Higher Education Institutions and Sustainable Development – Implementing a Whole-Institution Approach
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Education and Approaches".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2020) | Viewed by 91442
Special Issue Editors
Interests: education for sustainable development; higher education development; competence development; sustainable university development
Interests: education for sustainable development; educational governance; trust in educational organisations; sustainable university development
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Sustainability is an urgent developmental task for our society, and is attracting increasing attention. Higher education institutions (HEIs), like all other organisations within our society, are called upon to deal with the associated challenges. The task of HEIs is to deal theoretically, conceptually, methodically, critically, and reflectively with the processes and conditions of transformation, in order to contribute towards ensuring that sustainability is implemented in a specific context.
How can complex organisations such as HEIs succeed in initiating and maintaining the process of sustainable development within their own institutions, and make it a permanent responsibility? How can as many protagonists as possible be persuaded to get involved in sustainable development? For these questions, there is no patent recipe, no guidelines to action, no checklist that would be equally helpful for all universities or that could be applied across the board by all. HEIs are too different, for example ,in terms of their legal form (private or public), their location (rural or metropolitan), or size (small and specialised or a large university offering a full range of faculties). In addition, HEIs are influenced by external framework conditions that promote aspects of sustainability to varying degrees, depending on national or regional policies.
This Special Issue deals with the promotion of sustainable university development. In the sense of a “whole-institution approach”, which encompasses entire HEIs, the focus is not only on the core areas of teaching (education for sustainable development in higher education) and research (sustainability in research), but also on the operational management of HEIs. In addition, this Special Issue focuses on sustainability reporting and sustainability governance as cross-disciplinary themes, as well as on transfer for sustainable development at HEIs.
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Prof. Dr. Marco Rieckmann
Prof. Dr. Inka Bormann
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Higher education
- Sustainable development
- Whole-institution approach
- Education for sustainable development in higher education
- Sustainability in research
- Operational management
- Sustainability reporting
- Sustainability governance
- Transfer for sustainable development
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