The Anthropocene and the sustainable development goals: key elements in geography higher education?
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
ISSN: 1467-6370
Article publication date: 1 May 2023
Issue publication date: 13 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The current “Anthropocene” epoch has witnessed an imbalanced global change, but it is an opportunity to design a better and sustainable future. Sustainability criteria need to be fully implemented in political institutions, companies and universities. Moreover, sustainable pedagogies must accompany the process in terms of students’ professional competences to overcome crisis situations. This paper aims to evaluate geography degrees in Spain to corroborate whether students and teachers consider that students are prepared to address the challenges of global change.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is focused on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), a clear and easily identifiable framework for society that reflects the principles of the UN 2030 Agenda. A statistically validated questionnaire answered by 319 respondents has been used. Data analysis with descriptive and inferential techniques was performed.
Findings
The results show that geography degrees do not meet the needs of students, for whom career opportunities will be related to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda; there are significant gaps between the perception of teachers and students; some geographical topics are undervalued; SDGs are more present in optional subjects; and there is a need to “sustain” the curriculum, following this highly valued framework.
Originality/value
Geography educative programs had scarcely been empirically evaluated to check a sustainability framework implementation. This research provides innovative and unprecedented self-assessment results from higher education agents, in an empirical and statistically validated way.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their special thanks to the coordinators, teachers and students of the degrees in geography who have participated in the study. We are also grateful to the external validators of the research questionnaire as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments to improve the manuscript.
Funding 1: Grant PID2020-114186RB-C22 funded by MCIN-AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033.
Funding 2: UCM Teaching Project 14/2021 “Training of Geography and related sciences teachers in online and blended teaching based on Geographic Information Technologies and SDGs (DIDGEOTIG-II)”.
Citation
Martínez-Hernández, C. and Mínguez, C. (2023), "The Anthropocene and the sustainable development goals: key elements in geography higher education?", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 24 No. 7, pp. 1648-1667. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-09-2022-0316
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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