Scientific knowledge about sustainability-related topics – i.e. energy and environmental policy, climate change, sustainable food systems, waste management, circular economy etc. - forms an important foundation, but on its own rarely drives transformation (Vogel et al., 2023). However, when this knowledge encourages environmental awareness, a sense of connection with nature, and feelings of responsibility and agency within interconnected systems, it can become more powerful and transformative. Sustainability knowledge can help to shape values, provide meaning, and serve as the foundation for developing competencies that enable sustainable decision-making (Vogel et al., 2023). EfS depends not only on what students know, but also on how this knowledge brings them to radically re-assess their ways of thinking, practicing, and being (O’Grady 2022).
What this means for your teaching
You can play a key role in designing learning experiences that integrate EfS principles and adapt them to different contexts. This involves acquiring sustainability knowledge yourself while internalising its underlying values, developing necessary competencies, and learning how to teach these effectively. You can connect sustainability issues to your students' lived experiences, making abstract concepts tangible and relevant (Vogel et al., 2023).
Given the breadth of sustainability topics, setting clear subject-specific learning outcomes helps keep content coherent and allows students to develop deep knowledge on specific themes. However, this should be complemented by linking subject-specific learning outcomes with competencies and values that are transferable from educational settings to real-world scenarios, preparing students to be able to act on them (Vogel et al., 2023).
At the same time, as students learn about specific topics, you can help them navigate the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability. These dimensions often compete for emphasis and can weaken one another without an holistic approach to sustainability topics (Vogel et al., 2023). For instance, students designing sustainable business models may struggle to move beyond traditional economic growth paradigms, sometimes defaulting to charitable or non-profit approaches. By incorporating critical theory alongside disciplinary knowledge, you can help learners challenge dominant assumptions, engage in deeper reflection, and move toward more transformative forms of learning (Vogel et al. 2023 and O’Grady 2022).
Finding entry points for your discipline – Plymouth University Framework
Plymouth University offers a practical framework for integrating sustainability across different disciplines. Drawing on Tilbury and Wortman's (2004) work, they consider sustainability in its three dimensions - environmental, economic, and social - and identify specific curricular themes that fall within each dimension. These themes can serve as entry points where sustainability naturally connects to your subject area. You can use Plymouth's framework to map where sustainability already intersects with the content you are teaching. The framework also helps identify opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration when themes overlap with colleagues' areas.
In this video, Dr Nayat Horozoglu (LSE Department of Management) explains how she integrated sustainability questions into operations management teaching in MG104 Operations Management, prompting students to rethink the fundamental purpose of business. Link to video
In this video Dr Jillian Terry discusses the embedding of sustainability in LSE100 - LSE's flagship interdisciplinary course taken by all LSE first-year undergraduates - from course content, sustainability competencies (systems thinking), interdisciplinarity to assessment methods. Link to video