Abstract
Opportunities exist for nutrition and dietetic (N&D) professionals to contribute to sustainable development and support actions towards the attainment of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SGD’s). Students undertaking higher education are well-placed to develop skills and capabilities in creative and critical problem solving for sustainability. However, there is limited literature exploring nutrition and dietetic students’ perceptions of sustainability that would help to inform an effective and constructively aligned embedding of sustainability content and active learning opportunities into curriculum. This descriptive cohort study design utilised a 17-question online survey to explore 95 Australian N&D undergraduate students’ self-reported familiarity with and perceived importance of sustainability and related concepts, and view of sustainability for future practice. Participants reported being more familiar with the term environmental sustainability and related concepts than economic or social sustainability. Varying levels of familiarity of 42 sustainability related concepts within economic resilience, environmental integrity, social development and cross-cutting issues were reported. Most participants (82%, n = 78) reported sustainability was very important in general (82%, n = 78), and for professional practice (63%, n = 60). Over half of the participants identified government led initiatives to address the future of society (65%, n = 71). Our study highlights the complexity of sustainability in a discipline specific context and the need for understanding students’ perceptions of sustainability to inform N&D curriculum design.
Highlights
Sustainability, and sustainable development are emerging as central concepts within professional nutrition and dietetic practice [1,2]
While there is international literature that examines undergraduate students’ perceptions of sustainability in other disciplines, there is no such literature in the context of nutrition and dietetics
Australian student participants were most familiar with environmental aspects of sustainability and viewed sustainability as an important issue for nutrition and dietetic practice
Summary
Sustainability, and sustainable development are emerging as central concepts within professional nutrition and dietetic practice [1,2] This emergence runs parallel to calls in other disciplines and higher education itself to reposition our work within a new lens of the Anthropocene and further, for some a “climate emergency” [3]. The Anthropocene is a significant shift as it recognises this period as a point in geological time where human activities have become the dominant source of change on the physical systems of the earth. This recognition highlights the critical importance of sustainability thinking and sustainable development.
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