“Oh This Learning, What a Thing It Is!”—Putting Sustainability First in Teaching Techniques and in Content

Abstract

Although sustainability has become a strategic topic at many universities, working towards a learning approach in which sustainability is the fundament underlying and permeating the entire course is hardly straightforward. This paper is a case study on the development, the teaching, and the evaluation of one specific course that aims to achieve this. Based on (participant) observation, documents, and discussion with students and other stakeholders, we describe and analyze the results of the transformation of the course ‘advanced management accounting techniques’ for Masters students at the University of Groningen, in the academic year 2017–2018. We show how the course was transformed in a way to increase both a general, a business, and an accounting awareness of the importance of sustainability, while also applying a new teaching approach, namely lemniscate learning, to support this. Our course was the first in the faculty to make this transformation, and although the majority of the students were enthusiastic, the faculty staff was cautiously positive. In presenting our findings, we aim at supporting educators and other stakeholders at universities, by supplying a case study on the transformation of our course, and by scrutinizing the problems that we encountered, the feedback, both positive and negative, that we received, and the challenges that still face us, both on a course and a university level. Thus, we hope to be a source of inspiration and advice for others and to further advance our understanding of the dilemmas, practicalities, and challenges in working towards sustainability in teaching.

Analysis of Psychometric Properties and Validation of the Personal Learning Environments Questionnaire (B-PLE) in Higher Education Students

“…singular needs on a local scale and global needs as a member of a global culture [7,68]. Knowing more about students' PLE will enable educators to design training paths that are tailored to their needs, including open learning, information management, and knowledge generation and transfer [69,70], stimulating their self-regulated learning in formal and informal environments throughout their lives [65,71], so that they are able to cope in uncertain work and social scenarios, as a result of technological disruption.…”

Sociological Importance and Validation of a Questionnaire for the Sustainability of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) in 8th Grade Students of the Biobío Region in Chile

“…It also provides an instrument to build a reconceptualization of educational sociology, by measuring the new roles of students, preferably engaging with the concepts of open learning, information management, and the creation and transfer of knowledge. [8,68].…”

“…The sociological change is important when there are two-dimensional performances, i.e., performed in physical spaces and through digital interactions [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The trends of social change are conformed to the technological disruption, because "the technologies and the user environment are constructed in the same process" [8].…”

Enhancing sustainability education through experiential learning of sustainability reporting

“…Nonetheless, some progress is being made in promoting sustainable development in the wider society and in introducing sustainability into educational activities while noting there is still room for further advances (Christensen et al , 2007; Koscielniak, 2014; Gusc and van Veen-Dirks, 2017; Gusc and Heijes, 2018). Particular to Poland, there has been some individual, often “bottom-up” actions at the University of Warsaw and the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Koscielniak, 2014).…”