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The Design for the Environment Multimedia Implementation Project – demi – links design and sustainability information in a Web‐based resource and was set up in response to a number of UK Government reports which highlighted the dearth of knowledge and activity about sustainability in higher education design courses across the country. This paper details the design and development of demi, discussing its content, structure and educational potential. Also included is an investigation of design and sustainability pedagogy, which discusses the importance to the demi Web‐resource of a sustainability (rather than design) context and an exploration of the possible transferability of the demi structure to other disciplines, promoting practical and widespread action in education for sustainability.

Teaching sustainable development at the higher education level requires that existing curricula are supplemented with multi-disciplinary (and sometimes multi-national) collaboration and integrated thinking. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of a particular framework for business model innovation for sustainability-as-flourishing that is used as a boundary object in the context of interdisciplinary, peer-assessed distance learning. This study is positioned in the broader picture of enlarging curricular content so as to reflect the systemic and interconnected nature of socio-technical and economic developments. The motivation behind this study is the authors’ wish to achieve a deeper understanding of how students engage with the complex concept of sustainable business modelling, while using the flourishing business canvas (FBC).

An experiment was conducted on the use of the FBC as a boundary object among 52 engineering students at two universities. Data were provided by the following: iterations of the FBC; oral and written peer feedback; and an online survey.

Based on an evaluation of the experiment, this study shows that the FBC supports the use of multi-disciplinary, multi-national peer and distance learning in sustainability education.

This study used one test condition of multi-disciplinary, multi-national collaboration for peer and distance learning at one point in time. Additional tests, using the tools and approaches of this study, are needed.

Various tools and methods for use in education have been developed that support a new view of sustainability –sustainability-as-flourishing. Extant research focusses primarily on the development of tools and methods in this area. Not enough attention has been paid to the analysis of their implementation and use in higher education. This paper seeks to fill that research gap.

The paper intends to determine the extent to which environmental sustainability issues are integrated in the curricula of industrial design programs in Australian universities.

Industrial design lecturers and program heads were invited to participate in a web‐based survey on their university's industrial design curricula. Online university handbooks were also examined to determine which courses cover sustainability aspects. Survey results were then tabulated and analysed using descriptive statistics.

The study shows that, while there is a concern that sustainable development issues are important and relevant to design courses, the permeation of environmental sensitivity through most industrial design curricula, and indeed among design academics, is only starting to gain ground. Comparative examination of the curricular structures in Australian universities offering degree programs in industrial and product design revealed that, on average, 12 out of every 100 credit points earned have sustainability content.

The paper informs industrial design academics that much more work has to be done in order to educate the next generation of designers about their responsibilities to the planet and its people. It tells them where we currently are and the gaps that we have to bridge in order to achieve environmental sustainability.

The paper is original in the field of Australian industrial design education, and builds on work in other disciplines about incorporating sustainability aspects in tertiary education.

This paper aims to present key characteristics of educational design briefs for the circular economy (CE) through the analysis of 11 design briefs focussing on real-life challenges related to sustainability and the CE, developed with collaborating industry partners for four consecutive circular design internships conducted in Ireland, Catalunya, The Netherlands and Sweden.

These four internships were conducted between September 2017 and June 2019 and each internship lasted three to four months. The supervisors for each internship collaborated with local industry partners genuinely interested in adopting sustainable business practices to develop design briefs focussing on real-life challenges they face. The briefs for each internship were developed further according to the feedback of the interns, industry partners and supervisors of previous internships.

Five steps of brief making for circular design were identified as reviewing the existing resources, emphasizing the importance of systems thinking, emphasizing the importance of collaboration for the CE, focussing on circularity and communicating expectations. The paper outlines how design briefs changed throughout the consecutive internships according to the different curricula and the characteristics of an educational circular design brief.

For design educators and researchers, the value of this paper lies in presenting the steps for the brief making of educational circular design projects. Additionally, the characteristics of circular design briefs are outlined, discussing their focus and content to act as a guide for design educators.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the first experiences (activities, attitudes and inclinations) of an undergraduate student team with eco-design activities.

Undergraduate students of an industrial design course were invited to participate in the design project. The activities of students were carried out in the class titled in Japanese “Sogo Project” (Overall Project). The project is experimental learning based on pedagogical case studies that students propose practical designs with a sustainable approach.

According to the activities and attitudes of the student team, they showed interest in focusing on sustainable consumption and consequently leant towards a socio-cultural rather than a technological eco-design approach in their works. The barriers to design education for sustainable design were found, and the student team expressed that the available support tool during their design process was complex. They also expressed that the tool was not compatible with their academic skills and background.

This paper has limited participants, resources, time and contextual scale. Few Japanese educators are skilled in eco-design, and eco-design modules are also poorly integrated into undergraduate and graduate industrial-design courses at Japanese universities.

The paper contributes to an initial discussion in the field of Japanese industrial-design education regarding the principles of and barriers to design education for sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to interpret aspects of education for sustainability in relation to educational theories of the affective domain (values, attitudes and behaviours) and suggest how the use of these theories, and relevant experience, in other educational areas could benefit education for sustainability.

An analysis based on a literature review of relevant educational endeavours in affective learning.

This paper suggests that most teaching and assessment in higher education focus on cogitative skills of knowledge and understanding rather than on affective outcomes of values, attitudes and behaviours. Some areas of higher education, however, have effectively pursued affective outcomes and these use particular learning and teaching activities to do so. Key issues for consideration include assessing outcomes and evaluating courses, providing academic credit for affective outcomes, key roles for role models and designing realistic and acceptable learning outcomes in the affective domain.

Educators for sustainability could use this relevant theoretical underpinning and experience gained in other areas of education to address the impact of their own learner‐support activities.

Educators have traditionally been reluctant to pursue affective learning outcomes but often programmes of study simply fail to identify and describe their legitimate aims in these terms. This paper emphasises the application of a relevant theoretical underpinning to support educators' legitimate aspirations for affective learning outcomes. It will also help these educators to reflect on how the use of these approaches accords with the liberal traditions of higher education.

In the African context of business practice, the authors face two interrelated challenges. First, executives need to deal strategically and sustainably with growing levels of inequality, under-employment and declining levels of wellness and safety. Second, executive development needs to develop virtues to help executives to address these problems. This paper aims to articulate an integrated, sustainable business education approach that aims to prepare executives to practice integrative thinking while simultaneously cultivating virtues that enhance their lives, thereby enabling them to make ongoing sustainable impacts to their worlds.

This study uses a mixed method analysis including both quantitative and qualitative data from student course feedback evaluations from Business Model Innovation (BMI) and Phronesis Development Practice courses run over four consecutive years between 2018 and 2021 at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business as part of the Executive Masters of Business Administration degree.

The program’s pedagogical approach integrates a philosophical habituation process with a core course on BMI practice. This philosophical integration is one in which there is a sustainable focus on cultivating specific “process” and “practice” virtues which foster awareness amongst executives of their everyday mundane skilful coping in the world. This leads to candidates becoming attuned to ways, in which they can strive for more authenticity and to step into newer ways of being, that allow them to reflect their values and evolve cultural practices.

As the first business school in Africa to base a BMI course on the affordances of the phenomenon of being-in-the-world and a philosophical habituation process, the authors hope to inspire more business schools to adopt holistic, sustainable approaches to executive development that goes beyond the competence paradigm.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need for integrating a focus on digital literacies and digital ethics into sustainability education, proposing a conceptualization of these for sustainability education.

The paper draws on relevant literature in the field of sustainability education and in the field of digital literacies and digital ethics. It synthesizes perspectives in both fields to form a conceptualization of digital literacies and digital ethics for sustainability education.

The paper conceptualizes “digital literacies” as a capacity to reflect on the nature of digital space in relation to sustainability challenges and “digital ethics” as a capacity to reflexively engage with digital space in ways which build rich discourses around sustainability. Critically reflective and exploratory activities in digital space are a means of developing these capacities.

The conceptualization allows sustainability education to account for the increased role digital space plays in shaping views of sustainability challenges. It proposes a pedagogical approach to doing this.

This paper aims to investigate the educational benefits and challenges of introducing natural science students to on-campus and off-campus sustainability research projects as an approach to education for sustainability.

The course “Science and Sustainability” at the University of Leuven is a stand-alone course that aims at providing master students in the natural sciences, education for (the benefit of) sustainability action. It was launched in 2016-2017 and has been running for two years now. The first year focused on getting students acquire a similar level of knowledge in sustainability, while, on a higher level, the experiential learning phase (project work) was supported with specific reflection assignments. In the second year, more specific attention was directed toward allowing students to get acquainted with systems thinking and deal with inter- and transdisciplinary issues by approaching problems from a multi-stakeholder view. Insight in the impact and the appreciation of the setup of the course was obtained from a series of questionnaires offered to all participating students at the beginning, about midway, and again at the end of the course.

Analysis of the students’ self-reported sustainability competence development shows a clear positive impact for almost all students who participated. A clear relation between the observed change and the students’ self-rating and attitude at the start, as well as with their discipline, is observed.

Information is gained on a number of factors of importance to impact the students’ attitude toward action for sustainability, and how this can be further improved.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate undergraduate industrial design students’ perception of sustainable design concepts and how their conceptualization evolves as a function of their attendance to a specific sustainable design studio (SDS) course.

Two groups of students participated in the study. Students who did not attend to SDS were in the control group, whereas students who attended SDS were in the experimental group. In total, 22 concepts, which have been highlighted in literature and the SDS course, were selected as keywords. Participants were asked to provide relatedness scores of these keywords before and after they attended the course. The data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and pathfinder (PF) networks.

Results indicate that the SDS caused a change in the conceptualization of sustainable design concepts parallel to the course outcomes and the literature. Some concepts were highlighted as conveyors that guide students to conceptualize sustainable development and design.

This study is considered a case study focusing on declarative knowledge, and owing to the low number of participants, the results should be carefully interpreted.

The findings may support design educators to enhance their courses and promote deeper debates on teaching sustainable design.

Two specific dimensions were found from the analysis of multidimensional scaling, and several conveyor concepts were identified from PF networks. Allocating proposed dimensions and concepts into a course may have the potentials to enhance students’ perception of sustainability concepts.