Environmental sustainability and sport management education: bridging the gaps

ABSTRACT

Although sport management higher education has recognized the need to include environmental sustainability in curricula, little is known about the scope and content of environmental sustainability curricula. This study conducted an inventory of environmental sustainability courses offered in sport management programs. A questionnaire was distributed to 553 faculty members from North American higher education institutions. Additionally, a panel of experts were interviewed about the benefits, drawbacks and challenges of including sustainability in a sport management curriculum. Findings reveal that very few programs currently have stand-alone courses dedicated to environmental sustainability in sport. There are significant barriers to adopting environmental sustainability in sport as a stand-alone course and as a module, which certainly makes developing stand-alone coursework a long-term process. However, these challenges have not stopped many programs from incorporating these topics into their programs of study in other creative ways. The paper suggests ways to overcome barriers and integrate environmental and sport management education.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• environmental sustainability
• curriculum
• sport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.