1c. Role of Academia: education in sustainable development science
Track chairs:
Rodrigo Lozano. University of Gävle, Sweden. rodrigo.lozano@hig.se
Sandra Caeiro. Department of Science and Technology, Universidade Aberta and Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research, School of Science and Technology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. scaeiro@uab.pt
Goals and objectives of the track
Education for Sustainable Development research has seen a rapid increase during the last ten years, from campus operations, to curricula development, to sustainability reports, and to organisational change management. The aim of this track is to push forward discourses of the contributions of academia to societal transformations and their engagement efforts towards holistic and innovative approaches of education for sustainable development (EDS). We invite all researchers, educational institutions, professionals, and stakeholders committed to Education for Sustainable Development to this track in order to share your experiences, and present your research activities in this topic.
Contributions from the following areas include, but are not limited, to the following themes:
- Innovative and Inclusive approaches in sustainability science education;
- Rethinking education for sustainable development theories, practices and approaches;
- New competencies and pedagogical models for education for sustainable development;
- Stakeholder engagement and participation for education for sustainable development;
- Drivers to ESD implementation, barriers in adopting ESD, and strategies to overcome
- resistance to sustainability implementation;
- ESD efforts to change attitudes, behaviours, and lifestyles;
- Knowledge transfer and partnerships between academia, companies, civil society, and governments;
- Holistic integration of sustainable development into whole educational system, such as education, research, campus operations, outreach, assessment, reporting, on-campus life experiences, and educating-the-educators;
- Integration of education for sustainable development in all educational chain from kindergarten to university and thereafter, in life-long learning and labour market; and
- Sustainability assessment tools and benchmarking of education and research.
We warmly invite all participants to build upon the many great works on ESD already published, to explicitly state what their contribution to ESD is, and how other researchers can learn from your experiences.
Rodrigo Lozano is Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Cleaner Production (impact factor for 2015: 4.959) and Associate Professor at the University of Gävle, Sweden. He was previously assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and programme leader of the BA Environment and Business at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, UK. For more than fifteen years Rodrigo has been working towards Sustainability in NGO's, universities, and corporations. His projects have ranged from chemical leasing, indoor-air quality and energy efficiency, to sustainability assessment and reporting, and to organisational change management. He has developed assessment tools such as the GRaphical Assessment of Sustainability Performance (GRASP), the Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversities Curricula Holistically (STAUNCH®) (shortlisted for the Times Higher Education Awards in 2008), and the Graphical Assessment for Sustainability in Universities (GASUTM). Rodrigo holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering (graduated with honours) from Monterrey Tec, Mexico; a MSc in Environmental Management and Policy, from the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economies (IIIEE) at Lund University, Sweden; and a PhD on organizational change management for Corporate Sustainability at Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK. Rodrigo is also the managing director of Organisational Sustainability Ltd. (www.org-sustainability.com).
Sandra Caeiro is Professor in the Department of Science and Technology at Universidade Aberta (UAb) and a senior researcher at CENSE - Center for Sustainability and Environmental Research from New University of Lisbon, Portugal. Her main research and teaching areas include support tools for environmental management and assessment, education for sustainable development and sustainable consumption. She belongs to the coordination team of the PhD programme on Social Sustainability and Development, and she is the institutional coordinator of the European Virtual Seminar in Sustainable Development at UAb. She is subject editor at Journal of Cleaner Production, Elsevier and on the editorial board of the international journals of Ocean and Coastal Management, Elsevier, Latin American Journal of Management for Sustainable Development, Inderscience, and BioMed Research International, Hindawi Publishing Corporation and reviewer of several international scientific journals and books. She has mentored several post-graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, published papers in peer-review ISI journals, chapter books and international conference proceedings, and coordinated and participated in several research projects.
