Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): A holistic approach to curriculum design, development and implementation using participatory and integrative methodologies

Abstract

In response to the climate emergency and future Sustainable Development (SD) of our planet, HEIs must adopt integrated, holistic approaches to curriculum design that are primarily focused on developing graduates into more socially responsible, global citizens and engineers with sought-after sustainability competencies and skills, empowered to tackle complex local and global SD challenges. In line with our institutional strategic goals and commitments, we outline the use of innovative, participatory programme design methodologies involving internal and external stakeholders, in our approach to designing a new post-graduate course in Sustainable Engineering at Aston University that has the potential to fulfil these transformative goals, asking ourselves and all stakeholders throughout: “What content really matters?” “Are students doing something that is meaningful?” “How should it be taught?”. This work describes the implementation of our innovative ESD approaches to holistic curriculum design, development, implementation, and delivery. Using evaluation data from staff, students, and external stakeholders the effectiveness and impact of these programme design and delivery approaches are evaluated, and the findings are presented. Highlighted areas of good practice, as well as key lessons learned in our work can serve as potential signposts for other HEI adopters of similar or other ESD methodologies.