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The purpose of the paper is to identify learning points and inspirations from two different approaches by examining how education for sustainable development (ESD) initiatives are delivered in the University of X in the UK and Tongji University in China.

Through comparison of case studies, the pros and cons of each approach are made clear. The paper adopts semi-structured interviewing among staff and group interviewing among students as its main data collection methods. A snowball sampling strategy is employed to select potential interviewees in addition.

Learning points are drawn from each institution which could be useful in informing the strategy of other higher education institutions. The main learning points for UoX are: first, engage as many students as possible through linking extra-curriculum activities back to the curriculum and offer opportunities for students to take part in campus operations. Second, a project-oriented approach could be employed to enhance interdisciplinary cooperation. The main learning points for Tongji are: pedagogic changes are required to realize a transformative education and additions of more active learning into the curriculum are needed. Third, policy support is necessary to promote the ESD agenda but only when the top-down approach mixes with a bottom-up approach significant changes will happen.

ESD is transformative education rather than traditional education. It will guide students to study and live in a more sustainable way, which is promoted in both the formal curriculum and informal areas (including campus greening and extra-curriculum activities) in UoX as a model for developed countries and Tongji as a model for developing countries. As a dynamic whole, both of them comprise students' learning and living experiences in a microcosm of a pilot sustainable community through inter-disciplinary approaches.

Little comparative and international research has been done in the field of educational ESD. The research seeks to address the deficiency by comparing the ESD approaches in one British and one Chinese university.

As the saying goes, “food is heaven of people” the development of agriculture is not only related to the quality of human life but also profoundly affects the efficiency of economic operation. However, under the background of rapid economic and technological development, China’s agricultural modernization process is very slow and incompatible with the development trend of economic modernization. Therefore, it is particularly necessary to innovate the traditional agricultural development model to break through the bottlenecks encountered in the transformation process of agricultural modernization. The proposal of the agricultural logistics ecosphere is to solve the problems of poor industrial linkage, low technical level and backward operation mode in the development process of traditional agriculture, and it is an important starting point for agricultural supply-side structural reform. This study aims to answer three questions in three aspects, namely, what is the agricultural logistics ecosphere, analyzes the general composition of the agricultural logistics ecosphere and how the subjects of the agricultural logistics ecosphere cooperate. It also puts forward suggestions for the coordinated development of the agricultural logistics ecosphere under the leadership of Taoxin. Also, it inspires the transformation of the agricultural development model in other regions and countries.

This study adopts a case study and a qualitative analysis method to collate the first-hand and secondary data obtained from the interview and form a tertiary coding. It explores the mechanism of coordinated development of the agricultural logistics ecosphere from four levels: goal synergy, resource synergy, ability synergy and benefit synergy.

First, the formation of the agricultural logistics ecosphere will not be achieved overnight, as operational management matures and ecosphere experiences the germination-development-mature evolution process. Second, target synergy is the foundation and premise for the formation of agricultural logistics ecosphere: to attract external resources with Taoxin characteristic core resources, to attract external resources to achieve synergy, to provide a guarantee for the realization of the maximum value of the agricultural logistics ecosphere and then to realize the interest synergy of internal and external subjects. Third, driving agricultural products upward in the “10 + 1” model: it is the core resource of the agricultural logistics ecosphere led by Taoxin and attracts external subjects to gather with core resources to further improve the value of the ecosphere. The improvement of the value of the ecosphere can broaden the ecosphere network. This is both an important construction of the ecosphere, and it is also the path choice of the coordinated development of the agricultural logistics ecosphere.

This study has a very important practical value and theoretical significance. In practical terms, the integration of “primary, secondary and tertiary industries” is helpful to foster new momentum for the development of agriculture and rural areas and promote the general framework of the agricultural logistics economy, the analysis of the general mechanism and extension of the transition of the new economy.

This paper is an overview of reconstructability analysis (RA), an approach to discrete multivariate modeling developed in the systems community. RA includes set‐theoretic modeling of relations and information‐theoretic modeling of frequency and probability distribution. It thus encompasses both statistical and nonstatistical problems. It overlaps with logic design and machine learning in engineering and with log‐linear modeling in the social sciences. Its generality gives it considerable potential for knowledge representation and data mining.