Purpose: Because of the ever-expanding commercialization and marketing of higher education, a need now exists to apply the concepts of business process improvement to colleges and universities. Aims to explore this issue. Design/methodology/approach: An open-ended qualitative questionnaire was developed, administered to 18 public and private…

Rethinking our organisational learning processes is critical to society's transition to sustainability--a transition toward living respectfully with one another on a planet with finite resources. Presents the concept of sustainability as a central organising focus for higher education and draws on theories of organisational learning to help inform…

When sustainable development (SD) is only taught in specific courses, it is questionable if engineering students are able to integrate it into their engineering practices and technical designs. For this reason, sustainability should also be integrated into regular engineering courses, e.g. design courses, materials courses or processing…

Vocational education and training (VET) is often considered the enigma of education. For those that work in or research sustainable education within the schools and higher education sections, VET appears somewhat like the mysterious second cousin: often difficult to access and difficult to understand. VET differs quite markedly from the other…

UNESCO defines education for sustainable development (ESD) as covering a broad range of issues from natural resources and HIV/AIDS to poverty reduction. ESD thus becomes a term that must be subtle yet clear, holistic yet tangible. One option for ESD, in dealing with this complexity, is to simplify its content and narrow the issues it addresses.…

In October 2004, UNESCO hosted an International Experts Meeting on "Learning for Work, Citizenship and Sustainability" as a 5-year review of progress since the second International Conference on Technical and Vocational Education (TVET) held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in April 1999. Discussions led to the conclusion that a new paradigm of both…

This article focuses on attempts to introduce elements of sustainable development education into the curriculum of one of the largest Russian universities. At St. Petersburg State University, compulsory courses relevant to sustainable development have been introduced or modified in 14 faculties out of 20 during the last decade. Examples of…

The article is an historical account of the establishment of a new voluntary aided secondary school, named Nottingham Emmanuel School. The national and local contexts are established and discussed in practical and theological reflective ways by examining four key questions; (1) will the church take risks in education; (2) can the church deliver in…

This paper offers reflections on two transformative teacher education projects. The first a global communities module is set in a university in Vancouver and utilizes the lens of social ecology to examine the roles of teachers in bringing an awareness of local/global issues to their students' learning experiences. The second, a Canadian…

This study addresses several common shortcomings of current university campus sustainability initiatives, including a lack of attention to integrative issues such as land use, housing, and transportation, and a generally reactive rather than proactive approach to sustainability. To engage these concerns, we develop a model for assessing the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the experience of the Agriculture Engineering School of Barcelona (ESAB), where undergraduate students were involved in field research experiments on organic waste use in agricultural systems. Design/methodology/approach: The paper outlines how the formation of professionals oriented to work for…

An interdisciplinary sustainable design project that combines membrane technology with renewable energy to provide water for remote communities and developing countries was offered to students for voluntary participation. Through continuous design stages and improvements on several prototypes, laboratory testing and several field trials in…

The authors argue for integrating Boyer's four domains through the pursuit of public scholarship.

This article presents a framework for developing internally sustainable evaluation systems for environmental education organizations, although the framework can be applied to other types of organizations. The authors developed a sustainable evaluation framework (SEF) with the intent of creating an evaluation system that could be self-administered…

Environmental Education is one of the cross-curricular themes, introduced in the mid 1990s in the curriculum of Flemish secondary education (12-18 yr). Both the Brundtland report and the ENSI philosophy inspired the development of the objectives for EE. A strong partnership exists between the departments of education and the environment of the…