The role of sustainability in HE and the GEES disciplines; recommendations for future practice

ABSTRACT

Sustainability is becoming a key component of many HE curricula. However, questions as to what sustainability is and how it can be embedded within subject specific curriculum are difficult to answer. Focussing on existing pedagogic scholarship in this area and by drawing on experiences from my own institution, this article discusses how the GEES subjects are addressing sustainability in the curriculum. It provides both conceptual framing on the evolution of the GEES subjects in relation to sustainability and offers some practical examples of how different approaches to sustainability might be used in teaching, including challenging disciplinary perspectives and introducing interdisciplinary working around global challenges. It concludes with recommendations for how sustainability might be embedded in the curriculum in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• HE
• GEES disciplines
• curriculum change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is acknowledged that GEES subjects can also include Biosciences, however for the purpose of this paper GEES are defined traditionally as Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences.