Crafting Courses for Change-Makers

Embedding sustainability in the curriculum is morally and ethically imperative, but also increasingly stakeholders are demanding that sustainability feature so graduates can tackle sustainability issues faced in employment. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) presents a viable theoretical orientation for doing so, but like many theoretical pedagogical orientations, educators face difficulty operationalising it (Higgins, 2022). Graduates need an understanding of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and to develop abilities across the eight ESD competencies, therefore holding sustainability at the core of their professional and personal practice to make changes locally and globally for sustainable and equitable world (Giangrande et al., 2019).

This workshop bridges theory and practice, using the Co-Designing Reflective Approaches for the Teaching of Sustainability (C.R.A.F.T.S) curriculum and learning design model created by the presenters to embed ESD into courses at all disciplines and levels of study, and at a course or programme level.

AdvanceHE commissioned the presenters to develop a national toolkit to support the roll-out of their ESD Student Success Framework (AdvanceHE, 2024) following the publication of their ESD Literature Review (Vogel et al., 2023).

Participants will have an opportunity to experience the use of this toolkit and will complete this workshop with an understanding of ESD and its core competencies, as well as how to engage learners in sustainability through co-creation, transformative pedagogy, active learning, and authentic assessment.