Teaching sustainability across curricula: understanding faculty perspectives at Vancouver Island University

Abstract

Sustainability initiatives in higher education are growing in importance. This case study may guide faculty at other institutions who seek to gain deeper insight into the state of sustainability education where they work. Members of the Vancouver Island University Sustainability Advisory Committee hosted a workshop for faculty, students, and staff to explore how sustainability is incorporated into teaching and learning at the institution, to share perspectives, and examine ways to enhance individual and collective pedagogical practices. A World Café activity posed four questions for participants to answer as they rotated between tables. The resulting qualitative data was content analyzed and interpreted. Key themes and categories from data concerning participants' successes and inspirations while teaching and learning at VIU, challenges and barriers in blending sustainability into coursework, faculty's perceptions of student perspectives of sustainability in VIU courses, and about resources and opportunities to integrate sustainability in interdisciplinary courses are reported and discussed. This case study differs from research in that it does not describe an evaluation of a program but, rather, explicates a process that faculty working at a new university can use to elicit information from their peers and develop networks to engage their university in interdisciplinary sustainability for years to come.

Curriculum development in the higher education literature: A synthesis focusing on construction management programmes

“…Prior to searching the electronic journal databases, a manual review of pertinent literature (in English) was undertaken to identify keywords. Five publications were initially reviewed on the broader topic of curriculum development: Haning (2021); McCunn et al (2020); McManus and Rook (2021); Szczepankiewicz et al (2021); and Veltman et al, 2021. Second, the terms identified were entered into the Scopus search tool: “(TITLE-ABS-KEY (‘curriculum’) OR (‘curricula’) AND (‘development’) AND (‘higher education’) OR (‘university’) OR (‘universities’) AND LIMIT-TO (PUBYEAR 1912 to 2020) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, ‘ar’) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, ‘English’))”.…”

Development of Sustainable Thinking by Information Literacy

“…Many studies discuss the issue of awareness, as well as educating and training students, for a sustainable society by creating an adequate curriculum [1,[5][6][7][8].…”

Assessment of the Quality Education Awareness Competence of Pre-Service Educators Using Vignettes

“…The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development-Río +20 [5] outcome document, alongside the UNESCO document for the implementation of education-related SDGs [6,7] point to higher institutions as relevant agents for the integration of a holistic and comprehensive approach to sustainable development. Following this, universities around the world have incorporated sustainable development into their educational agendas [8][9][10], and have produced a series of recommendations to encourage the adoption of sustainable principles and competencies [11]. Moreover, the number of sustainability study programmes and curricula that incorporate these principles has grown significantly worldwide [12].…”