How multi-level governance frameworks assist community colleges in identifying education-related sustainable development goals

Abstract

Promoting inclusive and equitable postsecondary learning environments is a global priority Postsecondary institutions, particularly community colleges' career and technical education (CTE) programs, are increasingly held accountable for achieving education-related sustainable development goals (SDGs) and are expected to provide knowledge of the SDGs and implement them through practice and action. Community colleges rely on multi-level governance frameworks such as voluntary local review (VLR) to substantiate and institutionalize education-related SDG objectives. Though the VLR has been identified as a process for facilitating multi-level collaborative learning, the nature and process of implementing the approach has not been clearly defined and is not well understood. To identify key concepts and main research themes that present sustainability education and inclusive and equitable learning in community colleges, as well as to identify research gaps, a systematic literature review on sustainability education in workforce education and development (WFED) as well as inclusive and equitable learning in community colleges was conducted. The review found that VLR is critical for obtaining new knowledge about education-related SDGs and suggests that community colleges use the VLR to improve organizational contextual features and organizational change, internal structural features and organizational design, and external environment and influencing factors.