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There is increasing acknowledgment of the responsibility of universities in contributing to a more sustainable future, and our role as educators in ensuring our students have the agency to enact change (Robinson 2019). The responsibility of universities goes beyond the traditional estates‐based environmental management focus toward a more holistic understanding of the ways in which universities can contribute to sustainability, through their engagement and outreach with local communities, their research activities, as well as their educational mission. Education can be a thread which weaves these areas of responsibility together.

These potential contributions to sustainability by universities cross the breadth of interconnected and interdependent environmental, social and economic issues that embody our understanding of “sustainability” (Gibson 2006; Purvis et al. 2019). The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ratified in 2015, comprise 17 goals and 169 targets and, although not without criticism (Adelman 2018; Liverman 2018), might represent the best blueprint we have for a more sustainable future. These models of interconnected issues highlight that sustainability challenges are complex “wicked problems” which can be time‐consuming and difficult to address due to involving multiple stakeholders, dimensions and conflicting needs (Ackoff 1974; Waddock 2013) and therefore need holistic and systemic approaches.

Quality Education is an SDG in its own right, which alongside targets relating to access to and inclusion within education, includes a specific “education for sustainable development and global citizenship” target with a goal of ensuring that “all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non‐violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development” (UNESCO 2021a). Education, however, is not restricted to its own goal, but is an enabler for all other goals through empowering “people with the knowledge, skills and values to live in dignity, build their lives and contribute to their societies' (UNESCO 2021b).

Education for sustainable development (ESD) needs to be widely adopted across higher education to enable a fundamental, transformative shift in thinking and decision‐making in all of society's leaders (Cortese 2003) through enabling the development of sustainability literate graduates, whose leadership in society can take many forms throughout their lives (Robinson and Molthan‐Hill 2021). Higher education is also a liminal moment in the lives of many students given that many experience independent living and decision‐making for the first time, providing an opportunity for the development of new (sustainable) habits (Verplanken and Wood 2006; Haggar et al. 2019).

However, despite the potential of our higher education systems in driving sustainability, “it is the people coming out of the world's best colleges and universities that are leading us down the current unhealthy, inequitable, and unsustainable path” (Cortese 2003, 16). Therefore, it is essential that we consider both what and how we educate, as well as think critically about the educational systems in which we sit.

Many models of education for sustainability have been discussed in the literature (e.g. Scott and Gough 2003; Sterling 2003, 2004; Vare and Scott 2007) with clear distinctions being made between education about sustainability, education for sustainability, and education as sustainability (Sterling 2004) as different levels of educational response and transformation. Vare and Scott (2007) distinguish between two interrelated and complementary approaches that they refer to as ESD1 and ESD2. ESD1 relates to informing specific skills and behaviors to guide positive actions, based around a set of underlying values and behavioral outcomes. Whereas, ESD2 focuses on the development of the capacity to think critically, analyze and question alternatives, make sound choices in the face of complexity, and explore the contradictions of sustainable living (Vare and Scott 2007).

Shephard (2008) argue the importance of considering affective attributes with ESD, such as values, attitudes, and dispositions that underpin knowledge, skills, and competencies, although they acknowledge that affective attributes can be difficult to address in higher education. Increasingly, learning outcome taxonomies incorporate values and attitudes alongside knowledge and skills as desirable personal qualities in the context of professional education (e.g. Carter 1985). However, for others, the role of higher education in engaging with values, behaviors, and attitudes is contestable, and some teaching staff may be uncomfortable with this approach (Ostrow Michel et al. 2020; Shephard 2008).

Alongside the cognitive and affective dimensions of learning, others emphasize the importance of including the practical (or psychomotor) domains of ESD and holistic consideration of the “whole person” across “head, heart and hands” (Sipos et al. 2008; Mahmud 2017). Cognitive learning (head) focuses on understanding information and how it can be applied. Affective learning approaches (heart) engage with attitudes, values, and behaviors and enable students to make emotional connections with the curriculum (Shephard 2008). Learning processes incorporating the hands include practical skills development and physical labor, such as building, painting, and planting (Sipos et al. 2008), and can align particularly with informal curriculum activities, such as involvement in student gardens or conservation activities.

The approach to embed sustainability across formal, non‐formal/informal, and hidden curricula became established as a way to incorporate ESD throughout the student experience (Hopkinson et al. 2008). Table 2.1 summarizes the distinction between these different curricula domains. The formal curriculum refers to curricula developed for academic credit, guided by formally articulated learning outcomes. Non‐formal and informal curricula are a relatively heterogeneous group that overlap considerably. Non‐formal curricula are typically “organised, but … could have learning objectives (or not) and be intentional (or not)” (OECD 2007). The informal curriculum is somewhat of a misnomer given that the term “curriculum” implies some degree of intentionality and one of the principal characteristics of informal learning is that it is not intentional (OECD 2007). In the context of sustainability in higher education, the non‐formal and informal curricula include the opportunities available for students to become involved with outside of their coursework, such as involvement in societies or volunteering initiatives, which enable learning but are unlikely to be formally articulated or assessed (other than in the context of non‐formal schemes where some submission of work is still required). The hidden curriculum, a term originally coined by Jackson (1968), refers to what students learn through implicit messages of societal, institutional, or lecturers' values (Cotton et al. 2013). In the context of sustainability this has been defined as the “implicit messages a university sends about sustainability through the institutional environment and values” (Winter and Cotton 2012: 783), which includes the implicit messages within the campus environment itself (Cotton et al. 2020). In his 1993 essay “Architecture as Pedagogy,” Orr explores the implicit messages embodied within our university buildings including the inconsequence of environmental and energy costs from which we learn “carelessness that accompanies waste and inefficiency, as well as callousness to the degradation of other places where materials and energy originate” (Orr 1993, p. 226). In the context of ESD, it is important to consider how sustainability is integrated into the formal, informal/non‐formal, and hidden curricula, and how these different domains of learning intersect and provide opportunities for the “transformational sustainability learning” of integrating the head, heart, and hands (Sipos et al. 2008).

Table 2.1 Distinguishing characteristics between formal, non‐formal, informal, and hidden curricula.

Source: Based on Table 2 from OECD (2007), and drawing on material from Cotton et al. (2013).

	Organization of learning	Presence of learning objectives	Intentionality of learning	Duration	Leads to a qualification
Formal curriculum	Highly organized	Present	Highly intentional	Rather long and/or full‐time	Almost always
Non‐formal curriculum	May or may not be organized	Sometimes present	Can be intentional or unintentional	Rather short and/or part‐time	Usually not
Informal curriculum	Not organized	Not present	Unintentional	N/A	No
Hidden curriculum	Not organized, but has potential to be	Not present, but has potential to be	Almost always unintentional	N/A	No

Alongside the developing interest in embedding ESD in higher education, there has been development of other educational agendas, including increasing graduate employability and entrepreneurship skills (Rae 2007). As such, there is an increasing sector‐wide emphasis on graduate employability and the attributes that ought to be achieved by graduates during their time at university through curricular and non‐formal/informal curricular opportunities. Yet there are potential synergies (although not without their tensions) between the employability agendas and ESD in higher education. For at least a decade, links have been made between the clear demand for graduates to be equipped with sustainability skills, from employers (see BITC 2010), interest in skills for sustainable growth and a green economy (BIS 2010; HMG 2011) as well as clear evidence that students see sustainability skills as being important to their future employers (Bone and Agombar 2011; Drayson et al. 2014).

There have been developments to create a framework for what competencies ESD comprises (e.g. Frisk and Larsen 2011; Wiek et al. 2011; Brundiers et al. 2021) beyond more knowledge‐oriented approaches to ESD (Redman 2020), leading to the introduction of a framework of sustainability competencies from the United Nations (UNESCO 2017). This framework incorporates a range of knowledge, understanding, skills, values, and attributes under the following eight competencies: systems‐thinking, futures‐thinking, values‐thinking, strategic‐thinking, interpersonal, critical‐thinking, self‐awareness, and integrated problem‐solving (UNESCO 2017). Traditional learning and teaching contexts limit the possibilities for students to develop this range of competencies (Brundiers et al. 2021); therefore, innovative pedagogical approaches and educators' willingness to question their role and the activities they conduct are required. Despite these emerging frameworks, key questions remain as to what this means to our practice as educators and practitioners in ESD: How do we enable students to gain the kinds of competencies needed to bring about transformative social change toward sustainability in their own universities and wider communities? How can we move beyond preparing students for employment and produce graduates who are genuinely change agents and ready to be the change they want to see in the world?