Practising what we teach: using ESD to design effective CPD

The successful embedding of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within higher education curricula depends not only on institutional strategy but on the availability of effective, credible, and meaningful continuing professional development (CPD) for teaching staff. Despite growing expectations that all graduates develop sustainability-related knowledge, skills, and values, many educators report limited confidence to integrate ESD within their teaching.

This presentation builds on prior work that addressed this challenge through the design, delivery, and evaluation of an accredited academic development programme to support the embedding of ESD across the curriculum. Grounded in the CRAFTS methodology (Higgins & Calvert, 2024), a co-design framework integrating sustainability content, ESD competencies and high-impact pedagogical practice, the programme demonstrated statistically significant improvements in academic staff confidence and Professional Action Competence for ESD across diverse disciplines.

The presentation reports on the next phase of this work, namely the design of a comparable CPD programme at King’s College London (KCL). While retaining the same theoretical and pedagogical foundations, the KCL context introduces distinct drivers and cultures. The presentation explores what elements of ESD-focused CPD travel well across institutions and where divergence becomes necessary, with implications for designing CPD that supports sustained, institution-wide change in ESD practice.