Analysis of sustainability presence in Spanish higher education
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education
ISSN: 1467-6370
Article publication date: 3 February 2020
Issue publication date: 11 March 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the presence of sustainability in 16 Spanish higher education curricula in the fields of education and engineering.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology uses two instruments: sustainability map and sustainability presence map. These instruments enable analysis of the number of subjects that develop sustainability and the sustainability presence level in each curriculum; identification of what domain levels of the learning taxonomy sustainability is most developed; and analysis of whether a correlation exists between the sustainability presence and the number of subjects that develop sustainability in each curriculum.
Findings
A wide variety of subjects develop sustainability in a given degree, depending on the university. The presence of sustainability is more homogeneous in education degrees than in engineering degrees. Education degrees have a greater presence of sustainability in the lower domain levels of taxonomy, while in engineering degrees the lower levels of taxonomy have a lower presence of sustainability than the higher levels. Finally, a correlation appears to exist between the number of subjects that develop sustainability in the curriculum and the sustainability presence. However, engineering degrees seem to need fewer subjects than education degrees to achieve the same degree of sustainability presence.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a methodology to measure sustainability presence that can be applicable to the curricula of a higher education degree if the corresponding sustainability map is available. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the largest study yet conducted to analyze the presence of sustainability in different higher education curricula.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the rest of the EDINSOST team for their collaboration in this work, especially Miguel Antúnez, Antonio Gomera, Ibon Gutiérrez, Rafael Miñano, José Manuel Muñoz, Jorge Ruiz-Morales and Rocío Valderrama-Hernández.
Funding: This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under grant number EDU2015-65574-R and by Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) under grant number RTI2018-094982-B-I00, from study design to submission.
Citation
Sánchez-Carracedo, F., Sureda Carbonell, B. and Moreno-Pino, F.M. (2020), "Analysis of sustainability presence in Spanish higher education", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 393-412. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-10-2019-0321
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited