Sustainability Competences and Pedagogical Approaches at the University of Gävle

Abstract

The University of Gävle is located in the city of Gävle, Sweden. It has 16,000 students (about 6,500 full time equivalent) and 700 employees. The University of Gävle has been working with sustainability for the last 25 years. The university has extensive experience in working with an environmental management system, certified according to ISO 14001 since 2004. It published its first sustainability report in 2017. This chapter presents the results from the 66 survey respondents. The main focus of the university is on cross-cutting themes. The economic, environmental, and social dimensions have fairly similar percentages. The contribution to sustainabilityContribution to sustainability is high and the strength is high. The ranking of the competences shows that Critical thinking and analysisRankingcritical thinking and analysis is the highest, followed by Justice, responsibility, and ethics. The ranking of the pedagogical approaches resulted in Project- or Problem-based learning and Case studies were the highest, followed by Inter-disciplinary team teaching. The correlation analysis showed that Project- or Problem-based learningCorrelation analysisproject-/problem-based learning developed the most competences followed by Case studies and then Place-based environmental education. The competences most developed were Systems thinking, Anticipatory thinking, Strategic action, Personal involvement, and Justice, responsibility and ethics. The results highlight a holistic understanding and teaching of sustainability at the University of Gävle. The results provide a necessary mapping of the competences being developed by the educators and the university and the pedagogical approaches being used. Identifying sustainability trends and patterns in teaching at the University of Gävle can help to better integrate sustainability into all educational programmes, so that students can better contribute to making societies more sustainability.