Transition Towards Sustainability in Hull University Business School: A Study of Curricular Sustainability in the Teaching Processes

Abstract

The transition to sustainable development has become a strategic line of action that increasingly finds links to the quality of higher education (HE). A growing number of HE accreditation agencies include sustainability as a criterion for their standards and assessments, with a consideration of the degree of “curricular sustainability” of programmes, i.e. the extent to which contents, principles and values of sustainable development are present in HE formative processes. These aspects are directly related to the teaching practice of lecturers, and constitute the focus of this work. This research is currently being conducted at Hull University Business School (HUBS) with the aim of understanding the degree of coherence between the teaching practice of lecturers and the principles and values of sustainable development. It aims to evaluate such teaching practice from lecturers’ own perceptions in order to identify shortcomings and provide HUBS with information that can support future improvement. It is an empirical descriptive study whose variables are established from the quality standards of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), and taking into account the recommendations of the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) to implement education for sustainable development at higher education level. The results support the need to promote the role of lecturers as “change agents” for sustainability and show that there is a group of lecturers who could be motivated to build learning networks for curricular sustainability.