Činčera, Jan and Mikusinski, Grzegorz and Binka, Bohuslav and Calafate, Luís and Calheiro, Cristina and Cardoso, Alexandra and Hedblom, Marcus and Jones, Michael and Koutsouris, Alex and Vasconcelos, Clara and Iwińska, Katarzyna
(2019).
Managing Diversity: The Challenges of Inter-University Cooperation in Sustainability Education.
Sustainability. 11
, 1-16
[Research article]
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Abstract
One of the main challenges in sustainability discourse is its multifaceted nature often requiring that many different disciplines must cooperate in order to achieve progress. This issue also concerns sustainability education. In the article, we highlighted the experiences from the international cooperation of university teachers and researchers with highly diverse professional backgrounds who worked together on developing educational materials for university students in sustainability-oriented courses. The study is based on qualitative, participatory evaluation research, applying two rounds of open-ended questionnaires distributed to the same respondents (n = 18). For the analysis, we used the open-coding procedure for identifying the main categories. The results show some of the opportunities and barriers that emerged in the process of this cooperation. In particular, we discuss the issues related to the high heterogeneity of the group, such as the clashes of the different perspectives on the topics covered, group dynamics issues, trust, facilitation challenges, and also opportunities that such heterogeneity offers. We highlight the importance of open reflectivity in sustainability-oriented educational projects as the key to their successful implementation. Finally, we believe that results of this participatory study are useful in designing new projects aiming at further improvement of academic education in sustainability and sustainable development.
Authors/Creators: | Činčera, Jan and Mikusinski, Grzegorz and Binka, Bohuslav and Calafate, Luís and Calheiro, Cristina and Cardoso, Alexandra and Hedblom, Marcus and Jones, Michael and Koutsouris, Alex and Vasconcelos, Clara and Iwińska, Katarzyna | ||||
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Title: | Managing Diversity: The Challenges of Inter-University Cooperation in Sustainability Education | ||||
Series Name/Journal: | Sustainability | ||||
Year of publishing : | 2019 | ||||
Volume: | 11 | ||||
Page range: | 1-16 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 16 | ||||
Publisher: | MDPI | ||||
ISSN: | 2071-1050 | ||||
Language: | English | ||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||
Refereed: | Yes | ||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||
Version: | Published version | ||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 5 Social Sciences > 503 Educational Sciences | ||||
Keywords: | international cooperation, higher education institutions, European project, educational resources, sustainability, diversity | ||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-102072 | ||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-102072 | ||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 16386 | ||||
Faculty: | NJ - Fakulteten för naturresurser och jordbruksvetenskap S - Faculty of Forest Sciences | ||||
Department: | (NL, NJ) > Swedish Biodiversity Centre (S) > Dept. of Forest Resource Management (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Forest Resource Management (S) > School for Forest Management | ||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||
Deposited On: | 14 Nov 2019 10:13 | ||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 23 Feb 2022 20:57 |
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