Teaching sustainable development in higher education: Changing attitudes, the soft way

Abstract

The World is changing fast. With ever increasing population at an exponential rate, the need for water, food, energy and many other resources is increasing at a fast pace and becoming unsustainable. Every year, the Earth Overshoot Day takes place sooner in the year, and in 2020, in spite of the World lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic, this occurred on the 22nd August! This unbearable situation must change, and the younger generation is aware of it, aiming to do the necessary to change the situation. Thus, the concept of Sustainable Development is gaining increasing importance. Although changing attitudes and behavior is known to take time and be hard, it can be promoted by education at all levels, with potential cascading impact results if implemented in the Higher Education system. In fact, near future young professionals are being educated in this system, and whatever they learn today will certainly be replicated tomorrow, not only in their personal but also in their professional life. Furthermore, although they are young and inexperienced, their ingenuity can help disrupt some established ideas and practices that hinder the changes needed to promote the common well-being. In this Track of TEEM’20, it was presented and discussed a series of different approaches implemented by professors of Higher Education in different fields of knowledge. It was shown that the concepts of Sustainable Development and Sustainability can be well assimilated by young adults by using well thought recreational pedagogical activities. Nevertheless, all the intervenient have highlighted the need to include a feedback loop as a way to adapt and change the activities according to the students’ prior experience and motivation, as well as to the available means and their individual styles.