Embedding education for sustainable development
We work to progress the ways in which we embed sustainability and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into our formal educational and professional development offering through a number of means.
The University’s Responsible Futures group leads and provides a mechanism for embedding education for sustainable development (ESD) into the formal and informal curriculum. The group is led by Professor Liz Price, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor Sustainability and strategic lead for ESD, and reports directly to the University’s Environment Strategy Group, chaired by our Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor.
Our University Teaching Academy works to ensure we provide the necessary professional development opportunities and resources to embed ESD in our curriculum, while the Education Strategy principles offer guidance on how to do this.
The University Teaching Academy offers:
Monitoring our progress
The University’s Responsible Futures strategic lead Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Sustainability Professor Liz Price ensures that a key function of the project’s framework is to review and report our progress towards embedding ESD in our educational offering.
There are a number of mechanisms that the University uses to measure the integration of ESD:
- Annual enrolment survey for all students – we ask all returning students whether they perceive that as a result of their University experience, they are gaining the skills and knowledge that are helping them understand key sustainable development issues. Information about this is available in our ‘students, staff and sustainability’ perceptions report.
- Biennial staff travel and sustainability survey where we ask academic University employees to indicate whether they include sustainability in their teaching and research. Information about this is available in our students, staff and sustainability perceptions report.
- Our Responsible Futures working group and biennial audit report outlines the progress we have made towards embedding ESD and the steps we need to take to progress its integration.
Our University Strategy and our Leadership in Sustainability Enabling Strategy set out the steps that must be taken to embed ESD, such as including the framing of ESD within the curriculum in course validation, review and quality assurance and enhancement processes, embedding ESD and meaningful education around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals across the formal and informal curriculum, and measuring impacts of ESD in relation to positive outcomes for students.