Sustainable Development in Higher Education (Dawe Report)

This report is the culmination of a six-month investigation into how different subject disciplines taught within the higher education system are contributing to creating sustainability literate graduates. By undertaking such an investigation, the Academy sought to identify good practice in approaches to teaching and curriculum development; what barriers exist in embedding sustainable development in institutional teaching and learning strategies; as well as assessing the support required for widening and deepening the embedding process.

The approach adopted throughout the research has been non-prescriptive, open and participatory.

The report is a quick assessment of the current state of ESD, not a comprehensive review.

Nevertheless it represents the first interdisciplinary and integrated investigation into ESD and its implementation within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) within the UK.

Key Findings

Teaching and learning
The research found that most of the disciplines represented by the Academy’s 24 Subject Centres are making a contribution to the sustainability literacy of their students. But it is a dynamic and changing picture with many academic staff recognising ESD as an important component of the development of their respective subjects, and, by inference, what is taught and how. The state of progress can be summarised as follows: substantial work in progress, a range of good practice, but overall a patchy picture with sustainable development being marginal or non-existent in some influential disciplines but increasingly higher profile in others. There is universal acknowledgement that a wide-range of skills and knowledge are required to create an action-orientated sustainability-literate graduate body.

Many of these skills and attributes are not easy to teach in a traditional sense, but there are a growing number of examples of new teaching orientations or approaches which support the development of such skills as interdisciplinary thinking and problem solving and team working. The research revealed three prevailing orientations in the teaching of sustainable development:

• Educators as role models and learners. This orientation places an emphasis on how the tutor can act as a role model for students in order to offer a credible and authoritative perspective on the realities of putting sustainability principles into practice.
• Experiential learning by reconnecting to real-life situations. This orientation focuses on real and practical life issues and actual experiences as learning situations.
• Holistic thinking. Many of the skills and knowledge for sustainable development are associated with complex, multi-layered and interconnected systems. This approach
  encompasses a more open-ended exploration of interdependency and transdisciplinary connections between subjects as well as including approaches to developing and honing critical thinking.
  

Curriculum Responses
The research survey identified a wide-range of curricula connections in response to the sustainability agenda. Several disciplines have introduced relevant themes such as climate change, biodiversity and environmental management systems. However, the overall picture is patchy with major gaps in areas such as sustainable production and consumption, ecoefficiency and national and international sustainable development policy.

The survey identified three categories of response to ESD by subject disciplines:

1. Subject disciplines that have adopted a major process of embedding ESD curricula into undergraduate and post-graduate programmes. Examples include Engineering
   and Materials subjects which are dealing with the day-to-day realities of industrial processes, English with its strong tradition of ‘eco-literacy’ and Geography, Earth and
   Environmental Sciences.
2. Subject disciplines that have made some limited progress in embedding ESD into their curricular although acknowledging that these disciplines have some significant curricular content opportunities to do so. Examples include Biosciences, Economics, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism, Philosophy and Religious Studies.
3. Subject Centres that have an interest in ESD, but have found it much more difficult to embed ESD widely or deeply into their curricula. Examples include Information and Computer Sciences and Mathematics, Statistics and Operational
   Research, Performing Arts and Psychology.
   

Best practice examples elicited from the survey can be characterized in two specific ways:

1. Those subjects which were extending the boundaries of their discipline to include other unrelated disciplines, e.g., sciences and humanities.
2. Those subjects which have a close and continuing association with their institution’s environmental processes and practices.
   

Barriers and Solutions to Embedding ESD

The research revealed four major barriers to the successful embedding of ESD into many of  the subject disciplines in HE:

1. Overcrowded curriculum.
2. Perceived irrelevance by academic staff.
3. Limited staff awareness and expertise.
4. Limited institutional drive and commitment.
   

At one extreme, the arts and humanities identified the largest number of barriers, whereas sociology, the built environment and environmental sciences identified relatively few. For example, performing arts subjects identified at least ten barriers, ranging from awkward fit with the subject area to lack of staff expertise, irrelevance, financial restrictions and limited institutional commitment. English, with nine barriers, was particularly concerned with the difficulty in translating ecological concepts into literary theoretical concepts. Other subject areas raised the issue of sustainable development having limited academic rigour and
problems with internal validation and accreditation systems.

Solutions
Subject Centres identified a number of solutions to the barriers identified which are in the Executive Summary and Full Report (see below).

Report Conclusions

This report sets out the current state of progress on embedding ESD in many of the subject disciplines taught within the higher education sector. It also identifies some of the barriers and their resolution. The significance of this report is that it is a reflection of the views of practitioners in the disciplines that make up the HE sector in the UK. Whilst the progress might appear patchy and limited in some important disciplines, this research provides
evidence of the strong underlying support for more action in support of the embedding process. To this end, the report recommends that the Academy and its Subject Centres should strengthen the development of ESD in the following ways:

1. Support and funding should be provided to promote the development of ESD across all subject disciplines in HE, including the dissemination of good practice.
2. Action research should be commissioned to explore the connections between ESD and employability.
3. Action research should be commissioned into whether career opportunities and choices of HE graduates are being influenced by the SD agenda.
4. A stakeholder group should be established comprising employers, professional bodies and graduate careers to identify creative ways of implementing and supporting
   the integration of ESD to teaching, learning and the curriculum. The group should be tasked to develop a persuasive business case for creating sustainable universities.
   

Education for sustainable development is an emerging imperative. It represents a major shift in the way students are taught and learn within the higher education sector. It requires a broader and more flexible approach to the development and teaching of academic disciplines.

Much of this change is in line with what graduates will need in an increasingly complex work environment. This is the challenge that the Academy and the Subject Centres it supports should address.