V.Integration of Education for Sustainable Development in English 121

Abstract

Over the past years, many universities have integrated sustainability into their education, research, outreach, and operations. Within education, competences regarding sustainable development (SD) have been defined, courses on sustainability have been developed, and manuals and methods for teaching SD have been developed and integrated in curricula. The integration of competences for SD in higher education programs can be seen as an important step in achieving sustainability in higher education. Although these competences are defined and described in different models and settings, little information is available on the actual status of the integration of competences for SD in different study programs. In order to find out how and to what extent these competences are already present, the existing competence schemes of study programs within two Belgian universities were analyzed in the fields of business management, office management, and applied information technology. Results of the analysis show that competences for SD related to responsibility and emotional intelligence are widely integrated, while competences for SD dealing with system orientation, future orientation, personal commitment, and action taking are virtually absent. The analysis also shows that many competences for SD could be discovered within the selected study programs, though in an implicit and fragmented way, thus not covering all necessary fields of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. This calls for an adjustment of the study programs to clearly and explicitly integrate competences for SD, especially those related to system orientation, future orientation, personal involvement, and action taking. 

EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well developed wisdom. It has one of its fundamental aspects of imparting culture from generation to generation. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research related to teaching and learning. The basic aim of the education system for sustainable development is ‘education of a new man', ‘a man of a sustainable type of thinking’ a man of Cosmo-planetary consciousness with a holistic world outlook, who has a culture of sustainability, high socio-cultural needs and deep moral ethical values, who is capable to solve global tasks facing by the mankind and to promote the forming of sustainable society.
Education in its contemporary development should be aimed at the future, should “foresee” and form in a certain way and satisfy needs of future generations of people. That means that education should be anticipatory to social, economic and cultural life, it should form desirable sustainable future. But such ideas could not be realized in old organizational forms of education system. We need new organizational forms and educational institutions mobile, synergetic, creative, future-oriented- which could provide the implementation of new objectives and new historical functions of education. For that it is necessary that all spheres of life of society be incorporated whenever possible upon the principles of sustainable development. “Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of people to address environment and development issues…It is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behavior consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision making” (Chapter 36 of Agenda 21,Rio Declaration 1992).