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This paper aims to provide an overview of a content analysis of sustainability policies from Canadian post-secondary education institutions. The paper reports findings on the orientations to sustainability evident in the policies; references to other policies within the documents; and other key themes on how sustainability is engaged in the policies in relation to overall governance, education, operations, research and community outreach.

A sample of 50 Canadian colleges and universities was selected based on representativeness across a range of criteria. A qualitative thematic content analysis of these policies was conducted using a collaborative coding approach.

Results suggest that most sustainability policies described a Brundtland (i.e. intergenerational) and/or three-pillar (e.g. economic, environmental and social) orientation to sustainability. Many sustainability policies also connected to other external municipal or provincial policies. In terms of various domains of sustainability, campus operations was discussed by all of the policies and in the most detail, while discussions of sustainability in education (i.e. the curriculum) and in research were vague, and discussions of sustainability in relation to community outreach were included less frequently.

This comparative study provides a broad view of sustainability policies from post-secondary institutions across Canada. It deepens our understanding of the institutions’ conceptualizations of, and priorities for, sustainability. This paper has practical implications for institutions seeking to create or further develop their own policies, and it contributes to the comparative scholarly literature on the institutionalization of sustainability in higher education.

This paper aims to report on a census of high-level sustainability initiatives at all accredited post-secondary institutions in Canada by documenting the institutions that have undertaken sustainability assessments, have signed one or more sustainability declarations, have sustainability offices or officers or have sustainability policies. The aim was to better understand the broad-scale patterns of commitments by post-secondary institutions to these sustainability initiatives by exploring the interrelationships among them, and with geographic and institutional characteristics.

Data were collected on existing high-level sustainability initiatives at Canada’s 220 accredited post-secondary institutions. Patterns in the data were analyzed using exploratory statistical techniques. This paper proposes a sustainability initiative score to help understand the diversity and patterns of sustainability initiative uptake.

Institutions located in larger communities, and in British Columbia and Québec, tended to have higher sustainability initiative scores. Institutions in Saskatchewan and the territories had the lowest sustainability initiative scores. It was found that sustainability office(r)s, assessments and policies co-occurred disproportionately, potentially suggesting positive reinforcement mechanisms. On the other hand, having signed a declaration was not strongly linked to other sustainability initiatives. Terminological preference had shifted from “environment” and “sustainable development” to “sustainability”.

The scope was limited to a discrete set of high-level sustainability initiatives appropriate for a nation-wide census, at a moment in time, and is therefore not exhaustive in subject or temporal extent. This broad-scale comparative analysis compels further study into the relationship between the sustainability policy environment and sustainability practices on the ground, as well as implications for how post-secondary institutions engage with sustainability. The patterns and interrelationships this paper discovered help to structure future critical and comparative in-depth analyses of sustainability policies and practices within post-secondary education.

Almost no extensive, comparative empirical studies of sustainability policy and practice in post-secondary institutions exist. This void is addressed by documenting and analyzing high-level sustainability initiatives across all accredited post-secondary institutions in Canada.

The purpose of our chapter is to contribute to the current literature on sport and the environment by introducing an ethic of sustainability embedded in the historical and ongoing place-based physical cultures of Fisher River Cree Nation (Ochékwi Sipi).

Using an Indigenous-centered, community-based research design, we conducted four sharing circles with a total of 13 Elders from Fisher River Cree Nation. Sharing circles are a culturally safe discussion format for Elders to share their experiences and perspectives, which is significant in that Elders serve as critical links in the intergenerational communication of Cree place-based knowledge.

The key finding of this research is presented, centering around the more-than-human ethic that emerges from the place-specific stories of movement and physical culture shared by the Elders.

Based on the stories of the Elders we show how intimate and deeply embodied knowledges are formed over the course of generations of living with, learning from, and moving across Land. The knowledge gathered from this research presents an alternative to the dominant Western worldview and may serve as a critical link in struggles for environmental and social sustainability.

Over the past few decades, universities have been recognized as ideal leaders for the development of policies and innovative solutions required to support the transition to sustainable societies. As a major stakeholder group, students play a significant role in moving this agenda forward; however, their actions remain understudied in the sustainability in higher education (SHE) literature.

In response, this systematic literature review was conducted to determine what research has been done on student-led action for SHE.

Findings demonstrate that while students are an understudied stakeholder group, there is a growing focus in the SHE literature on their contributions. The results suggest that students are working to increase the uptake of SHE through multi-stakeholder collaborations, collective action and interdisciplinarity. This review identifies a lack of engagement with intersectionality (interrelated environmental and social issues) and highlights the need to redirect future SHE research, calling for increased comparative research studies and research syntheses to provide greater depth to our understanding of student-led initiatives.

This literature review is limited by the smaller sample size of articles; however, conclusions can nonetheless be drawn from these results to guide future scholarship. Implications exist for theoretical contributions to social movement theories and theories of organizational change for SHE.

This research provides insight into student-led action for SHE and how their efforts might better be supported to encourage the increased integration of SHE.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the following questions: what is the origin of the concepts of documents and documentation? Are there a need for these concepts in every culture? Who gives the terms for their definitions, and what are the consequences of different terminology?

The authors use interdisciplinary methodology, combining document and information theory and Sámi linguistics. The aim of this paper is to discuss documentation from the perspective of the Sámi, with some examples from other indigenous groups.

Oral accounts, legends, traditional songs and traces in the landscape are seen as documents and documentation in Sámi and other indigenous cultures. The paper presents different theories in order to interpret and understand the specific information content in indigenous forms of documentation.

Indigenous ways of documentation have been accepted as valid proof of ownership or the right to extensive use of land resources. When no written records exist, oral testimonies and the landscape itself can be seen as documenting traditional use and has been accepted as evidence in high courts in Norway and Canada. The authors have also seen that the rich Sámi snow terminology is used as concepts in different fields of natural sciences.

The Sámi understanding of the concepts of document and documentation contributes to the traditional information and documentation disciplines by introducing ways of seeing natural phenomenon as fundamental forms of information.

Recent research has suggested that there is limited information about mental health help‐seeking among young African—Caribbean and South Asian communities. This study explores the mental health support needs and perceptions of the Samaritans among young African—Caribbean and South Asian people living in Luton. Five single‐sex focus groups were conducted among the three main South Asian groups and African—Caribbeans in Luton. This paper describes the challenges faced by service providers and potential users from minority ethnic groups in respectively providing and accessing mental health services. Finally, the paper makes some recommendations for developing culturally competent and more visible service provision.

The negative effects of gender disparities on nutrition outcomes for women and children are well documented. Gender analyses are often used at the start of projects to capture contextual factors contributing to persisting inequalities and malnutrition but there is a dearth of information about processes for applying findings to program designs and activities at the implementation level. The authors describe a three-phase process used by Helen Keller International (HKI) in 2015–2016 for a nutrition-sensitive program called Family Farms for the Future in rural Cambodia that included: (1) a community-based gender assessment; (2) a workshop to interpret findings from the assessment; and (3) a strategy to incorporate gender-relevant findings into program activities. The gender analysis used qualitative methods involving 32 participatory group activities and 20 individual interviews with men, women, and elders in the program communities. Findings and insights gained from this analysis revealed persistent and different gender disparities and perceptions from each respondent group regarding the reasons for the inequalities. A workshop organized to share the gender analysis findings with program implementers generated ideas and strategies for incorporating and translating findings into program activities. This three-phase process was crucial not only to reveal and understand barriers to socio-economic empowerment of women, but also to obtain buy-in from program implementers and to encourage use of their insights to translate findings into practical strategies and activities to address gender disparities that may influence nutrition and health outcomes of women and children.

Sustainability education has at its heart an ethic of interdisciplinary research and teaching practice. This is because sustainability problems require integrated solutions, multiple perspectives, bodies of knowledge and skill sets. Given the imperative to address looming environmental challenges and the need for every graduate to be equipped to do so, how do we enable and support interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability education within our disciplines and professional programmes? It is increasingly apparent that organisational learning for change must be taken forward in the context of local disciplinary meanings and priorities; this is how academics know themselves and identify and value their research – and teaching – priorities. However, at the same time this may create tensions when disciplinary boundaries need to be crossed and disciplinary identities are challenged. This chapter will consider (inter)disciplinarity in engagements with organisational learning and change, and suggest a way forward in order to create ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ transformation in education for sustainability.