Teaching for Sustainability

The Initiative “Teaching for Sustainability”

Hi there! Welcome to the Teaching for Sustainability at Lund University-blog!

On this page, we respond to Frequently Asked Questions including what Education for Sustainability entails and how you can engage with it at Lund University – with links to additional resources. 

What is Education for Sustainability? 

Education for Sustainability trains students to be able to understand, address, and cope with sustainability challenges. Exactly what this looks like depends on your profession and discipline, but we know that in addition to knowledge about sustainability we also need skills and attitudes to be able and motivated to contribute to a more sustainable world. This is why we prefer to talk about teaching for sustainability rather than teaching about sustainability, though the latter is an important part as well. This also means that education for sustainability is much more than informing about sustainability and that regardless of what you teach, you already teach something that is relevant for sustainability.  

How then does Education for Sustainability as an approach translate into teaching practice? There is a lot of literature on this topic (e.g. UNESCO had a whole decade on Education for Sustainability and they have lots of reports and digital resources – see below for one example or check out their webpage), but to boil it down, we use primarily two frameworks to think about what education for sustainability can look like in different contexts: 

  • Sustainability competencies framework, e.g. by Redman & Wiek (2021) (there are other very similar frameworks e.g. by Brundiers et al. 2021). This framework puts Key Competencies for Sustainability in the context of other disciplinary and professional competences. 
  • The Teaching about, with, in, through, for Sustainability framework offers 5 different lenses to investigate how to include different facets of sustainability into existing courses and is very useful as a first step to integrating sustainability. 

We use these frameworks because they can be used for education that already explicitly deals with sustainability issues, as well as education where sustainability is less apparent. All education is relevant for sustainability because at the end of the day, sustainability has to do with living well on this planet today and in the future. Therefore, all disciplines are needed and relevant! 

Another way we can start thinking about what teaching for sustainability can and should contain is to consider the fact that last year was the hottest year since global records began, that we have crossed six of nine planetary boundaries, and that democracy is under attack in many parts of the world. What type of education is relevant in light of this? Do our students acquire the necessary competencies to deal with these challenges? Moreover, students starting an education towards a master’s degree in 2025 will graduate in 2030. What will the world look like then? Will we have met the Agenda 2030? Will the world be a more or less peaceful place to live? 

Science gives us some insight into these questions, but as always when we are talking about the future, uncertainties exist, and no one can respond to these questions with certainty. However, we can think about them and discuss if there are things we can and should change to make students more resilient and adaptable to current and future challenges. 

How can I engage with Education for Sustainability at Lund University? 

Lund University supports Education for Sustainability in several different ways. For instance, sustainability is an important part of the university’s strategic quality assurance work, meaning that sustainability is considered part of all quality education, not something that matters to just a few. Sustainability is also highlighted in the Education Strategy and Education for Sustainability is included in the university’s sustainability strategy and plan. You can read more about and access relevant information and policy documents through staff pages: Sustainable development in education | Staff Pages On Staff Pages, you also find a list of competence development opportunities such as various forms of courses.  

Through the Teaching for Sustainability-initiative, Lund University offers support to teachers who want to work with learning for sustainability in various ways. Teaching for Sustainability acts as a hub for educators at Lund University offering a platform for training, resources and community building. This blog is one of our main communication channels – welcome! 

The initiative is coordinated by the Sustainability Forum in collaboration with the Division for Higher Education Development (AHU) and the Centre for Engineering Education (CEE) but welcomes all LU employees who are interested in Education for Sustainability.  

We work with three main circles of involvement: 

  • The “Community of Practice” is an open network for all interested teachers at Lund University. Teachers and other interested join the community through our MS Teams group, by opting in to an email list, or by joining events. Members of the community meet both in formal structures like courses or seminar series, as well as informally, to share experiences, and provide mutual support. 
  • The “Roundtable” consists of voluntary (in contrast to officially appointed) representatives from all faculties. Its role is to ensure information flow and collaboration between different parts of the university. The Roundtable gathers twice per semester. 
  • The “Coordination Team” engages in operational planning and implementation based on recommendations and wishes from the Community of Practice and the Roundtable. The group meets weekly. 

Members may choose to play central roles or remain in the periphery in any and all of the circles above, and to change their roles over time. We also support workshops and other events. Please contact us for more information and to discuss ideas that you have! 

 Is the Teaching for Sustainability-initiative for me? 

Are you still unsure if this initiative is for you? Do you feel that you don’t know how to teach for sustainability? Our initiative is here to support you. And you are not alone. Sustainability is broad, it is complex, and it concerns everyone. All disciplines and all subjects are needed to solve our sustainability challenges. You are the expert on how your specific topic relates to sustainability.  

Have you been teaching for sustainability for decades already? Great, we are eager to learn from you and can offer you a community of people with similar interests. 

Do you feel that you don’t have time to teach for sustainability? While we cannot promise that engaging in Teaching for Sustainability won’t take time, if you feel that this is something that is important to you, this is a chance to bring more meaning and purpose to your work. Moreover, we try hard to ensure that sustainability is not another thing added on top of everything that we are already doing but instead integrated into existing education through sustainability competencies connected to academic and professional competencies that you already teach.  

Further reading and resources