with World Environment Day, the university invited students to submit photographs that showcase the principles and practices of environmental sustainability. This chapter describes the history, purposes and impact of photography and the competition. Starting as an engagement partnership between the environment coordinator, academics and the Perth Centre for Photography, it is now an international competition across Australia and New Zealand, not exclusive to photography students, hosted by Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS).

Sharing the Load

Today there is an impetus on professional designers to practice in a responsible and ‘sustainable' manner, with equal emphasis on society, economy and environment (Fletcher & Dewberry, 2002). This is an enormous challenge as the competencies needed to develop these types of holistic solutions are extremely complex. This chapter describes a Pedagogical Innovation in the discipline of Product Design regarding the important role international collaborative projects can play in introducing these competencies into design practice. Iterative cycles of Action Research describe three such projects. A brief over-view of the project logistics is followed by an analysis of the participant experiences. The findings show that building capacity for sustainable design, through collaboration, is not a simple or ‘one size fits all' approach. The research learning advises on how future projects should be structured and delivered and how the competencies acquired could bring about a change in designers behaviours towards a more sustainable future.

Efforts to Promote Sustainable Development through Education in Cambodia

This chapter provides an overview of how “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD) is being promoted in Cambodia today through historical, social, and cultural contexts as part of the implementation of the goals of “Education for All (EFA),” from three perspectives: (1) acquisition/improvement of life skills; (2) enhancing environmental education; and (3) promotion of peace education and human rights education. It is worth noting here that although the educational activities conducted in Cambodia are not necessarily known as ESD, they certainly embody the concept of it. The chapter emphasizes that the positioning of EFA and ESD as essential lifelong learning is important to achieve a sustainable society.1