Implementing Sustainability in Higher Education

Subtitled 'learning in an age of transformation', this book brings the challenge of sustainability firmly into the university sector where such ideas should be debated and implemented, especially in terms of education for sustainable development – both teaching and learning. The author continues the work of Sterling and Maxey in their book The Sustainable University and takes as his starting point the nine planetary boundaries of Johan Rockstrom and the growing human impact on the Earth's resources as identified by sustainability science. For universities, this means defining intended learning outcomes, learning content and pedagogies as well as developing the necessary competencies and assessment frameworks. Barth considers drivers of and barriers to curriculum change and the evolution of systemic social learning involving not just doing things differently but ultimately doing different things. The book points towards the notion that the sustainable university is an idea whose time has come. As the it shows, this will require a fundamental change in patterns of thinking, so that students begin to learn to understand things systemically rather than only engage in left hemisphere critical analysis. Needless to say, this will have to happen at the staff level first, and books like this can help provide a rationale and guidelines.