In 2015, more than 190 countries pledged to meet by 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030 that aim to ensure sustainable global social and economic development, and to strengthen universal peace. Public institutions, businesses, organizations and individuals are all called upon to contribute to this challenge. Focusing on business schools (BSs), and the potential impact they have on graduates, we ask what they are doing for the deployment of these objectives. To this end, we conducted a systematic review of the literature related to SDGs and business schools in the WOS, SCOPUS and ERIC databases. A multi-stage exclusion process resulted in 16 documents for review. The findings of this study provide key information on the role that business schools have to play in achieving SDGs and the ways in which they can be incorporated into their activity: from more in-depth actions linked to creating awareness, questioning current paradigms, fostering cooperation and interdisciplinarity with stakeholders, and working on coherence; to more specific interventions such as creating student associations, incorporating new teaching methodologies or increasing students’ participation in extracurricular activities. In addition, this study also allows us to identify gaps in the literature, giving ideas on necessary future lines of research.

One of the concerns in our time is the need to integrate economic, social and environmental aspects, which is known as sustainable development. The role of higher education is essential for providing future professionals with the necessary profiles to respond to the sustainability challenges in increasingly complex and global contexts. That is why numerous authors have sought to define key competencies, skills and learning outcomes for sustainability. However, there is still no agreement on what these key competencies for sustainability in higher education really are. For that reason, the objective of this paper is to determine which are the sustainability core competencies, considering three different geographical regions (Europe, Latin America, and Central Asia), and the perspective of four different stakeholders (graduates, employers, students and academics). The framework of the research is the development of the so-called Tuning projects, which aim to design comparable and compatible higher education degrees in different regions of the world, based on student-centered and competency-based learning. Using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the results of this study reveal the existence of a factor intimately related to sustainability, which includes competencies such as commitment to the preservation of the environment, social responsibility or respect for diversity and multiculturality, among others.

The objective of higher education institutions is to integrate reflective learning that contributes to the development of a greater awareness among individuals of the importance of facing the 21st century’s sustainability challenges. This paper analyzes the impact of an extracurricular volunteer activity in Tangier, Morocco in the development of student reflection at a Spanish university. To this end, two objectives were proposed: (1) to explore the students’ primary reflections of the experience, and (2) analyze the students’ perceptions of the importance of participating in the experience in order to develop reflective learning. In the study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 students who participated in the volunteer activity. Data analysis was carried out using Iramuteq software to conduct a descending hierarchical classification (DHC), and MAXQDA software to conduct a constant comparison analysis. This research highlights the value of voluntary extracurricular activities in the development of reflections that guide change in the beliefs, attitudes, and daily behaviors of students that ultimately result in sustainability. Due to this, not only is it considered essential that students participate in social projects, but also that they undertake these projects with peers and instructors who can create environments of support and trust.

Recientemente se está desarrollando una línea de investigación en educación superior que muestra evidencia de que las actividades fuera de programa o extracurriculares estructuradas tienen un impacto positivo en la formación integral del alumnado (Ivanova & Logvinova, 2017). Los trabajos existentes son mayoritariamente empíricos e identifican algunas contribuciones relevantes, sin existir una revisión sistemática del conjunto de funciones y beneficios derivados de estas. Además, el término y tipología de actividad extracurricular (ECA) siguen siendo ambiguos y todavía no existe una definición ni una clasificación generalmente aceptada para este concepto (Greenbank, 2015).En este contexto, el trabajo que se presenta en este artículo tiene como objetivos: (a) describir el concepto y tipología de las actividades extracurriculares en educación superior; y (b) identificar las funciones y beneficios de estas en el desarrollo humano integral del alumnado universitario. La metodología llevada a cabo siguió la declaración PRISMA para las revisiones sistemáticas (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff & Altman, 2009). Los estudios se seleccionaron de las bases de datos WoS, Scopus y ERIC y se analizaron de acuerdo a los objetivos planteados.El análisis de los 50 trabajos de investigación seleccionados aporta luz a la literatura académica no solo en torno al concepto y tipología de actividad extracurricular sino también respecto a los efectos de esta en la empleabilidad, rendimiento académico, bienestar, adaptación a la vida universitaria y participación y transformación social. Asimismo, se exponen los beneficios que aportan dichas actividades en cuanto al desarrollo de habilidades personales, sociales y profesionales. Finalmente, se pone de relieve la necesidad de abordar investigaciones sobre lo que supone la formación extracurricular en el ámbito universitario, así como la importancia de potenciar dicha formación para promover el desarrollo humano integral del alumnado en educación superior.

The purpose of this research is to perform a systematic review of the literature published on the benefits of applying the service-learning methodology with business students. Several works and studies identify significant contributions that are important to the student’s profile; however, a systematic review of the benefits derived from the methodology application in the profile previously described has not yet been conducted. The main objective of this study is to gather, identify, and classify evidence from 32 studies conducted across global business schools regarding the benefits of service-learning in university students. The applied methodology follows the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” statement for systematic reviews. The studies were extracted from the World of Science, Scopus, and Educational Resource Information Center databases and were analyzed according to the suggested objectives. The suggested systematic review provides a rigorous analysis of academic literature on the benefits of service learning in the student’s personal, social, academic, and civic environment. A theoretical framework that combines all gathered benefits from the 32 studies has been suggested in these pages, by means of grouping these benefits into four categories considering prior research on the academic, personal, social, and citizenship outcomes. Several quantitative, qualitative, and mixed studies support the benefits of this methodology, focusing on the student’s profile development. We found that students enjoy plenty of outcomes after participating in the service-learning experience, thus, the most frequent outcome is greater social engagement. With more than 4,000 students involved in the total analyzed studies, we present a list of ranked outcomes that reflects and supports the strength of the methodology. Through this study, institutions as well as teachers may be aware of the potential present in this methodology. Our study also suggested a framework for university coordinators to act.