Abstract
Sustainable development (SD) in higher education has occupied the agenda over recent decades. Higher education institutions make efforts to promote sustainability in education, curriculum, research, outreach, and campus operations. This article aims to analyze the level of implementation of sustainability in higher education in the Amazon. The specific objectives of this paper are to identify the curriculum greening (CG) characteristics in institutional development plans (IDPs) and to analyze the perceptions of students from a higher education institution in the Amazon region about sustainability. It follows a qualitative approach, with documentary research and questionnaires applied to students. Analysis content was used in the data analysis. The main findings are the presence of some CG characteristics in institutional documents that were analyzed as a commitment to the transformation of society–nature relations, contextualization, disciplinary order, democracy, theory and practice, students as knowledge protagonists, cognitive aspects, alternative scenarios, and methodological adequacy. The results show that commitment to sustainability cannot just be a declaration of good intentions. It is essential to discuss the ways of implementing sustainability in the academic environment, as it implies changes in epistemological, political, and social conceptions.
Highlights
The debate about the implementation of sustainability in higher education institutions (HEI) has become more intense [1,2]
A reason is that HEIs occupy a strategic place in the training and preparation of professionals of different degrees of education and different knowledge areas, demonstrating that “no institution in modern society is better positioned and none is more obliged to facilitate the transition to a sustainable future than colleges and universities” [3]
The research consisted in verifying the presence of curriculum greening (CG) characteristics in education, research, outreach, and management in institutional development plans (IDPs)
Summary
The debate about the implementation of sustainability in higher education institutions (HEI) has become more intense [1,2]. A reason is that HEIs occupy a strategic place in the training and preparation of professionals of different degrees of education (bachelor’s and graduate) and different knowledge areas, demonstrating that “no institution in modern society is better positioned and none is more obliged to facilitate the transition to a sustainable future than colleges and universities” [3]. In Education for Sustainable Development, which is a roadmap, Stefania Giannini (UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education) highlights the COVID-19 pandemic that spread across the planet in 2020. It is a crisis that affects every aspect of our lives, and that reveals the fragility of the human interdependence with nature. As forests are destroyed, are wild animals endangered and ecosystems weakened, but humans are exposed to unknown infectious agents that can threaten their lives [5]
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