Editorial

Citation

Leal Filho, W. (2008), "Editorial", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 9 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe.2008.24909caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Volume 9, Issue 3

Welcome to another issue of IJSHE. Readers will find in this issue a set of interesting papers handling matters related to sustainability and higher education from different parts of the world.

The first paper describes a framework used to help MBA students understand and reconcile the different sustainability perspectives in Australia, while the second one explores the extent and type of extra-curricular ESD-related practice in UK universities, recording opinions about the utility of such work. The third paper examines the social sustainability of academic work in Australian tertiary institutions, followed by a description of the activities that created the conditions for introducing sustainability projects and curriculum at the University of Hawaii. Paper five provides an example from Mexico, with experiences from Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) which has incorporated sustainable development concepts within its mission. Paper 6 describes the current barriers to sustainability in a bioscience laboratory setting, determining the mechanisms that are likely to increase sustainable behaviours in this specialised environment.

Furthermore, three papers in this issue result from “Going global,” an intensive international collaboration led recently by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology with support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The Going Global initiative brought together nearly fifty sustainability educators from four continents and 28 institutions. The papers published here examine sustainability in higher education at three distinct levels of analysis: societal, institutional, and pedagogical. Stephens et al. shine a spotlight on the vast potential for universities to serve as “change agents” to advance society’s transition toward more equitable, more innovative and less resource-intensive human, technical and environmental interrelationships. Ferrer-Balas et al. offer a strategy for assessing progress at the individual university level in transforming these complex systems into institutions that both embody and foster sustainable practices. Svanström, Lozano-G. and Rowe focus on perhaps the most important deliverable an educational institution can have: the learning outcomes that must guide the development and implementation of both the latent and the manifest curricula for sustainability. Together, these papers provide a three-tiered framework with conceptual and pragmatic utility as well as broad cross-cultural relevance for evaluating how well we are doing in adapting our university organizations and activities to make a difference in society’s contemporary – and future – social and environmental challenges. Thanks are due to Dr Amanda C. Graham, Director of the Education Office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative.

Enjoy your reading!

Walter Leal Filho