Smart Solutions in Higher Education for Sustainability: Advancing the Craft of Exploration

Dear Colleagues,

Higher Education for Sustainability (HES) has advanced into a substantial field of teaching, research, and practice—progressing mainly under an exploratory umbrella of curriculum integration in the last three decades. As we improve our understanding of the extent of ecosystem degradation, growing global economic inequality, unanticipated surge in global warming and climate changes, etc., more profound disfunctions in our socio-ecological systems currently dominate public, academic, and political discourse. To this end, HES proposes an instrumental narrative which tasks higher education institutions to produce innovative solutions and graduates equipped with skills to implement such solutions effectively. However, even if we have moved past the debates on what should be learned in HES and how this should be learned, many societies remain deeply disconnected about achieving the necessary transitions towards more sustainable socio-ecological systems.

The goal of this Special Issue is to problematize learning in higher education at a more fundamental level. We are seeking studies that engage in a deeper conversation with the HES literature around the following thematic areas:

• What innovative spaces (or reforms) have been created in which students discover, create, and implement novel ways of being, knowing, and relating to the Anthropocene? On the other hand, what are the more radical views from scholars who dispute and argue that these attempts at sustainability reforms are trapped in a superficial improvement agenda?
• What does the empirical research report on the struggles between scholars to demonstrate that specific curriculum experiences (process, content, and delivery) lead to specific sustainability outcomes, skills, and/or competences? What have we learned from competency maps, cross-curricular learning outcomes, interdisciplinary approaches, stakeholder integration, and best practice certifications for university staff and students? On the other hand, what has not been learned?
• What is the range in particular specifications, such as generic experiential learning, service learning, project-based learning, problem-based learning, game-based learning, student-generated filming, and digital storytelling? Is the HES literature rooted in a constructivist paradigm? How do these specifications lack range?
• As HES discourse continues to be concentrated in the Global North (North America and Europe), how have we achieved momentum for similar aims in the Global South, or vice versa? Specifically, what have been deliberate interventions (novel and theoretically sound learning approaches) that have brought these demographics together? What have been the barriers to cross-border collaborations among schools?
• How do themes traditionally belonging, for example, to the humanities (or social sciences, informatics, technology, engineering, economics, management, arts, etc.), spur critical inquiry and raise theoretical issues with other disciplines in our quest to craft meaningful sustainability knowledge? How do we end the polarization of learning in disciplines considered to hold privileged access to planetary education?

The above contributions to the Special Issue can be in the form of co-creativity, in-depth investigations, contextualized and/or comparative analyses, larger-scale approaches, and longitudinal studies. 

Prof. Dr. Jorge A. Arevalo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• anthropocene
• sustainability curriculum
• experiential learning
• sustainability competences
• planetary boundaries education