Abstract
In 2016, the University of Bristol launched its institution-wide, interdisciplinary Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) initiative. Bristol Futures (BF) is formed of two parts: a free online course available to university students and the public, and an optional, credit-bearing unit available to all undergraduate students. This initiative encourages learners to understand the role that everyday behaviours have in creating and mitigating global environmental challenges. This paper profiles the Sustainable Futures (SF) pathway: one of three pathways within the BF initiative. SF offers innovative education to students that illuminates the role of their core discipline, and its relationship to others, in solving sustainable development challenges. In doing so, it encourages them to become engaged citizens and agents in both understanding and addressing the challenges that humanity faces, whilst giving them a broad educational experience which enhances their future employability. By adopting a challenge-based, post-disciplinary approach to global challenges (and therefore Education in Sustainable Development (ESD)), and through the combination of a range of learning and teaching methods including multimedia platforms, blended learning and flipped classrooms, Bristol University’s model of teaching ESD in the Anthropocene is presented. This work demonstrates the fusion of the key characteristics that has allowed for the BF curriculum to enhance student learning, and provide interdisciplinary engagement with complex challenges in a way that forms Sustainable Development leaders of the future.
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Notes
- 1.
This differentiated level of student response is rooted in the different sizes of the two cohorts. Whilst the pilot run involved over 260 students, the second run involved 40. At the time of writing, we are preparing for the third cohort—involving 300 students.
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Michalopoulou, E. et al. (2021). Development and Delivery of a Sustainable Development Unit in UK Universities: A Higher Education’s Guide for Future Sustainability Leaders. In: Leal Filho, W., Salvia, A.L., Brandli, L., Azeiteiro, U.M., Pretorius, R. (eds) Universities, Sustainability and Society: Supporting the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63399-8_30
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