Educating Future Change Agents - Higher Education as a Motor of the Sustainability Transformation

Project: Research

Project participants

Description

The well-being of humankind and the biosphere, from generation to generation, is at stake in the quest for sustainable development and calls for collaborative efforts across all sectors of society. Yet, higher education institutions play a particular role. As hubs of knowledge generation, universities are able to provide evidence for transformational strategies and actions that foster sustainable development around the world. Similarly important, however, is universities’ opportunity and responsibility to educate future change agents who are willing and able to initialize, support, and carry out the transformation of economy and societies towards sustainability. Over the past decade, sustainability has inspired new curricula and has been incorporated into existing ones at universities worldwide. Additionally, novel approaches on how to teach and learn sustainability have been developed and applied in innumerable courses. However, to date little empirical research has been
conducted on sustainability curricula and courses as to provide robust evidence specifically on how students can best be educated to acquire such competencies that would qualify them for becoming impactful change agents.
The proposed project attempts to generate this type of evidence. It addresses the research question, how competence acquisition can best be fostered on two levels – for novel teaching and learning approaches in individual sustainability courses as well as for entire sustainability curricula. To this end, the project adopts a multi-methodological approach, combining indepth qualitative case studies with a quantitative sample study to generate both detailed as well as generalizable insights.
The project is designed in a transdisciplinary way involving sustainability professionals (alumni), HR managers from selected sustainability employers, curriculum developers, course instructors, and students. The team integrates expertise in research on higher education (competencies and pedagogies), sustainability solution options, and sustainable entrepreneurship.
The proposed project conducts its research on two universities that have pioneered sustainability education in Europe and North America, namely, Leuphana University of Lüneburg in Germany and Arizona State University in the United States. Both universities have fully developed degree programs in sustainability (Bachelor, Master, PhD) and are widely known for their innovative teaching and learning approaches, including transdisciplinary, problem-based, project-based, and solutionoriented pedagogies. The project is expected to generate results on:
- What competencies in sustainability are critical for future change agents, qualifying them for employability or
entrepreneurship;
- How effective are novel teaching and learning formats in conveying these key competencies;
- Which of such novel teaching and learning formats yield the most profound impact (longitivity);
- What types of integrating sustainability into curricula are best suited to educate competent and passionate change agents;
- What institutional factors are conducive to adopting such types of sustainability curricula;
- If and how real contributions to the sustainability transformation can get attributed to the acquisition of key competencies during higher education.
The project results will advance the evidence base in the field of research on sustainability education. With regard to the practice of higher education, the project offers evidence-based guidance to other universities around the world. There is great interest in adopting and establishing impactful sustainability curricula and courses that educate future change agents able to support and carry out the sustainability transformation. This project offers some of the necessary evidence to do this in successful ways.
AcronymEdFCA
StatusFinished
Period01.03.1630.04.20

Datasets

  • Connecting curricula and competence through student learning journeys

    Dataset

Research outputs

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Business model communication and financial performance in crossnational acquisitions
  2. Do I need to charge right now? Tailored choice architecture design can increase preferences for electric vehicle smart charging
  3. Family firm identity and capital structure decisions
  4. Characterization of dissimilar friction stir welded lap joints of AA5083 and GL D36 steel
  5. Does it pay off? Integrated reporting and cost of debt
  6. Who is responsible for corruption?
  7. Introduction
  8. Entrepreneurial Traits, Entrepreneurial Orientation, and Innovation in the Performance of Owner-Manager Led Firms: A Meta-analysis
  9. How Germany is phasing out lignite
  10. Wertschaffendes Umweltmanagement
  11. „Save the queen“: female national wheelchair basketball players in gender-segregated and gender-mixed competitive sport
  12. Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development
  13. Lagrangian heat transport in turbulent three-dimensional convection
  14. Accumulation of total trace metals due to rapid urbanization in microtidal zone of Pallikaranai marsh, South of Chennai, India
  15. Gott ist Liebe. Studien zum Verständnis der Liebe als Modell des trinitarischen Redens von Gott
  16. The impact of the 2004 EU enlargement on the performance of service enterprises in Germany's eastern border region
  17. "Nun Künstler, wo steht ihr, seid ihr auch bereit ..."
  18. Greenpeace's Digital Transformation
  19. Plant neighbors differentially alter a focal species' biotic interactions through changes to resource allocation
  20. Demons at Play in Paul Auster´s The Music of Chance
  21. Taxonomic and functional changes in mountain meadow communities four years after transplantation to a lowland environment