Recommendations to align higher education teaching with the UN sustainability goals – A scoping survey

Abstract

Global challenges such as climate change, limited resources, and an ever-growing world population demonstrate a perceptible impact on the lives of people around the globe. To tackle the arising issues and to enable peace and prosperity in the future, the United Nations (UN) have defined 17 interlinked sustainable development goals. A major facilitator to achieve these goals is considered through education. Consequently, higher education institutes have started to align their curricula with sustainable development. Yet, lesser attention has been paid to teaching methods themselves. Hence, in this paper, a scoping survey is performed on how higher education teaching can be inspired by the UN sustainable development goals, specifically, by a summarized subset of 7 goals: (1) Tackle Poverty, (2) Enable Good Health and Well-Being, (3) Establish Quality Education, (4) Reduce Inequalities, (5) Embrace Environmental Sustainability, (6) Foster Innovation, and (7) Establish Partnerships. Overall, the discussed recommendations show a promising potential towards having a positive impact on higher education, yet, also unveil conflicts between different goals. Nevertheless, this paper could provide an orientation to critically reflect on current means of higher education teaching.

Keywords

• Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)
• Higher education for sustainable development (HEfSD)
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
• Teacher education