How to Teach Sustainability in Higher Education
The Teacher Training Course: How to Teach Sustainability in Higher Education is an advanced-level program designed for educators who wish to incorporate sustainability principles and practices into their teaching methods. This course provides a comprehensive understanding of sustainability education in higher education contexts, equipping participants with the necessary knowledge, tools, and strategies to effectively teach sustainability to their students. Through interactive workshops, case studies, and collaborative discussions, participants will develop a pedagogical framework that promotes critical thinking, interdisciplinary learning, and transformative action towards a sustainable future.
This Teacher Training Course can be used in a flexible way. If you click on the boxes you wil find short information and links to related topics and suggestions for literature, including some examples.
Please, be aware of the Open Access combined with a Creative Commons License.
Self-Paced Learning
As a selfpaced course based on digital materials, where you decide the order of the topics that you would like to know more about.
Workshops
As inspiration for on-site or on-line workshops where you meet phsysically with colleagues. Could also be in the form of a ‘Summer-School’. Workshops would be based on download of the digital materials and your own programme.
Contact a Lecturer
As a starting point for contacting one of the lecturers among the SustainComp partner groups for a conversation or more information. You will find the educational resources for the full SustainComp Curriculum in Moodle. You only need to register as a teacher in order to be able to download. Please use, the contactformular in Moodle for making contact.
OBJECTIVES
Course Objectives & Outcomes
Gain a deep understanding of sustainability concepts, frameworks, and challenges in the context of higher education.
Explore effective pedagogical approaches and teaching methods to integrate sustainability into diverse disciplines and curricula.
Develop practical skills to design and implement sustainability-focused lesson plans, assignments, and assessments.
Foster a transformative learning environment that empowers students to become active agents of change for a sustainable future.
Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of sustainability principles and their application in higher education, enabling educators to effectively teach and engage students on this topic.
Apply a range of pedagogical approaches and teaching methods to integrate sustainability into diverse disciplinary contexts, fostering interdisciplinary thinking and problem-solving skills among students.
Design and implement effective lesson plans, assignments, and assessments that promote critical thinking, systems thinking, and sustainable practices.
Create a transformative learning environment that inspires students to become change agents, fostering their motivation and capacity to contribute to a sustainable future.
STRUCTURE
Course Structure
1: Teaching Interculturally
Topic 1:
Why teach interculturally? What are the stages in learning to teach interculturally and what are the fundamental dimensions of intercultural teaching? Watch the video to find out more!
Topic 2:
The video summarizes the three stages of intercultural learning and focuses on the first stage – development of intercultural competences. This includes tips on how to develop intercultural attitudes, knowledge, and skills to be able to engage diversity of both students and teachers.
Topic 3:
Developing awareness of one’s own culture and identity is the second stage in intercultural learning. Learn to reflect on your core values and values around education and how they condition the ways you relate to teaching, the discipline, and students.
Topic 4:
Work on your developmental expertise to reach the third stage in intercultural learning. Rather than focusing on what you know and relying on your expertise, become comfortable with ‘not knowing’, understand there are variations in cultures and be open to the unexpected.
Topic 5:
This video introduces the dimensions of intercultural teaching: developing internationalized curriculum and engaging diversity in teaching.
Topic 6:
What is internationalization of curriculum? Why and how to internationalize learning outcomes and activities in the curriculum, so that they engage students’ different perspectives, develop students’ intercultural competences and engage cultural diversity? Find out in this video.
Topic 7:
Learn how to write international learning outcomes so that they are demonstrable, measurable, realistic, and achievable. Learn about internationalization methods, such as comparative methodology and COIL, that contribute to fully internationalized curriculum.
Topic 8:
This video gives you tips on how to align your curriculum and teaching content in your existing courses with the SustainComp curriculum.
Topic 9:
This is an overview of methods designed to engage diversity by pursuing equity and inclusion in the classroom, facilitating purposeful discussion, managing intercultural group work, facilitating productive discomfort, and managing anxiety.
Topic 10:
This video gives some tips on how to pursue equality and inclusion and value students’ insights and perspectives. This includes an interculturally sensitive approach to students of diverse backgrounds and cultures, avoiding stereotypes, and seeing the cultural complexity and multiplicity of students’ identities.
Topic 11: Learn how to make students’ interactions more purposeful and relevant to the goals at hand and how to facilitate discussion among students of diverse backgrounds and with diverse learning needs.
Topic 12:
Learn how to create intercultural groups by finding balance between students’ social need for acceptance and the need for their intercultural learning. Become more aware of how peer status and power imbalance may affect group dynamics and learn how to assign students’ roles in teams and how to make their group work authentic.
Topic 13:
Intercultural learning takes place outside the comfort zone. Learn some tips on how to challenge students’ mindset and encourage them to shift their habitual frames of reference. Balance dissonance with support and help students manage anxiety.
2: Interdisciplinary Teaching
The aim of this presentation is to present some definitions of interdisciplinary teaching in relation to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Interdisciplinarity is related to problem-oriented and project-based teaching methods and to didactical practice in the form of co-teaching and other methods that facilitate collaboration across subjects, disciplines, HEIs, sectors, cultures and geographies. Examples of application in the SustainComp Curriculum.
3: 21st Century Learning Skills
The aim of this educational resource is to share references and examples regarding the notion of the 21st century Learning Goals. Anticipating the UNSDGs the 21st Century learning Goals constituted the point-of-departure for a broader, idealistic and humanist approach to development based on education. Especially regarding the language education platform at HEIs is still important and corresponds well with the the UNESCO based and interdisciplinary approach. Examples from the SustainComp curriculum are included in the presentation.
4: Teaching Sustainability
The aim of this educational resource is to share important references for teaching education for sustainable development (ESD) in relation to the SustainComp Curriculum. Examples to the individual modules are included in the presentation.
5: Inquiry-Based Didactics
The aim of Inquiry-Based Teaching methods is to scaffold or facilitate Inquiry-Based Learning processes among students. In this presentation there is a short overview of the background for this method and how it has been included in Education for Sustainable Development in various subjects and topics in the SustainComp Curriculum.
6: COIL
Instructor’s Guide for Collaborative Online International Learning
Author: Janík, Zdeněk
Elportál, Brno : Masarykova univerzita. ISSN 1802-128X. 2024 http://elportal.cz/publikace/coil
