The sustainability challenges we face require action and adaptation by individuals and institutions. Too often, this adaptation is isolating and resource intensive. That’s why we have launched the initiative Teaching for Sustainability (read more about it on the official website).
We live in a world where the challenges of climate change, social inequality, economic instability, and geopolitical tensions are ever-present. As educators, we have a unique opportunity—and responsibility—to prepare our students to navigate these complexities. However, as an educator, you’re likely juggling teaching and research, competing deadlines, shifting expectations, and limited time and support. Perhaps you wonder:
- What is our responsibility to prepare our students for a complex world?
- How can we integrate sustainability into curriculum?
- How can we make sustainability relatable and actionable for our students?
- What teaching methods are most effective?
- What resources are available to help us teach sustainability more effectively?
To address these questions and more, we’ve launched Teaching for Sustainability. This initiative serves as a hub for educators at Lund University, offering a platform for training, resources, and community building. The initiative intends to serve the larger community, in line with the strategic and sustainability commitments made by Lund University.
Who we are
“We” are (currently, but always open and welcoming of more people joining our community!) Terese Thoni (Educational Coordinator at LU Sustainability Forum), Steven Curtis (Pedagogical Developer at the Division for Higher Education Development, AHU), Mirjam Glessmer (Pedagogical Developer at the Center for Engineering Education) and Karin Steen (Senior Lecturer at the Center for Sustainability Studies).
Our Approach
We are educators and researchers, like you, so we understand the effort required to integrate new content into your course or programmes. For those of you teaching in disciplines not typically associated with sustainability, we acknowledge your experiences and concerns.
We utilise the sustainability competencies framework, which deliberately links existing academic or professional skills with those competencies required to address sustainability.
We aim to provide educators with the practical tools and theoretical frameworks they need to seamlessly integrate sustainability into their curricula. To achieve this, we employ a variety of methods, including pedagogical coursework, training opportunities, workshops, expert-led seminars, and other inspiration-rich resources. Our ultimate goal is to foster a culture that enriches the educational experience for both educators and students.
This blog
On this blog, we collect ideas that we want to archive, for example:
- Event summaries, where we give brief summaries of events that we arranged or attended, and link to slides, videos, further reading, etc, whenever available.
- Experiences from the field, where we introduce colleagues who want to connect on the topic of “teaching about sustainability”, or share teaching about sustainability that we or our colleagues have done or experienced, what about it we found inspiring, and how it might be transferrable to other contexts.
- How-to guides are very hands-on, practical examples of how someone (in the literature or in teaching here at LU) planned and/or conducted their teaching about a sustainability topic
- Literature: summaries or discussions of articles that influenced our thinking about teaching about sustainability, and our thoughts on them.