Embedding Education for Sustainable Development in the curriculum: an example from Manchester Metropolitan University

There is a growing number of national and international drivers to embed Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Higher Education. Through ESD, universities have the potential to educate future leaders, policy makers,... [ view full abstract ]

There is a growing number of national and international drivers to embed Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Higher Education. Through ESD, universities have the potential to educate future leaders, policy makers, business owners and media on issues related to Sustainable Development e.g. climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, research shows that current levels of knowledge and skills amongst university lecturers present a barrier to embedding ESD in the curriculum. This poster provides an overview of a project to review the comprehension and uptake of ESD in the School of Science and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University. Stage one of the process involved the development of a new auditing tool to assess the current inclusivity of ESD themes within curricula. Stage two involved an assessment of the ‘success’ of units in relation to student progression/ number of good honours and the teaching of ESD across a range of subject areas. Development of the auditing tool involved documenting of a range of Sustainable Development ‘themes’, notably ‘keywords’ employed in teaching. This included a systematic literature review where phrases reflecting the breadth of related social, economic, and environmental issues and skills were codified. The identified themes were then reviewed and supplemented where appropriate, through a further discipline-specific iterative process. Piloting of the audit tool consisted of two stages; a keyword search of curriculum documentation at the School of Science and the Environment (MMU) and semi structured interviews with unit leaders to test the accuracy of the tool against actual unit content. The second stage involved a series of semi-structured interviews with teaching teams to assess interdisciplinary support for ESD across the School. Levels of inclusion (audit results) and support for ESD were then analysed in conjunction with individual unit success metrics (progression/ number of good honours). Overall, the tool piloted well with 67% of unit coordinators either agreeing or strongly agreeing that the results were representative of the content of their units (25% disagreed). From the thematic analysis of the data, findings included an overall positive response to the tool but a question in terms of which part of the unit documentation (e.g. unit specifications, unit handbooks) is more suitable to evaluate ESD content. Perceptions of the need to embed ESD ranged from ESD being a distraction for students, to it being core to teaching. Similar to other studies, this study also found that individual knowledge or lack thereof, posed a barrier to the incorporation of ESD in taught content. It is recommended that integrating ESD across an interdisciplinary curriculum requires bespoke and individual approaches.