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This study aims to assess the impact of sustainability pedagogies on students’ sustainability consciousness (SC) in the online instructional settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A mixed-method, embedded research design was applied to conduct the research. The participants of the study were the pre-service teachers studying a course, namely, “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD) in a public sector university of Pakistan. A total of 49 participants were divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental group experienced ESD-pedagogies in online teaching-learning (educational) settings, whereas the control group was taught through a lecture-based approach in an online educational setting. The outcome of the research was measured in terms of a change in the pre-service teachers’ SC. The qualitative data were collected from the experimental group only. The quantitative data were analyzed using paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test, whereas the qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis.

The quantitative and qualitative data indicate that sustainability pedagogies (i.e. case studies, critical incidents, discussions, debates and problem-based teaching) enhanced pre-service teachers’ SC in online educational settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current research expands the discussion on the effectiveness of sustainability pedagogies in online educational settings in teacher education programs.

This study aims to examine whether the development of students’ sustainability competences is dependent on how courses are delivered at higher education institutions (HEIs). It further investigates to what extent such competences can affect students’ belief in the new environmental paradigm (NEP) and pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs).

The data was collected through an online survey conducted in 2021 among the students of an international research university based in The Netherlands. The final sample (N = 262) consisted of all the students who completed the survey and claimed that they had taken at least one course that addressed sustainability. Linear regression models were used to examine the relationship of sustainability education and students’ competences, as well as their pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors.

The findings reveal that the strength of universal, broadly applicable pedagogies is positively related to the development of students’ sustainability mindset/framework as well as their sustainability action/communication. The results also reveal that developing students’ competences on sustainability mindset/framework is directly related to their belief in the NEP and PEBs.

To develop an integrative pedagogical approach requires understanding how a HEI’s engagement in sustainability can impact students’ attitudes and behaviors, but little research has actually measured the development of students’ competences. This study fills this gap through empirically testing how different pedagogical approaches can affect students’ sustainability competences differently. This has important implications for systematically linking pedagogical approaches to teaching practices or concrete learning objectives.

This paper aims to draw on an in-depth qualitative case study of an undergraduate sustainability education course to show the extent of pedagogical reflection and teaching capability demonstrated in lived practice to support transformative, systemic and capability building learning processes, as advocated in the literature, for effective sustainability education.

Transformative learning and capability building are an essential part of sustainability education according to the growing body of literature. This approach to education, however, necessitates critical, learner-centred pedagogies which challenge traditional transmissive modes of teaching.

This paper finds that pedagogy which supports the learning experiences and outcomes advocated in sustainability education literature requires significant reflection on behalf of the educator and also motivation, capability and experience to do this, thus more research and academic support is needed which focusses on pedagogical development within sustainability education.

Literature on sustainability education often assumes that teachers are capable of reflecting on and transforming their pedagogical practice, and therefore, the pedagogical implications of sustainability education are often understated in research findings. This paper highlights why pedagogical reflection plays a crucial role in the effective implementation of sustainability education.

The purpose of this paper is to ground contemporary sustainability education in John Dewey’s democratic pedagogy. Specifically, the authors argue that Dewey’s thought anticipates, and theoretically informs, the sustainability skill set required of contemporary citizens in a complex and changing world.

For illustrative purposes, the authors consider how these skills are at work in current approaches to the adaptive co-management of ecosystems, and they argue that these same skills are at work across professional and cultural contexts, toward the achievement of sustainable societies. In turn, the authors situate Dewey’s relevance to contemporary sustainability education in his writing on interdependence, fallibilism and experimentalism.

Dewey’s writings provide both a historical antecedent and still valid moral and practical justification for sustainability education’s emphasis on integrated and adaptive learning.

Grounding sustainability education in Dewey’s democratic pedagogy underlines its capacity and obligation to develop critical thinking and systems thinking skills, communication skills and collaboration skills in students.

The paper acknowledges the many ways Dewey has been incorporated into environmental philosophy, experiential pedagogy and sustainability theory. But Dewey’s role in the historical development of skills-based pedagogy and, more specifically, his continuing contribution to contemporary practices of sustainability education has yet to be explored. By grounding sustainability education in Dewey’s democratic pedagogy, the authors underline its civic mandate to empower citizens to become lifelong learners and skillful stewards.

This paper aims to showcase and critically review the value of selected pedagogies in which real-world engagements are used to enhance sustainability learning in an open, distance and e-learning (ODeL) context in the Global South. The paper considers opportunities, issues, alternatives and implementation guidelines.

The School of Ecological and Human Sustainability (University of South Africa) serves as case study, with blended and fully online learning used as examples of pedagogies. The assessment of these pedagogies uses examples of learning activities and exercises, critical reflections on feedback by lecturers and students and consideration against criteria for real-world learning.

The experiences showcased illustrate that despite challenges in ODeL, real-world engagements can be used successful as pedagogy for sustainability learning in the Global South context. Limited access to ICTs can be mitigated through mobile technologies and free and open software applications, as illustrated by the examples in this paper.

The case study approach and qualitative methodology present limitations, with focus on only two examples. However, significant depth is achieved with the assessment of these examples, while the recommendations and lessons learnt can be applied in other contexts, thus expanding on the knowledge and experience in this field.

This paper showcases innovative approaches to incorporate real-world engagements for sustainability learning in ODeL. Application of real-world engagements in ODeL in the Global South context is original and addresses the need for teaching and learning strategies responding to the digital divide and contributing to expand access to higher education and an Afrocentric discourse to best practice.

Education for Sustainability in Higher Education (ESHE) sits within and across disciplinary settings that share the need for a framework that provides a basis for pedagogy, assessment and learning outcomes (Kalsoom, 2019). ESHE strives to create transformative learning spaces that help students gain the knowledge and skills they need to understand and contribute to shaping a world based on communities living within the limits of earth’s resources. This paper aims to offer a novel solution to the challenge of teaching students from different disciplines struggling with the complexity of sustainability.

The paper explores the development of an interdisciplinary subject designed for undergraduate students from four faculties. It presents a case study of pedagogy that moves away from three pillars/concentric circles approaches towards practices based in systems thinking and interactive transformative learning. It describes the iterative process of developing and implementing an infographic: the “Sustainability Wheel of Fortune” (Wheel), to support constructive alignment of content, assessment tasks and learning outcomes.

The Wheel provides a holistic, interconnected and dynamic focus for framing content and teaching. The pedagogy aligns with sustainability competencies, builds in flexibility in response to changing times and student experiences and provides teachers and students with a common framework for interrogating the possibilities for sustainable futures.

The Wheel is a novel learning tool for contemporary sustainability education. It captures key elements of approaches to and concepts about sustainability, visually reinforces the idea of a holistic interconnected approach and provides a framework that supports the constructive pedagogy of an interdisciplinary sustainability subject.

Following the positive call for a special issue on Architectural Pedagogies and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the purpose of this overview article is to contextualise reflections on nine selected articles, within recent efforts made by professional organisations, which aspire to blend sustainable development into the collective psyche of both academics and future professionals.

This article adopts four lines of inquiry by capturing key insights on the place of sustainable design knowledge in architectural education validation and accreditation at both national and global scales; presenting analytical narratives on the recent global efforts that embrace excellence in architectural pedagogy through addressing SDGs; elucidating the two knowledge spaces, centred on pedagogy and sustainability, which are strengthened and supported by Archnet-IJAR, and offering reflections on the nine articles published in this special issue that aims at integration of the two knowledge spaces.

Contextualisation and reflective narratives offer insights into current efforts and demonstrate a clear commitment of professional organisations to embed values relevant to SDGs. Efforts of the Education Commission of the International Union of Architects and the UNESCO-UIA Validation Council of Architectural Education appear to have advanced significantly over recent years with a clear prospect for a sustainable future. The nine articles published in this special issue respond clearly to the goal of Quality Education (SDG4), but not all of them have addressed the goals related to Good Health and Well-being (SDG3) and Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11), and their place in architectural pedagogy. However, they take a step further to address aspects of climate change, globalisation, sustainable architecture and urbanism, social sustainability, global north/global south dialectics and decolonisation.

The findings offer opportunities to recognise efforts by professional organisations, map key pedagogical experiments into these efforts, while providing lessons learned from best practices aiming to effectively integrate SDGs into architectural pedagogy.

No serious effort has been made to articulate the integration of SDGs into architectural education at the level of research or design studio pedagogical practice. Addressing architectural pedagogies and sustainable development is predicated on the fact that there is very little written or known on integrating SDGs into architectural education and design pedagogy. Understanding, appreciating, and sharing various efforts and approaches to incorporate SDGs into architectural pedagogy is a key step towards a sustainable future.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of interactions between learners in a massive open online course (MOOC), particularly role of the tutors in such interactions. For educators concerned with sustainability literacy, the authors are necessarily both affected by, and effectors of, digital pedagogies. The call for papers for this special issue challenged the authors to consider whether digital pedagogies are “supportive of sustainability or perpetuators of unsustainability”. As might be expected, this question is not a simple binary choice and the authors have chosen to address it indirectly, by considering the nature of interaction in a global, digitally connected community of learners. In particular, the changing role of tutors in these communities, and the possible implications of this change on sustainable literacy, are examined.

The authors focus on the “Sustainability for Professionals” massive open online course (MOOC) delivered by the University of Bath on the FutureLearn platform which hosts the “Inside Cancer” MOOC, also from Bath. “Sustainability for Professionals” is pedagogically connectivist, with “Inside Cancer” being more traditional and instructor led. The authors used social network analysis (SNA) for the research. It is a key tool to understand interactions in an online environment and allows quantitative comparison between different networks and thus between courses. In the context of digital pedagogy, the authors used a number of relevant SNA metrics to carry out analysis of MOOC network structures.

It was found that MOOCs are different in their network structure but tend to adapt to the subject matter. Digital pedagogies for sustainability result in a qualitative as well as quantitative change in learning where course design affects the learning process and gatekeepers are critical for information flow. These gatekeepers are distinct from tutors in the network. In such a network, tutors’ role is limited to course delivery and verifying, depending on course content, the information within the network. The analysis shows that network learning is dependent on course design and content, and gatekeepers exercise influence over the information within the network.

This study has implications for sustainability literacy. The authors examined the extent to which patterns of interaction in the network affect the learning process, and how this can help participants engage with the concept of sustainability. They used SNA to explore the nature of interaction between learners in a MOOC, particularly the role of the tutors in mediating such interactions. They also found that tutors can and do take a central role in early runs of the MOOC; however, with the subsequent runs, the removal of tutor nodes has little effect, suggesting that different modes of learning driven by participants are possible in a MOOC community.

This paper aims to describe a two-stage sustainability curriculum assessment, providing tools and strategies for other faculty to use in implementing their own sustainability assessments.

In the first stage of the five-year curriculum assessment, the authors used an anonymous survey of sustainability faculty and requested data that would verify the survey’s self-reporting: updated sustainability syllabi, and answers to the question, “where have you integrated the three aspects of sustainability – biological systems, social systems, economic systems – into this course?” Finding that the self-reporting results did not match the evidence on the syllabi, the authors interrogated their methods from the faculty workshop trainings for sustainability curriculum transformation.

The authors’ workshops had not provided clear definitions for “sustainability” and the learning outcomes expected in sustainability courses. They had also not addressed the role of transformative pedagogy in teaching a holistic approach to sustainability. The research identified and transcended five key barriers to implementing sustainability curriculum: an over-reliance on faculty volunteers, unclear and unenforced expectations about sustainability implementations, a failure to recognize and circumvent institutional and philosophical barriers to teaching sustainability’s interdisciplinary approach through disciplinary-based curriculum, conceiving of sustainability pedagogy as transmission rather than transformation, and overlooking the ecology of educational systems as nested within the larger sociopolitical environment.

This study confirms the limitations of faculty self-reporting unless augmented with verifiable data.

Sustainability educators can use this research to devise curriculum or program assessment on their campuses: the mixed-methods approach to data collection, the inquiry into sustainability workshop trainings, the elements required on sustainability syllabi for building a coherent sustainability studies program, the resources for practicing a transformative sustainability pedagogy, and the barriers to sustainability implementation along with strategies for surmounting these barriers will all be of use.

This paper explores and combats root causes for an all-too-common disconnection between positive faculty self-assessment and syllabi that do not fully integrate sustainability across the disciplines.

The current UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development echoes many scholars' calls to re‐envision education for sustainability. Short of a complete overhaul of education, the paper seeks to propose learning objectives that can be integrated across existing curricula. These learning objectives are organized by head, hands and heart – balancing cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. University programs and courses meeting these learning objectives exhibit an emergent property here termed transformative sustainability learning (TSL).

Theoretically, TSL grew from traditions of sustainability education and transformative education. Practically, TSL emerged from experimental learning collaborations sponsored by the University of British Columbia in 2003 and 2004 in an effort to enable explicit transitions to sustainability‐oriented higher education. Primarily through action research, these community‐based, applied learning experiences constituted cyclical processes of innovation, implementation and reflection.

The paper finds: advancement of head, hands and heart as an organizing principle by which to integrate transdisciplinary study (head); practical skill sharing and development (hands); and translation of passion and values into behaviour (heart); development of a cognitive landscape for understanding TSL as a unifying framework amongst related sustainability and transformative pedagogies that are inter/transdisciplinary, practical and/or place‐based; creation of learning objectives, organized to evaluate a course or program's embodiment of TSL.

By enabling change within existing structures of higher education, the paper complements and contributes to more radical departures from the institution. The work to date demonstrates potential in applying this learning framework to courses and programs in higher education.