Introducing sustainability into university curricula: an indicator and baseline survey of the views of university teachers at the University of Valencia

Abstract

Many higher education institutions have assumed the role of diffusing knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviours that favour sustainability. A key objective in such work is training university teachers to apply sustainability criteria to their respective disciplines. While university teachers' active participation is essential to achieving this goal, their ideas about and predispositions towards introducing sustainability into curricula are not always understood or appreciated. In this paper, we report on a questionnaire survey at the University of Valencia, Spain, on the current baseline situation for introducing sustainability across the university's curricula. We also report on a measure to periodically review the situation, including progress of and/or decline in introducing sustainability into diverse subject areas, focusing on a series of indicators grouped under the common name ‘π Indicator’. Key findings from the survey include the widespread support for introducing sustainability across the university's curricula; however, as might be expected, significant differences occur in how questions are addressed by staff from various disciplines, including how they relate to departmental perceptions, interpretations and performance of sustainability‐related teaching.

Keywords:

• environmental education
• higher education
• sustainability
• curriculum

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the editor and the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. The Copernicus Project addresses the implementation of the sustainability perspective throughout the university system to stimulate and coordinate interdisciplinary research projects, to create stronger university relationships with other social sectors, and to promote the training of all graduates, not only in scientific and technical competences, but also in sustainability‐related competences so that these people will make decisions and undertake actions in accordance with sustainability criteria in their future professional duties.

2. AASHE: http://www.aashe.org/conf2006/index.php

3. For further information on the ACES network, see Junyent and Geli de Ciurana (2008).

4. The authors are a multidisciplinary research team, formed by a professor of pedagogy, a doctor in economic sociology, a doctor in biology and a doctor in psycho‐pedagogy, and who belong to three different university departments.

5. This paper does not discuss any of the open questions in the questionnaire.

6. An English version of the complete questionnaire is available on our website, www.uv.es/acuveg.

7. Given their content, the answers to the open question ‘others, please specify’ could be redirected to the closed questions as they are variants of them.