Effective Areas and Solutions for Sustainability Education Development in Iranian Architecture Universities

Abstract

Today, given the rapid population growth, development of sciences, new changes in all aspects of human life, and ultimately, the occurrence of unfavorable conditions for the human environment, sustainable development has attracted considerable attention as one of the most critical and common issues at the international level. Among the strategies to achieve sustainable development, education is the most effective mechanism of society to deal with the century's biggest problem, i.e., sustainable development. According to the United Nations, education is needed to promote sustainable development and improve public awareness of environmental and developmental issues. Sustainable development using educational tools, in the first step, requires identifying the areas and factors that play a role in the development of sustainability education. This study aims to identify the effective factors for the development of sustainability education in Iranian architecture universities using the analytical-inferential strategy. The qualitative analysis of the documents revealed that the educational environment, educational system, and society were the most effective ones in the development of sustainability education of architecture students. Finally, solutions were presented to improve public awareness and reform the educational environment and system to develop sustainable education in Iranian architecture universities.