Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum at a Teaching-Oriented University

Abstract

This research collects and analyzes student and faculty knowledge and perceptions toward sustainability education at a predominately undergraduate, teaching-oriented university. In-depth, qualitative methods distinguish low- and high-knowledge student and faculty cohorts, identify perceived barriers to sustainability education in each cohort, and recognize strategies to overcome the barriers identified by each cohort. Data collected from recorded and transcribed semi-structured interviews of student and faculty subjects underwent analysis via repeated readings to uncover key themes. Results required developing metrics for student and faculty sustainability knowledge and attitudes across disciplines, determining discipline-specific gaps in sustainability knowledge and differences in attitudes, and relating implementation barriers to general or specific knowledge gaps and attitudes. Findings identified low and high levels of sustainability knowledge within the student and faculty subject population and revealed barriers in pursuing interdisciplinary sustainability curricula across disciplines and among both students and faculty at the study university. Overall, higher sustainability knowledge participants tend to identify barriers related to institutional accountability while lower sustainability knowledge participants tend to identify barriers related to personal responsibility. Distributing barriers and solutions along a continuum from personal responsibility to educational institution responsibility reveals more recognition of barriers at the personal level and more solutions proposed at the institutional level. This result may reflect a common tendency to deny personal responsibility when addressing sustainability challenges.