Abstract
As human environmental impacts have increased, so has the desirability of sustainable practices in multiple dimensions and at multiple scales. In this context, sustainability literacy has become a desirable outcome of higher education, driving the advance of sustainability as a core component of higher education institutions’ missions at local, regional, and global scales. However, little is known about the efficacy of different instructional delivery modalities of higher education courses in delivering desired outcomes of sustainability education. This study employed a quasi-experimental design to explore the relative influence of a limited range of instructional delivery modalities and sustainability content (study abroad/home campus and sustainability/non-sustainability) on growth of sustainability literacy among university students. Within each modality (study abroad or home campus), studying sustainability was associated with higher sustainability literacy scores than studying non-sustainability. However, studying non-sustainability courses abroad showed comparable growth in students’ sustainability literacy scores compared to studying sustainability on home campuses. These results support not only the idea that sustainability can be taught but also that study abroad, regardless of course content, may be at least as effective at increasing sustainability literacy as home campus sustainability-related courses.
Highlights
The social, economic, and environmental challenges facing humanity are global in scope [1,2]
Human Subjects approval from the University’s Institutional Review Board, surveys were administered to students enrolled in Sustainability Educational Travel courses (SETss; n = 769), Sustainability Home Campus courses (SHC; n = 175), Non-Sustainability Study
Planned contrasts show no significant difference for gain in sustainability literacy score between NSSA and Non-Sustainability-Focused Home Campus courses (NSHC) (Difference estimate = 0.17, S.E. = 0.12, p > 0.05), and we find no support for H1 on that basis
Summary
The social, economic, and environmental challenges facing humanity are global in scope [1,2]. Biodiversity loss, and water scarcity threaten the sustainability of both human and natural systems [3] Rising to meet these challenges as a society requires a populace informed of the global consequences of their consumer choices, as well as the role that they play within the broader system of social and economic production [4,5]. If actors remain uninformed about the tenets of sustainability, they will likely struggle to achieve it, even if they possess altruistic values and positive attitudes toward sustainability. Scholars have termed this paradox as the value-action gap [7]
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