Appendix A
Definitions of Key Terms and Phrases Used in the Report
Sustainable Development
We use sustainable development with reference to its original use in Our Common Future (WCED, 1987, 37), and define it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This is consistent with its use in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and similar contexts in which the term refers to the intergenerational balance between economic, environmental, and social constraints in the pursuit of human development. Culture is increasingly included as a sustainability constraint (Pereira Roders and van Oers, 2011).
Sustainability
Sustainability refers to achieving individual, societal, and environmental wellbeing in present and future generations. The pursuit of sustainability explicitly links social, economic, and environmental goals. It requires understanding and working with the dynamics of socio-environmental systems (Matson et al., 2016). Different communities, initiatives, and scholars have articulated different specific goals, approaches, and outcomes in pursuit of sustainability (NRC, 1999; Quental et al., 2011; UN, 2015). Conceptions of sustainability range from those with an instrumental focus, such as the triple bottom line of benefiting “people, planet and profit” (McDonough and Braungart, 2002), and the three pillars of sustainability, with a focus on reconciling economic, social, and environmental goals (Purvis et al., 2019), to visionary aspiration for sustainability as the possibility of human and other life flourishing indefinitely on Earth (Ehrenfeld and Hoffman, 2013). The irreducibility of different goals, approaches, and outcomes is an inherent
characteristic of sustainability (Lélé and Norgaard, 1996; Quental et al., 2011) and underpins this report’s themes and recommendations. It also offers entry points for integrating many academic fields, practitioner partners, and career paths into interdisciplinary sustainability curricula and programs in higher education.
Sustainability Education
Sustainability education refers to all aspects of student learning about sustainability in postsecondary or higher education. It includes student engagement in curricular and pedagogical aspects of instruction, student research, and student experiential learning at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Sustainability education is related to Education for Sustainable Development, or ESD, and environmental education.1 All three seek to develop a set of overlapping competencies in students; sustainability education encompasses the focus of ESD on processes and the focus of environmental education on ecosystems and the environment. Sustainability education seeks to link human and environmental well-being, thereby going beyond understanding the nature of environmental systems to include a focus on intra- and intergenerational human well-being. Its orientation is normative and interventionist, asking students to consider what the future should be and what we do to make it happen. This includes empathy and consideration of different value systems with a commitment to justice and equity (Jones et al., 2010; Moore, 2005b; Victor, 2009).
In this report the terms sustainability education and sustainability in higher education are used interchangeably. Sustainability initiatives for campus operations, such as reducing water use, installing renewable energy systems, or reducing food waste may be part of the student educational experience. Where the report mentions such campus sustainability projects or initiatives, the words “project” and “initiative” are used, respectively, to describe them.
Sustainability Education Programs/Sustainability Programs in Higher Education
This report uses the terms sustainability education programs and sustainability programs in higher education interchangeably. “Programs” covers the range of educational, research, and engagement activities that are part of educational and curricular offerings, and it includes undergraduate and graduate majors and associated degree programs, minors, certificate programs, concentration or specialization areas, practicums, service, and/or experiential learning activities. The term also includes curricular and pedagogical practices as well as basic and applied research on sustainability issues. Chapter 2 provides examples of different
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1 See UNESCO What is Education for Sustainable Development, available at https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development/what-is-esd, accessed on September 23, 2020.
types of sustainability education programs. Many disciplines, from architecture to zoology, include sustainability issues but are not sustainability programs, per se. What distinguishes a sustainability education program is its integrated focus on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of human development (Moore, 2005a).
Sustainability Curricula
Sustainability curricula refers to all the curricular and pedagogical concepts, activities, products, and processes associated with sustainability education programs as defined above (Thomas, 2004). These curricula vary widely across institutions because the interdisciplinary academic field of sustainability is still developing, and there is as yet no accredited standard curriculum for sustainability education (Rowe, 2007; Brundiers et al., 2020).
Sustainability Science Research
Sustainability science research, a component of many sustainability in higher education programs, refers to use-inspired basic and applied research that advances both “useful knowledge and informed action” on sustainability issues (Clark, 2007). Student participation in sustainability science research may occur within higher education institutions or outside at other institutions that conduct such research, including corporations, foundations, think tanks, government agencies or nonprofit and other civic society organizations (Hirsch-Hadorn et al., 2006). Sustainability science research is discussed further in Chapter 2.
Sustainability Education Research
The definition of sustainability education research differs from the definition of sustainability science research. Sustainability education research focuses on issues of curriculum, pedagogy, student learning, and the assessment and evaluation of educational processes, programs, and outcomes, including the relationship of student learning and training with career trajectories and labor market outcomes. Sund and Lysgaard (2013) appeal for grounding this research in educational philosophy and emphasizing this research on the process of “education” aimed at “enhancing the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, and supporting the development of independent thought” as a key element of sustainability education.
Environmental Education
Environmental education refers to the range of subjects in education about the environment and spans a broad range of disciplinary subfields, such as envi-
ronmental science, environmental engineering, ecology, environmental chemistry, environmental economics or ecological economics, environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, environmental history, and environmental humanities. Environmental education may include topics that are relevant to and included in sustainability education, but when it focuses solely on principles and processes of the natural environment or seeks only to apply knowledge from a specific discipline to environmental challenges, it is different from sustainability education. That is, sustainability education’s consideration of the natural environment always is within the broader context of the social and economic environments in which generations of humanity live (Pearson et al., 2005). Similar to how engineering draws on physics or medicine draws on biology, sustainability education draws on and integrates disciplinary knowledges to teach students how to develop interventions to solve problems and improve well-being.
The committee notes, however, that many interdisciplinary higher education programs that call themselves “Environmental Studies” or “Environment Sciences” align with the attributes of sustainability education (see the definition for this term). For instance, a large survey of U.S. interdisciplinary environmental programs found consensus in defining the field as “an applied, interdisciplinary focus on the interface of coupled human-natural systems with a normative commitment to sustainability” (Vincent and Focht, 2011). The survey also found a positive relationship between enrollment and program inclusion of sustainability (in core principles, course work, and research and service learning opportunities), preparing students to be change agents and providing community service. These parallel major features of sustainability education are addressed in Chapters 3 and 4 of this report.
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