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Purpose -There is a widely held belief that Sustainable Development (SD) policies are essential for universities to successfully engage in matters related to sustainability, and are an indicator of the extent to which they are active in this field. This paper examines the evidence which currently exists to support this assumption. It surveys a sample of universities in Brazil, Germany, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (USA) to ascertain the extent to which universities that are active in the field of sustainable development have formal policies on sustainable development, and whether such policies are a pre-condition for successful sustainability efforts. Design/methodology/approach -The study involved 35 universities in these seven countries (five universities respectively). A mixed-methods approach has been used, ranging from document analysis, website analysis, questionnaires and interviewing. Findings -Although only 60% of the sampled universities had a policy that specifically addressed SD, this cannot be regarded as an indicator that the remaining 40% are not engaged with substantial actions that address SD. Indeed, all of the universities in the sample, regardless of the existence of a SD formal policy, demonstrated engagement with environmental sustainability policies or procedures in some form or another. This research has been limited by the availability and ability to procure information from the sampled universities. Despite this, it is one of the largest research efforts of this kind ever performed. Originality/value -Our findings provide some valuable insights about the connections between SD policies on the one hand, and the practice of SD in higher education institutions on the other.

In South Africa, geography education students' approach to deep learning has received little attention. Therefore the purpose of this one-shot experimental case study was to evaluate the extent to which first-year geography education students used deep or surface learning in an embedded problem-based learning (PBL) format. The researchers measured students' approach to learning in this PBL format in two groups of first-year students (2012 and 2013), using the standardized revised study process questionnaire adapted to the PBL context. The study provided evidence to suggest that the implementation of PBL could help to foster deep learning among first-year geography education students.

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