A Whole Sector Approach: Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Wales
The Welsh Government aims to ensure sustainable development as a central organizing principle for organizations. Strategies from the Welsh Government provide Welsh higher education institutions with support and structure to embed education for sustainable
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Abstract The Welsh Government aims to ensure sustainable development as a central organizing principle for organizations. Strategies from the Welsh Government provide Welsh higher education institutions with support and structure to embed education for sustainable development and global citizenship across all activities. The Welsh Government has funded a sector wide review of environmental management systems and energy efficiency improvements at Welsh higher education institutions. Following an audit of all higher education curricula for education for sustainable development and global citizenship content a potential baselining tool has been developed and piloted. In order to assist implementation of this tool a Sustainability Maturity Model has been created based on a capability maturity model project management tool. The Sustainability Maturity Model illustrates the processes which are vital in the maturing of sustainability at an institutional level. The model uses commitment and leadership, teaching and learning, institutional management, partnerships, and research and monitoring to structure the elements that need to be considered and addressed within an institution to initiate and mobilize change in education for sustainable development and global citizenship. Offering a strategic overview for managers in higher education institutions this is a practically useful tool for higher education internationally.
Keywords Baselining Education for sustainable development citizenship Maturity model
Global
A. Glover (&) C. Peters University of South Wales, Newport, UK e-mail: [email protected] C. Peters e-mail: [email protected]
S. Caeiro et al. (eds.), Sustainability Assessment Tools in Higher Education Institutions, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02375-5_12, Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013
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A. Glover and C. Peters
Introduction Higher education performs a vital role in preparing the leaders, designers, and teachers of tomorrow to fully participate in society and future decision making at the local and global level. There is opportunity for universities to lead the way in modeling sustainability as institutions ‘are significant leverage points which both reflect and inform social mindsets’ (Cortese 1999, p. 6). Many have emphasized the importance of higher education delivering the sustainability agenda (Orr 1994; Alabaster and Blair 1996; Moore 2005; Gough and Scott 2007). However, criticism that higher education is ‘failing society by producing leaders incapable of addressing our most pressing problems’ has also been suggested (Martin and Jucker 2003, p. 3). It is vital higher education provides ‘graduates with the attitude, knowledge and skills to lead this process (sustainable development), while also developing and delivering the knowledge to support research on sustainable development’ (Jansen 2009, p. 55). The World Commission on Environment and Development provided a widely applied definition of sustainable development as ‘development that meets the
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