Higher Education Institutions (HEI), with or without governmental polices andrecommendations are moving towards holistic and systemic approaches whenaddressing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The SustainableDevelopments Goals (SDG), recently adopted by United Nations, and inparticular SDG 4 are an additional driver for implementation of sustainability atHEI in an integrative way. Different tools have been developed to assess andbenchmark ESD implementation at HEI but how well are being performed andits impact is still an open question. In southern Europe countries like Portugaland Spain, in spite of the lack of national policies, HEI are working towards ESDimplementation through the development of plans and actions in sectorial areas.The aim of this research is to assess and compare the integration of ESDaccording to an all school approach into two public Universities, withheadquarters in the capitals of Portugal and Spain: Universidade Aberta,Portugal and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain. Universidade Aberta,the only Distance Learning public higher education institution in Portugal, hasbeing applied sustainability in different ways: i) curricula (through a e-learningthree cycle degrees system from undergraduate, to master and PhD aiming toactively promote education for sustainable development, along with an increasein transdisciplinarity across subjects, and also through non formal courses about Climate Change, Education for Sustainability and Environment), ii)application of a quality Management policy with a Recognition of Excellence, iii)a specific inclusion program for students with disabilities. The UniversidadAutonoma de Madrid is one of the main public universities in Madrid. Thisinstitution offers an extensive range of studies, organized into eight schools andstrong links with research centers from Spanish National Research Council(CSIC) that make possible best practices in teaching and researching aboutsustainability. Besides, this university has pushed sustainability inenvironmental management, education and involvement of all academic adtechnical staff and students (Environmental Education, EnvironmentalParticipation) by means of their ECOCAMPUS Project. Being two different HEItheir actions towards ESD can still be compared and for that purpose we usedthe online Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating SystemTM (STARS)Reporting Tool to measure and benchmark sustainability progress at bothUniversities. The assessment performed in order to evaluate the ESDapplicability focused on four categories: Academics; Engagement, Operationsand Planning & Administration. A focus group and questionnaire survey withexperts from both universities with the personal in charged of each of the fourcategories of STARS was developed for data gathering. Results of bothUniversities were compared, and discussed ways to improve. The performanceof STARS was also discussed compared to other similar tools. The resultsobtained allow us to identify fields for improvement as well as new ways for theimplementation of the sustainability concept and its different dimensions.Bearing in mind that both countries have some similarities, namely cultural, thiscollaboration also brought up difficulties that need to be addressed in order tosuccessfully apply and implement EDS.
Key-words – Higher Education Institutions, Sustainability Brenchmarking,Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating SystemTM, Education forSustainability
2b. Educating for sustainability
