Sustainability competencies provide an orientation to help reframe or integrate sustainability into both curriculum and teaching practice. Despite decades of pedagogical research, the sustainability competencies frameworks are largely unknown and insufficiently operationalised in higher education. In this seminar, we present the concept of sustainability competencies, as well as provide specific teacher moves to support your teaching practice.

There exists much knowledge about our sustainability challenges, though much less on the specific approaches to address and overcome them. As our students attain their degrees and enter the workforce, they are faced with increasing urgency to generate and implement context-specific solutions. Thus, higher education must ensure students acquire the necessary competencies to be able to understand, analyse, address, and cope with the challenges they face.

Simply, a competence is a functionally linked complex of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable successful task performance and problem-solving. Then, which competencies are essential for sustainability?

During the seminar, we aim to introduce sustainability competencies as a framework to support the integration and implementation of sustainability in your teaching practice. We will showcase specific teacher moves (e.g. scene-setting, staging an inquiry) as well as teaching and learning activities (e.g. active learning, service learning, liberating structures).

The framing of sustainability competencies reflects the competence-based and outcome-based educational practices, which dominate higher education. At the same time, this framework suggests the need to reframe the purpose of education so that it encompasses not only academic and professional skills but also the essential competencies that foster inner development, civic engagement, civility, and our shared duty as citizens.

This seminar is designed to blend informative presentations with engaging discussions, thus, requesting both active listening and participation from those in attendance. The seminar is facilitated by Steven Curtis, with support from Terese Thoni. The seminar is conducted online in English.

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Registration & Venue

Please register for the event to receive the Zoom link to participate.

Register to attend the online seminar – zoom.us

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Audience

This seminar is intended for educators at Lund University, regardless of discipline. Participants from other Swedish universities are welcome to register.

About the Organisers

The seminar is organised as part of the initiative Teaching for Sustainability. We aim to support educators, by developing and organising pedagogical coursework, training opportunities, workshops, expert-led seminars, and other inspiration-rich resources. Our ultimate goal is to foster a culture that enriches the educational experience for both educators and students that meaningfully advances sustainability. 

Learn more about the Initiative – lu.se

We invite those interested to join our growing Community of Practice – we engage and empower members to explore real approaches to integrate sustainability into their teaching practice. Regularly, we host an inspiration or social event, bringing together the community. Anyone can become a member – the extent of your engagement is entirely up to you.

Join us on Microsoft Teams – teams.microsoft.com

The initiative Teaching for Sustainability is a cooperation between the Lund University Sustainability Forum, the Division of Higher Education Development (AHU), and the Centre for Engineering Education (CEE).

Division for Higher Education Development (AHU) - lu.se
Sustainability Forum - lu.se
LTH Centre for Engineering Education - lu.se