Managing Diversity: The Challenges of Inter-University Cooperation in Sustainability Education

Jan Činčera, Grzegorz Mikusiński, Bohuslav Binka, Luis Calafate, Cristina Calheiros, Alexandra Cardoso, Marcus Hedblom, Michael Jones, Alex Koutsouris, Clara Vasconcelos and Katarzyna Iwińska
Additional contact information
Jan Činčera: Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, 601 77 Brno, Czech Republic
Grzegorz Mikusiński: School for Forest Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 739 21 Skinnskatteberg, Sweden
Bohuslav Binka: Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, 601 77 Brno, Czech Republic
Luis Calafate: Department of Biology, Porto University, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Cristina Calheiros: Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR/CIMAR), University of Porto, 4450-208 Matosinhos, Portugal
Alexandra Cardoso: Institute of Earth Sciences, Porto University, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Marcus Hedblom: Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 756 51 Uppsala, Sweden
Michael Jones: Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
Clara Vasconcelos: Institute of Earth Sciences, Porto University, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
Katarzyna Iwińska: Institute of Sociology, Collegium Civitas, 00-901 Warszawa, Poland

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 20, 1-16

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.

Keywords: international cooperation; higher education institutions; European project; educational resources; sustainability; diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5610/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5610/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:20:p:5610-:d:275576

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().