Implementing Education for Sustainable Development in Teaching and Learning Practice

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. 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).

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) presents a viable pedagogical orientation for achieving this, but educators face difficulty operationalising it (Higgins, 2022). Previous SoTL work regarding ESD has been highly theoretical (Hallinger & Nyugen, 2020), or small-scale case reports focused on singular courses or programmes (Loorback & Wittmayer, 2024).

This workshop bridges theory and practice, using the Co-Designing Reflective Approaches for the Teaching of Sustainability (C.R.A.F.T.S) model created by the presenters to embed ESD into courses across disciplines, levels of study, and at a course or programme level (Higgins & Calvert, 2024). Participants 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. Participants should bring an existing course, or one currently in development, to be worked on through our interactive and tactile approach supported by dialogical coaching practices.

Participants in previous iterations of this workshop have stated that it contains “great strategies...to reflect on our practice” and enabled for them “broader thinking...methods and design using a clear path”.