Sustainability
A transformative learning journey with Bath Spa University enables sustainability
Students experience academic programmes that are regionally anchored and address global challenges, including environmental sustainability, through the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Key topics:
Reflection:
How far do you agree with the following comments?
- My teaching and learning activities have identified the UN Sustainable Development Goals that are most relevant to this context.
- Sustainability literacy is embedded within my teaching and learning activities.
Sustainability and Sustainable Development
Bath Spa University is committed to pursuing ambitious sustainability targets. The Sustainability Policy highlights as its first aim to:
- "Continually develop and expand education for a sustainable future in the curriculum"
In order to achieve this, curricula must promote sustainability literacy. The United Nations define that:
- "Sustainability Literacy" is the knowledge, skills and mindsets that allow individuals to become deeply committed to building a sustainable future and assisting in making informed and effective decisions to this end.
As governments and organisations around the world pursue urgent sustainability goals and targets (e.g. the UK goal of net zero by 2050) there is growing demand for sustainability literacy in the workforce.
Some resources are:
- The University College of Estate Management: Provides a short introduction to sustainability literacy in Higher Education.
There are 17 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN's Division for Sustainable Development Goals explains:
- "[The SDGs] are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests."
Bath Spa University is committed to these SDGs, and is one of the signatories of the SDG accord, a worldwide collaboration of universities committed to delivering the Goals. Our intention is for all programmes to identify and explore the SDGs most relevant to their context.
The Education for Sustainability (EfS) project (led by the University of Gloucestershire and funded by the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education) focused on how university courses could embed sustainability in a deeper way. This produced two outputs:
- A "blueprint" of quality principles and criteria for EfS: These can be used to help design or enhance sustainability in a curriculum.
- An "anti-greenwash education kit": To help evaluate a curriculum to analyse how meaningfully sustainability is embedded.
The key recommendations from the EfS principles are that curricula should integrate sustainability into compulsory modules, consider it across all levels of study, and include it in assessment design. The principles also advise that consideration of sustainability should join together a breadth of issues across people, planet and profit; and not just narrowly target individual issues.
Advance HE also have a Framework for Education for Sustainable Development.
Bath Spa University's Sustainability team provide support to staff and students on this theme, and on delivering the Sustainability Strategy across the University.