Education for Sustainable Development: Emerging Themes from Adopters of a Declaration

Abstract

Universities that sign the Talloires Declaration signify their commitment to education for sustainable development. This research explores whether the signification is a strategic desire to be seen to be doing the right thing, or a genuine commitment to enhancing sustainability and helping the environment. This semi-structured interview research involves communication with the sustainability managers in the majority of Talloires signified universities in Australia. Since Australia has a comparably high rate of commitment to the Talloires Declaration, the findings represent rich and deep insight into reasons and motivations that can inform the adoption process around the world. Applying institutional theory and related concepts of structuration, isomorphism, and signaling, the findings are analyzed to reveal the range of environmental initiatives and the underlying explanation of themes. Current strategies and future directions for universities are indicated. Findings are that higher education is a key mechanism in business and society for finding and harnessing knowledge-based solutions. The challenge is that institutionalization has created resistance to change through coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphism, along with rhetoric. Structuration factors should be considered in the context of making positive changes for sustainability in the university sector.

Do Codes of Ethics Reveal a University’s Commitment to Sustainable Development? Evidence from Italy

“…Although no studies have previously examined universities' codes of ethics in a SD perspective, the results presented in this study could be compared with the conclusions of other international similar works. On the one hand, this analysis is, for example, in-line with that studies that argue that an (a) SD is a well-defined concept within higher education [11,50], (b) the SDGs have a global dimension and their action implementation depends on the level of priority that different countries give to them [51], (c) there are currently no international guidelines and best practices on sustainability in universities [35] and (d) only a small number of universities are communicating their sustainability efforts [11]. On the other hand, it is important to highlight how in the universities' codes of ethics some SDGs are totally excluded from the ethical actions of universities.…”

Education for Sustainable Development: Evolution and Perspectives: A Bibliometric Review of Research, 1992–2018

“…Zutshi, Creed, and Connely [9] argued that sustainability initiatives should occupy a strategic place in higher education institutions, while Alba-Hidalgo, del Alamo, and Gutierrez-Perez [84] recognized the mature experiences associated with environmental sustainability in connection with the main pillars of a university's activity: teaching, research, facilities, and services. In this sense, universities began collaborating and adopting external standards.…”

“…In recent years, numerous studies [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] have shown that the interest in research concerning Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has grown considerably. As it expands rapidly, this sector is becoming more visible and significant in a global world affected by serious environmental issues and by growing social, economic, and political inequality.…”

Education for Sustainable Development and Children’s Involvement in Public Spaces. From Universalism to Places, from Rights to Capabilities: Some Evidence from a Research Project on the Regeneration of Public Spaces in Milan

“…Recent years have seen considerable development, arguably stimulated by the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005Development ( -2014, in the interdisciplinary debate on the biunivocal links between education and sustainability (Jickling and Wals 2008;Reunamo and Pipere 2011;Sterling 2016;Zutshi et al 2019). "The number of publications, authors, and journals has increased, proving that ESD has gained momentum" (Grosseck et al 2019, p. 30), while experts and scholars have focused on two main priorities, namely "international efforts to bring this area of inquiry into the mainstream [and] the integration of education into sustainable development and of sustainable development into education" (ivi, p. 1).…”