Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum at a Teaching-Oriented University
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Context and Background
- (1)
- Define and apply sustainability principles within their academic programs,
- (2)
- Explain how natural, economic, and social systems interact to foster or prevent sustainability,
- (3)
- Analyze and explain local, national, and global sustainability using a multidisciplinary approach, and
- (4)
- Consider sustainability principles while developing personal and professional values.”
1.2. Literature Review
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Interview Design and Implementation
- How do you gauge your own knowledge on sustainability?
- How do you define sustainability?
- How important do you think sustainability is? Why do you think that?
- Do you think sustainability learning is important to include in the Cal Poly curriculum?
- How does Cal Poly teach sustainability?
- What courses have you taken that discuss sustainability or focus on sustainability? (Students).
- What courses have you taught that present information on sustainability? (Faculty)
- What prevents you from receiving more sustainability instruction at Cal Poly? (Students).
- What prevents you from providing more sustainability instruction at Cal Poly? (Faculty).
- What are some ways to make sustainability education more accessible at Cal Poly?
2.2. Transcript Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Student Responses
3.1.1. Student-Identified Barriers
3.1.2. Student Identified Solutions
3.1.3. Student Identified Barriers and Solutions by College
3.2. Faculty Responses
3.2.1. Faculty-Identified Barriers
3.2.2. Faculty Identified Solutions
4. Discussion—Designing Barrier-Specific Solutions
- (1)
- Developing workshops that provide space, training, and education focused on the development of new course material for existing courses. Workshops would promote identified solutions “integrating” and “linking” with the goal of increasing the number of sustainability-related courses. Workshop activities would include the review of learning outcomes and course structure, while designing additional course materials.
- (2)
- Developing a sustainability learning community to inform faculty from a wide range of disciplines with low sustainability knowledge. Faculty learning communities are established solutions for infusing sustainability concepts into the curriculum and increasing the number of sustainability-related courses [20]. This focused community will align with the barriers and solutions of “discipline restrictive”, “more training”, and “lack of knowledge”. A focus on overcoming seemingly discipline-specific barriers and including sustainability would be addressed through interdisciplinary approaches. The learning community participants would pair faculty with low and high sustainability knowledge as a means to address the identified “lack of knowledge” barrier with “more training” solution.
- (3)
- Developing a year-long “Community of Practice” consisting of a group of interdisciplinary educators with high sustainability knowledge and a shared interest in sustainability in higher education. The community will serve as a platform to exchange ideas, insights, and practices regarding sustainability in education. Meanwhile, it can facilitate the assessment and improvement of sustainability education across university curriculum.
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Barriers | Examples | LSK 1 (N = 17) 3 | HSK 2 (N = 22) 3 |
---|---|---|---|
Neglect | Lack of interest or care in topic | 12 | 6 |
Time constraints | No opportunities in schedule or curriculum | 12 | 8 |
Major & background | No connection or relation with discipline | 1 | 2 |
Personal attitude | Insignificant subject, not important | 0 | 4 |
Conflicts with goals | Concepts not aligned with career goals | 1 | 0 |
Personal priority | No incentive | 5 | 6 |
Accessibility | Courses not offered | 9 | 12 |
Lack of resources | To make courses available | 3 | 1 |
Approach of promotion | Over advertising and integrating | 0 | 7 |
Professor motivation | Concern not expressed by faculty | 2 | 3 |
Professor not equipped | Faculty lack competence | 0 | 1 |
Lack of institutional investment | Funds unavailable to develop courses, initiatives | 1 | 0 |
Institutional priorities | Not an emphasis or strategic goal for campus | 1 | 2 |
Solutions | Examples | LSK 1 (N = 17) 3 | HSK 2 (N = 22) 3 |
---|---|---|---|
Promotion | Increase awareness, advertising | 8 | 12 |
Integration | Add material to existing, disciplinary courses instead of creating new courses or requiring added courses | 5 | 11 |
Ge option | Add material or courses to existing GE requirements | 5 | 9 |
Ge required | Add and require a new GE course focused on sustainability | 2 | 2 |
More classes | Add/schedule additional classes | 2 | 1 |
Link to major/job | Connect importance and benefit of topic to finding a job or disciplinary knowledge | 2 | 6 |
Activities & events | Create extracurricular events and activities to increase awareness | 2 | 5 |
Early awareness | Include information in freshman orientation programs | 1 | 5 |
Smaller class size | Reduce enrollment to promote discussion, inclusion of subject | 1 | 0 |
Institutional responsibility | Make priority/goal for campus | 1 | 1 |
Most Frequently Identified Barrier | Most Frequently Identified Solution | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
College | LSK | HSK | LSK | HSK |
All (39) | Neglect (11) | Accessibility (12) | Promotion (8) | Promotion (12) |
Agriculture (7) | Neglect (2) | Accessibility (4) | Promotion (2) | Promotion (4) |
Architecture (6) | Neglect (2) | Time Constraints (3) | Promotion (1) | Promotion (3) |
Business (3) | n/a | n/a | GE Option (1) | n/a |
Engineering (7) | Neglect (3) Time Constraints (3) | Accessibility (2) Time Constraints (2) | GE Option (2) Integration (2) | GE Option (3) |
Liberal Arts (13) | Accessibility (2) Time Constraints (2) | Accessibility (4) | Integration (2) | Integration (2) |
Science and Math (3) | Neglect (3) Accessibility (3) | n/a | Promotion (3) | n/a |
Barriers | Examples | LSK 1 (N = 7) 3 | HSK 2 (N = 10) 3 |
---|---|---|---|
Lack of awareness | Unsure if applies to courses taught, unsure how to incorporate | 4 | 3 |
Lack of competence | No knowledge of subject | 4 | 2 |
Instructor philosophy | Subject is controversial | 1 | 2 |
Personal priority | Other concerns or competing requirements have greater importance | 3 | 5 |
Time constraints | Quarter system or class meeting pattern doesn’t allow for additional topics/information | 2 | 2 |
Accessibility | No courses offered, available | 2 | 2 |
Discipline restrictive | Course topic restricts opportunity to integrate | 3 | 7 |
Lack of guidance | No training, support, directions for including in teaching | 1 | 0 |
No incentive | No personal benefit, no recognition for incorporating into teaching | 0 | 1 |
Lack of resources | Funding not available for new courses, electives | 0 | 1 |
Institutional priority | Not listed as an institutional priority/goal | 0 | 1 |
Solutions | Examples | LSK 1 (N = 7) 3 | HSK 2 (N = 10) 3 |
---|---|---|---|
Hold students accountable | Require assessment of all students | 0 | 1 |
Clear definition | Provide shared definition and concepts | 0 | 1 |
More faculty training | Provide instruction, class support | 3 | 0 |
Promotion | Increase awareness of activities, events, courses | 2 | 1 |
Integration | Include information in existing courses, make coursework relevant to sustainability | 2 | 4 |
Systems thinking in teaching | Add additional information on systems to courses | 1 | 0 |
Link to major/job | Connect/emphasize relevance to finding a job or disciplinary importance | 0 | 3 |
Early awareness | Include information in freshman orientation programs | 0 | 3 |
Promote minors | Advertise existing programs on campus that are focused on sustainability | 1 | 2 |
Ge option | Add materials or courses to existing GE requirements | 0 | 2 |
Interdisciplinary solutions | Provide courses, opportunities for faculty from other disciplines to teach together | 1 | 1 |
Institutional responsibility | Make campus priority, strategic goal | 1 | 5 |
More resources | Provide funding for additional courses/electives | 0 | 2 |
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Share and Cite
Pompeii, B.; Chiu, Y.-W.; Neill, D.; Braun, D.; Fiegel, G.; Oulton, R.; Ragsdale, J.; Singh, K. Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum at a Teaching-Oriented University. Sustainability 2019, 11, 2652. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092652
Pompeii B, Chiu Y-W, Neill D, Braun D, Fiegel G, Oulton R, Ragsdale J, Singh K. Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum at a Teaching-Oriented University. Sustainability. 2019; 11(9):2652. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092652
Chicago/Turabian StylePompeii, Brian, Yi-Wen Chiu, Dawn Neill, David Braun, Gregg Fiegel, Rebekah Oulton, Joseph Ragsdale, and Kylee Singh. 2019. "Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum at a Teaching-Oriented University" Sustainability 11, no. 9: 2652. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11092652