Introduction to Sustainable Development Leadership and Strategies in Higher Education

Enakshi Sengupta, Patrick Blessinger, Taisir Subhi Yamin, Enakshi Sengupta, Patrick Blessinger, Taisir Subhi Yamin

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781789736489
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789736496
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The world's leading international agencies are promoting and stimulating the intellectual debate towards incorporating sustainability in main stream education with the help of thought leaders. This volume highlights innovative pedagogy, discusses the learning methods which can help us to address the world's current sustainability challenges, and offers solutions to meet these. The case studies featured, offering international insight from Malaysia to Australia, discuss curriculum development and integrating sustainability within the core philosophy of the university. The authors explore how leadership education needs to innovate to effectively respond to current sustainability challenges. This topical volume contextualizes the heightened interest in sustainable education across the globe and will be of interest to researchers, university leaders, and students interested in a sustainable future for universities and society as a whole.

PART I

PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES

INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Enakshi Sengupta, Patrick Blessinger and Taisir Subhi Yamin

ABSTRACT

Today’s society is plagued with a myriad of sustainability-related issues such as poverty, climate change, environmental disasters, shrinking biodiversity, eroding of potential food-producing systems, disease and choking urban population. The nature of the problems requires societies to work collectively to find a solution to end such issues. Research is needed along with a supportive, functional and cohesive leadership across disciplines, sectors and organizations. Sustainability is the strategic imperative that one cannot keep ignoring any longer and time has come to build the momentum toward excellence, quality and reengineering. Institutions of higher education should work as equal partners in this journey toward sustainable development. World’s leading international agencies are promoting and stimulating the intellectual debate toward incorporating sustainability in main stream education with the help of thought leaders. The effort will help learners to take informed decision and responsibility toward creating environmental integrity and economic welfare for all. This volume talks about innovative pedagogy and learning methods that address the current scenario and offer solutions to meet them. The case studies and approaches written by various authors from Malaysia to Australia talk about curriculum development and integrating sustainability with the core philosophy of the university. The authors have elaborated how leadership education needs to innovate for dealing with the current sustainability challenges. This volume is topical and comes at the right time when there is a heightened interest in sustainability education across the globe.

Keywords: Sustainability; leadership; education; higher educational institutions; research; innovation; environmental concerns; pedagogy, strategy

INTRODUCTION

The 1960s saw the rise of debates and discussions centered around the topic of sustainability and a growing concern among policy-makers and scientists to create a solution that will help mitigate the issues of our civilization chartering an unsustainable path. Several summits and discussion forums resulted in policy-making, norms and legalities that might help in binding the problems into a cohesive whole. Educational institutions with their researchers and scientists joined to minimize the escalating negative impacts that we as human are collectively responsible. The compounding damage to ecosystem and the social structure is leaving the future generation on a shaky ground that might jeopardize their continued existence on this planet.

The first and foremost responsibility is to create an awareness among the young generation of the impending gloom that they are likely to face in not so distant future. Education for sustainable development (ESD) is not just another subject in the curriculum any longer but a necessity that will encourage our future generation to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that will empower and equip them to create a just and balanced society with an integrated approach toward saving the environment, alleviating the society out of poverty and moving in a trajectory toward sustainable development. ESD as a concept started growing with the need to address the environmental concerns and challenges that the planet is facing. ESD is holistic and transformational education and concerns learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO], 2014b).

The content and the curricula need to reflect the complex challenges of sustainability and cut across various thematic areas addressing key issues such as climate change, sustainable production and poverty. These critical issues should be integrated and aligned in both local and global contexts, which will help the young learners to understand the complexity and gravity of such problems and the means to address them in future. The curriculum should have elements of system thinking, decision-making and responsible business, which would further help the students to get prepared in facing an unstable future. Integrating the curriculum and making it all encompassing involves knowledge and skills of the faculty with a directional guidance from the institutional leaders. The pedagogy must be learner centered, transformative yet explorative, experiential and action oriented, which will help create a value-based attitude toward a sustainable future.

ESD should not be a single directional classroom delivery of lessons; it should encompass both virtual and real-life learning experience that can inspire the learners to evolve as better citizens of this planet. Such education may be formal or non-formal and holistic in nature, which is based on a lifelong learning. Evidence in the past has shown that it is not only sufficient for the teachers to develop their own teaching style but also develop a curriculum toward building sustainability. Leaders of the institution have a vital role to play in shaping the orientation of the institutions toward sustainability. The learning style must be adopted by the whole institution and not only by a particular stream of study. The capacity of the educators needs to be enhanced and supported by the policy of the institutions and the role that the leaders of the institution adopt. Interaction and involvement of local communities should be treated as an integral part of the university thus creating an awareness among the students:

In simple terms, sustainable development means integrating the economic, social and environmental objectives of society, in order to maximize human well-being in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This requires seeking mutually supportive approaches whenever possible, and making trade-offs where necessary. (OECD, 2001, p. 11)

UN Decade of ESD (2005–2014) facilitated a series of movement between international and local players to reorient education toward addressing and achieving the challenges faced by countries in matters of sustainability. ESD occupies a prime position in 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development along with its 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). The mandate is to recognize the need to combat and mitigate negative impacts created by unsustainable way of life and ensure peace, prosperity and partnership in order to take up the challenges that are necessary for survival of the planet and human beings. Universities and their leaders are expected to be a tuned to such needs and modify the way they think and act.

International players have been discussing the importance of education in promoting sustainability in all countries and creating “sustainable citizens” among students:

Education was deemed to be one of the most powerful tools at hand to drive the transformational changes necessary for sustainable development, but to realize this potential, education systems need to be flexible, culturally sensitive, relevant and suited to changing people’s values and behaviors. (The World We Want, 2013, p. iv)

This also explicitly underlines that, “in order to act as a driver for change, education itself needs to change, to become transformative, to change values and behaviors” (UNESCO, 2013; UNICEF, 2013, p. 14).

The threats to the planet are too many, starting for climate change to spread of diseases unheard of in the past. Formal education to acquire knowledge to get a job is not enough. Education is the only solution that can help transform lives of individuals and transform them into change agents. Need of the hour is to promote the concepts of critical thinking, creativity as a resource and decision-making in a collaborative manner (de Haan, 2010; United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2012). ESD is a dynamic concept that begins with a new vision of education that will help enable empowerment among all strata of society and enable them to take responsibility for creating a sustainable future (UNESCO, 2002, 2005, 2014a). It is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, no discipline alone can claim ESD as its own, but all disciplines can respond and contribute to ESD individually and/or collectively.

Institutions of higher education (HE) must address the global problems that the world is facing at this moment, which doesn’t merely confine itself to economic problems alone. Educational systems ought to become more inclusive and equitable based on democratic rights and right-based educational models (Blessinger, Sengupta, & Makhanya, 2019). In the ever-changing world new demands are being placed on basic amenities like water, sanitation or food. The choking urban cities are in dire straits requiring innovative solutions and a new humanistic paradigm that can address these issues on a global scale. Educational institutions are the foundations on which students can learn about these issues with the help of new teaching and learning approaches, which are inter-related and inter-dependent to deal with the problems in an effective manner (Blessinger et al., 2019).

THE ROLE OF A LEADER

Bringing about a change in the education system and inculcating a curriculum that supports sustainable development is a task that cannot be accomplished by an individual. This daunting task can be achieved only when faculty is adequately supported by a leader who believes that sustainability is the need of the hour in which all students needs to be trained. Teachers take collective responsibility toward pedagogical development and implementing it in the classroom but the lead is always taken by the leader of the institution in such matters. Building the capacity of the institution is a coll...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I. Pedagogical Approaches
• Part II. Framework and Tools
• About the Contributors
• Name Index
• Subject Index