Educating for Sustainability: Perspectives and Critical Notes on Accounting Scholars’ Role in Higher Education

Abstract

Education for sustainable development represents a relevant issue that allows Universities to lead and respond to social needs towards a more sustainable life and a complete change in the global paradigm of education and involvement of society. A crucial point for developing a culturally sensitive vision is to deepen the scholars' genuine commitment to sustainability. A pillar of sustainability education should rest on authenticity, intended as coherence between the scholars' research and teaching arguments relative to sustainability and the concrete behaviors held in their professional and personal spheres of life. Starting from this premise, the papers aims to inquire if there is a decoupling between the concepts scholars contribute to promote within the sustainability discourse and the real practice of sustainability in their personal and professional experience. "Is there a missing link between what scholars teach and study, thereby contributing to sustainability research and their daily choices and style of life?" After having presented the research design and the methodological approach adopted to empirically investigate the phenomenon the attention has been focused on the social and environmental accounting research literature, where some contributions claim for the presence of "blue meanies" that invade the world of scholarship, reflection, collegiality and hinder the development of challenges toward sustainability. The preliminary results of the explorative study suggest that a lot of tension related to education for sustainability improve the transfer of sustainable values and attitudes within the scientific community and the students, while several factors hinder sustainable behaviors in the daily professional and personal life of scholars, thus undermining relationships which are a pillar of sustainability.

CSR Education in Economia Aziendale Curricula: An Overview

“…The main research field interested by studies about the enabling role of HEIs on sustainable development and corporate social responsibility is represented by management. In fact, during the last years, many academics started to analyze the enabling role covered by HEIs through different theoretical lenses (Brusca et al 2018;Moggi 2019;del Baldo and Baldarelli 2017). In particular, two of the main research areas analyzed by academics are represented by managerial studies about HEIs' governance and independent studies about the integration of CSR courses in teaching programs.…”

Evaluation of a tertiary sustainability experiential learning program

“…Ely (2018) states that rooting ideas in action or “learning by doing” environmental behaviors invests the actor and creates meaning, which helps “test,” critically reflect upon and make sense of abstract concepts (Goralnik et al , 2018). Hence, experiential learning provides opportunities to apply academic content to complex or wicked “real-world” problems, providing students with the opportunity to work across discipline boundaries and to gain an understanding of community contexts and systemic factors (del Baldo and Baldarelli, 2017). In doing so, experiential learning may assist in refining career goals and developing graduate employability attributes including critical thinking, problem-solving skills, communication, teamwork, leadership and activating cognitive learning (Thiry et al , 2011), group building and personal development (Goralnik and Nelson, 2017), as well as developing practical skills (Parr and Horn, 2006).…”

Transformative sustainability education in accounting: effects on male and female students’ attitudes toward sustainable development

“…Therefore, faculty members need to know how important sustainability education is to students' future careers. In addition, IJSHE 25,3 some researchers have said that accounting faculty need to be more knowledgeable about and committed to sustainability (Botes et al, 2014;del Baldo and Baldarelli, 2017;Hahn and Reimsbach, 2014). Thus, a research implication is to assess the sustainability attitudes of accounting faculty to determine if their attitudes are a significant barrier to including sustainability education in accounting.…”