Keywords

Introduction: The Tree Model

In a series of action research experiments in the Netherlands between 1991 and 2012, a coherent strategy was designed to integrate sustainable development (SD) into higher education.

The present chapter offers a practical description of this ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD) strategy and of the ‘toolbox’ that it makes use of. It does not discuss the philosophy behind the ESD strategy or the validation of its tools. These backgrounds can be found in Roorda (2010).

The strategy is expressed in a compact way with the aid of a metaphor, the ‘Tree Model,’ in which a bachelor or a master program in a university is compared to a tree, its parts and its environment, as is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
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The ‘Tree Model,’ a metaphor for a bachelor or master program in a university

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For each of the elements of this ‘tree,’ tools and instruments have been designed, validated and applied. Together, these instruments form a toolkit which enables universities to integrate SD thoroughly in all of its activities, starting from modest starting steps, all the way toward System Integration of SD (‘SISD’), a concept which is pivotal to the philosophy behind the ESD strategy. Table 1 offers an overview of the instruments.

Table 1 The tree model: defining the sustainability strategy
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The Tree Model is a tool in itself. It enables a university (department) to select priorities for organization development, and to define an ESD strategy based on those priorities. This is what the empty 4th column in Table 1 is meant for.

The Genotype: The University Mission

Ideally, the university mission is an expression of its identity, translating this into concrete goals and a strategy. An example is the strategy of Avans University in The Netherlands, which is an inspiring example of a university that has decided to become a truly sustainable institution. This is clear from its Mission Statement (Avans 2010):

Avans University educates students to become highly qualified professionals, who continuously develop themselves and their profession, being aware of their societal responsibility. Avans wants to co-create social-cultural and economic developments by being a partner to companies, governments, and organizations for which contributing to sustainable development is pivotal. (…) Our graduates fulfil key positions for the realization of a sustainable society. This demands them to have a societal engagement and an entrepreneuring attitude. (…) From our expertise of, and involvement in the on-going societal developments Avans participates in the societal debate, thus contributing to finding solutions to societal issues.

In 2012, Avans University formally decided to appoint SD as one of its highest priorities. In a vision paper (Avans 2012a), it formulated a ‘prospect’:

In 2016, Avans University has reached System Integration of Sustainable Development (SISD), which means that sustainability has been embedded in all of its operations, education, and research. By then, Avans will be a truly sustainable university.

In a legally binding contract with the Dutch Ministry of Education, Avans University decided to make ample use of the strategy and the various tools of the ‘Tree Model’ (Avans 2012b):

Before 2015, all 19 academies and all service departments of Avans University have acquired the ESD Certificate at the level of two stars. Besides, all curricula will have integrated the SD competences described by RESFIA+D.

Other excellent examples of mission statements stressing the importance of SD can be found in Roorda (2010) and in various other sources.

The Phenotype: Characteristics of Education for Sustainable Development

Much has been written about the notion that higher education, in order to be able to contribute effectively to SD, will have to go through a significant change process. In his dissertation (Roorda 2010), the author of the present chapter presented an overview of the characteristics of ESD (education for SD), partly based on his experiments between 1991 and 2010, and partly on a list of literature sources. The overview is reprinted here as Table 2.

Table 2 The ESD checklist: characteristics of education for sustainable development
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The table can be used as a checklist by those who are designing or redesigning study programs in higher education.

The Roots: The Graduate Profile (RESFIA+D)

Competence-based learning has entered higher education in many countries. Discussions are going on in many places: what kind of competences do our highly educated professionals need in order to be able to contribute effectively to SD? In other words: what typifies a sustainably competent professional?

To answer this question, a tool was developed and validated called ‘RESFIA + D’ (see: Roorda 2010 and 2012). RESFIA+D has also been dubbed ‘The seven SD Competences,’ as it consists of six generic competences, appropriate for each and every discipline or professional, plus a seventh group that varies according to the discipline involved. The six generic competences, each are divided into three sub-competences, as Table 3 shows.

Table 3 RESFIA+D : Professional competences for sustainable development The section numbers refer to the sections of Roorda ( 2012 ), in which this table is printed as Table 8.4
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Competence levels

For each of the 6 × 3 sub-competences, four levels of competence have been defined. The four ascending levels are apply, integrate, improve, and innovate. This makes it possible to use RESFIA+D as a tool for education design or improvement. As an example, the levels of sub-competence F1 are shown in Table 4.

Table 4 Example of a competence card
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When RESFIA+D is applied, a group is formed, delegated from: the education management, the teaching staff, the students, and the professional field. Together, they discuss three questions for each of the 18 sub-competences, aiming at reaching consensus:

  1. 1.

    Which competence level should every student of your study program at least have acquired at the moment of graduation?

  2. 2.

    Which level is demanded in the present competence profile of the study program?

  3. 3.

    Which level is actually realized for all students in the current curriculum?

This consensus meeting usually leads to remarkable differences between the answers to the three questions, and thus the team of the study program gives itself evident goals for improvement.

The Trunk: Fundamentals of Sustainable Development (a Textbook)

As the basis for the SD education, the ‘trunk of the tree,’ a tool was developed consisting of a textbook called ‘Fundamentals of Sustainable Development’ (Roorda 2012), and a series of online accessories, which can be retrieved from www.routledge.com/cw/roorda-9781849713863.

The textbook is intended for all disciplines, e.g., for technical, economic, social, environmental, agricultural, educational, and art courses. The book offers a broad introduction to the concept of SD.

Consequently, the book does not go into the details of specific disciplines. It is not intended for those who want to become high-level experts on sustainability. For them, many other books exist. The philosophy behind this approach is that, as all of society needs to become more and more sustainable, it is essential that not just some, but all professionals with a high level of power and responsibility in every company, government department, ngo, etc., are able to think and act in a sustainable way. So, an introduction to sustainable development at a basic level should be a necessary element in the study programs of each discipline in every university, all over the world.

The online accessories consist of, e.g., a glossary, a set of about 200 student exercises, 40 video clips, and for each chapter: additional texts, a description of the learning goals, a summary, and a powerpoint presentation.

The Branches: The SD Curriculum Scan

The above mentioned RESFIA+D model is a tool for education development, starting from the roots; the competence profile. The opposite approach is offered by the SD Curriculum Scan. This tool enables to draw a map of a curriculum, showing which aspects or topics of SD have been realized in which part of the curriculum.

In order to describe the curriculum in such a way, 16 categories of topics have been defined, grouped into four groups: basics, people, planet, and profit, as Fig. 2 illustrates.

Fig. 2
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A (still empty) example of an SD curriculum map

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For each of the 16 categories, a series of topics was selected. This was not intended as an exact or forcing checklist for the curricula, but just as a source of inspiration for education developers, to give them some impression of how the themes might be interpreted. As an example, for the ‘Participation’ category, the following topics were selected:

  • Participation versus exclusion

  • Social cohesion versus segregation

  • Freedom versus solidarity

  • Civil society

  • Cultural values and differences

  • Democracy

  • Equal opportunities

  • Gender issues

  • Human rights

  • Minorities

  • Fugitives

  • Immigration, integration

  • Unemployment.

A practical tool was designed in the shape of a spreadsheet in which spaces are available (the white boxes in Fig. 2) to fill in all kinds of curriculum elements that exist in an actual study program. When filled with the details of a curriculum, the result is an ‘SD Curriculum Map.’ After a series of practical tests in 2008 and 2009, the Curriculum Scan is now being applied. These applications make it possible to develop the Scan further, from a generic tool to a more specified instrument that can be applied in a variety of disciplines.

The application of the SD Curriculum Scan takes quite some time, as the scan consists of investigating all study materials (e.g., textbooks, lecture notes, exam regulations) and interviewing a selection of professors, lecturers and students, followed by feedback loops and checks. This is why the scan is usually performed by students in educational sciences, performing the scan as a graduation project.

The Biochemistry: Methodologies for the Learning Process

Nowadays, there are many didactic approaches that can be used. Examples are: Analysis tasks, numerical exercises (such as calculations, simulations), research tasks, serious games, TED talks, MOOCs, debates & discussions, problem-based learning (PBL), projects, and creative tasks (e.g., movie clips, paintings, events).

An example of how a seemingly traditional exercise can be transformed into an innovative task, demanding creativity and societal involvement from the students, is shown here. Preferably, this exercise is performed by a group of students.

Exercise 8.6. The accidental discharge

A PVC factory has a permit to discharge wastewater into a nearby river. Full use is made of this permit, and on a given summer’s day they discharge wastewater at a rate of 4,000 l a minute.The wastewater quality is regularly measured, which is why alarm bells quickly rang out when, at 12:31, it was noticed that a dissolved substance was present in the water, which was highly poisonous and should under no circumstances be released into the surface waters. The substance is called methyl mercury−its scientific name is hydroxyl (1-methylethyl)mercury(II), for short: C3OHgH8 (Fig. 3)−and its concentration levels in the discharge pipeline stood at three ppm (parts per million).

Fig. 3
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The molecular structure of methylmercury

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The chemical has a notorious recent history and is highly toxic, with an LD50 value of 1 ppm (LD50 stands for ‘Lethal Dose 50 %’, the concentration level at which 50 % of sufferers die). Some decades ago methylmercury was discharged into the surface waters of the town of Minamata in Japan, with the locals consuming the fish caught in these waters. What came to be known as Minamata disease claimed many human lives.

Fig. 4
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The outflow of wastewater as a function of time

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Immediately after the alarm was sounded, employees attempted to shut the valve. This is not a small and simple tap but rather a large and very heavy gate valve. At 12:38, the closing disc started moving, initially moved slowly as it is so heavy. The large part of the shut-off operation after that went relatively quickly, although toward the end work slowed as the wastepipe could burst open if the disc was forced shut too fast. By 12:43, it was completely sealed.

The form of the outflow that occurred while staff was busy closing the valve resembles a section of a sine graph; see the graph (Fig. 4).

  1. (a)

    What is the minimum amount, in grams, of the poisonous chemical that was discharged into the environment?

  2. (b)

    And what is the maximum amount?

  3. (c)

    What actions might have been undertaken between 12:31 and 13:38?

  4. (d)

    If you were the company manager, what would you have instructed the company’s press secretary to say?

Question (a) in this exercise is straightforward and traditional. Students capable of performing basic mathematic calculations can find the answer easily.

Question (b) appears to be comparable, but it is not, as the proper data to perform the calculation are missing. Consequently, the correct answer is: ‘We don’t know’. For many students, this is a shocking experience.

Question (c) encourages a wide range of activities, if you allow the students to use sufficient time. Practical experiences showed that some students approached environmental or operational managers of chemical factories, while others phoned the local government to get information about regional disaster plans. Still others studied internet sources or consulted lawyers. When these students came together again after their investigations, they combined all those new kinds of information in order to formulate their best answer.

Question (d) evidently raises all kinds of discussions of an ethical, management, or philosophical nature. It’s not the exact answer that the students arrive at that matters, but rather the discussion itself.

Another example is illustrated in Fig. 5. Both examples belong to the 200 exercises that are a part of the accessories of ‘Fundamentals of Sustainable Development,’ the textbook described above. All of them can be downloaded freely.

Fig. 5
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The World scenario simulation program popSim

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The second exercise makes use of a serious game called PopSim. This computer application simulates the growth of a population on an isolated island.

Exercise 6.11. PopSim simulation: global scenarios

For this exercise use the program PopSim, which can be downloaded from the website of the book.

  1. (a)

    Launch the program and press the ‘Start’ button, which will set the simulation running using the ‘simple’ scenario. Examine the results-what type of growth do you observe?

  2. (b)

    Press the ‘Help’ button and read the program guide.

  3. (c)

    Select the scenario ‘Attenuation towards stability’. What type of growth do you observe?

  4. (d)

    Experiment with the ‘simple’ and ‘Attenuation towards stability’ scenarios by changing the values of the variables. You can invoke one-off events and study the results.

  5. (e)

    Turn on the ‘Pause at important moments’ option. Use the three ‘Realistic’ options-low, medium, and high. Detail your findings.

  6. (f)

    Which of the three ‘realistic’ scenarios do you believe most closely resembles the real world, and why?

  7. (g)

    In your report, also focus on the question of whether a model such as this one can, in spite of the fact that it is a simplified representation of the real world, teaches us something about that real world. If this is the case, what might it teach us? If that is not the case, why not?

The Ecosystem: Inter- and Transdisciplinary Cooperation

In multidisciplinary education, issues or methods from various disciplines are combined into one curriculum. In other words, multidisciplinary approaches can be performed by one or more students within just one study program. In interdisciplinary education, students from various disciplines (e.g., engineering, management, law, social studies) are joined to perform a complicated task as a team in a real-life context (Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn 2007).

In initial experiments around 2000, participating students were hardly prepared for such a task, and their lack of ability to work beyond the borders of their own discipline caused serious struggles and misunderstandings.

For this reason, training and coaching program was developed. This program appeared to be relevant, not only for the students, but certainly also for their lecturers. In the first week of the internship, the involved students and lecturers met with each other, explained their varying views on SD, on the involved company, on professionalism, etc. Exercises were made, e.g., role playing games, to transform the individuals into a team. In the course of some years, this approach was improved and utilized repeatedly. Tools are based, e.g., on the Belbin Test for team roles (Belbin 1981), the Tuckman group development model (Tuckman 1965), and elements from Six Sigma (George 2003).

A next step was taken when a transdisciplinary approach was selected. In this case, not just students from various disciplines functioned as a team, but also others were added. In one case, where a planned home for the elderly was redesigned, en number of them, future inhabitants, joined the project; not just as incidental stakeholders or interviewees, but as true members of the project team. Initial problems were solved by adding them to the first week training program and permanent coaching.

These projects have proved to render excellent results, which would have been impossible within a mono- or just multidisciplinary approach.

Sprouting and Growing: Strategy, Assessment, and Involvement (AISHE 2.0)

Assessment of SD in a university or school can have a number of reasons or benefits (see Table 5). It can be used for the development of a strategy to implement SD into the education, the operations, the research, the community outreach, and even into the identity of the university itself. AISHE, the ‘Assessment Instrument for Sustainability in Higher Education,’ was developed for all of these reasons.

Table 5 Nine reasons for the assessment of ESD
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The first version of AISHE was developed and validated in 2000–2001 (Roorda 2001). Since then, the tool has been applied in 11 countries. Case studies are available in, e.g., Roorda (2004) and Roorda and Martens (2008).

A second, expanded version has been developed by an international group (Roorda et al. 2009). This ‘AISHE 2.0′ consists of five modules, each with six indicators (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6
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The five modules of AISHE 2.0

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AISHE was derived from a tool for general quality management in higher education (HBO Expert Group 1999). It makes use of a five-point ordinal scale, describing the natural development of an organization, as Fig. 7 shows.

Fig. 7
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The five stages of AISHE

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Characteristics of those five stages are descried for each of the indicators. A group of participants, together representing the professional field, the management, the educators, the non-teaching staff and the students, discusses the indicators, reaching consensus on the present stage within the assessed organization (e.g., a faculty or a campus), and also on the ambitions that are to be realized within a next strategy period. Thus, AISHE has proved to be a successful strategic ESD instrument (Roorda 2010).

The Recognition: Reward, Benchmarking, Ranking (The ESD Certificate)

Based on the results of AISHE, assessments, a Certificate for Sustainable Development in Higher Education was defined by the Dutch ESD organization DHO. The certificate has been awarded to universities about 100 times. It is a ‘star system,’ corresponding to the five stages of AISHE. The certificate has been formally recognized by the Dutch and Flemish Accreditation Organization for Higher Education (NVAO).

Case studies (Roorda 2010) show that the certificate is an effective incentive for continued efforts to implement ESD more and more thoroughly, eventually leading to SISD.

Reaching Maturity: System Integration of Sustainable Development (SISD)

When a university or a department takes its first steps concerning the integration of SD into its education or its organization, this is described by the stages 1 and 2 of AISHE. If this process is continued and ESD becomes systematically integrated, the three-star certificate may be reached, establishing a state called ‘System Integration of Sustainable Development,’ ‘SISD.’ This concept is defined as follows (Roorda 2010, p. 138):

SISD not only refers to a systematic integration of sustainable development into an educational organization (or a functional unit within it, e.g., a faculty, a school, or a study program), but also, and even primarily, at integration at a systems level. This implies that sustainable development has become a part of the fundamental characteristics of the organization, of its very identity. If this is the case, it will be observed that sustainability has become a part of all or most activities, or at least of the thoughts and philosophies behind those activities.

Figure 8 shows the case of a faculty (Fontys School of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, Netherlands) in which SISD was realized in 2008 as the result of a six-year process.

Fig. 8
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A case study: the development of a faculty toward SISD

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The SISD concept is an appropriate final goal for an SD strategy of a university, as it is both assessable and realistic, as several cases on the faculty level have proved. An example of a SISD ambition at the full university level is Avans University. Its mission statement was quoted above, containing the SISD concept as its prospect, to be reached around 2016. Avans University designed a detailed ESD strategy, applying the entire ESD toolbox described in this chapter, to realize its ambition.

The Fruits: The Effects on Profession and Society

If the process toward SISD is followed through consistently, making use of AISHE to design and evaluate the strategy, and making use of RESFIA+D to define the educational goals, the effect will be that the graduates will all be sustainably competent professionals. The final indicators for success will naturally be the dissertations by the students, and later their efforts and successes concerning SD in the course of their careers.

The final element in the toolbox of the ESD strategy, described in this chapter, is a pledge that students may make at the moment of their graduation. The pledge is introduced in Roorda (2012):

The Pledge

I promise that in my work I will consistently consider the consequences of my actions for society and for the environment, both today and in the future. I shall, before making decisions and while making them, conscientiously assess issues. I shall not undertake any actions geared toward harming people or the natural environment. I shall use my education, talents, and experiences in order to make a contribution to a better world through sustainable development.

I accept that I am personally responsible for my choices and actions, and I promise that I will be held publically accountable for my work by everyone for whom that work holds consequences. I shall not appeal to the fact that I acted on the instructions of others.

I promise that in my work I will not only make an effort for my own interests and my career, but also for my dreams and my ideals. In this I shall respect the values and the interests of others.

I understand that there will be times in the course of my career when it will be difficult to do what I am now promising to do. I will adhere to this pledge, even in those times.