Conceptualization of green curriculum in Iran's higher education system

Abstract

Today, the world is facing various environmental hazards as a result of non-standard human activities, and different societies are forced to find solutions to manage and solve them. Universities are one of the significant social institutions in every society, which generally take on special duties when a crisis occurs. Regarding the management of environmental risks, one of the tasks assigned to universities is to implement the idea of a green university, which has often been implemented in different parts of the world in the form of greening the physical environment of the university. While green education in general and green curriculum in particular can increase the effectiveness of universities' activities in this field. Hence, this qualitative research aimed to conceptualize the green curriculum in Iran's higher education system. The population was the curriculum experts who have been active in the field of sustainability and environmental management. Moreover, a collection of authentic scientific papers related to the research objectives were also used in order to further enrich and complete the data. Data analysis was done through semantic content analysis. The results led to extraction of 47 codes related to the concept of the green curriculum. Accordingly, the concept of green curriculum can be categorized in three dimensions: concepts aimed at the society, concepts aimed at the learning ecosystem, and concepts aimed at the classroom and learners.