Unorthodox? Sustainability as Discursive Guidepost for Creating Transformative Agency in Professional Communication Education

Franzisca Weder () and Penelope M. Kierans
Additional contact information
Franzisca Weder: Institute for Strategic Communication, Department of Business Communication, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1020 Vienna, Austria
Penelope M. Kierans: Institute for Strategic Communication, Department of Business Communication, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1020 Vienna, Austria

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 15, 1-19

Abstract: Based on recent work outlining the transformation of professional communicator roles and the desperate search for “curators” or “agents of change” in neighboring disciplines such as management, business and economics, sustainability studies and education, we present a systematic reflection of concepts in higher education for sustainability and their (missing) fit to professional communication education in a world in crisis. The blind spots and challenges identified, especially from a communication perspective, will be filled with concepts from environmental communication pedagogy, pointing to the need for more participatory strategies and radicality in professional communication education. Concrete modalities of instruction will be discussed and supported by eight reconstruction interviews with pedagogues, educators and students from diverse cultural contexts involved in sustainability communication education. The findings show the need for more radical pedagogy and unorthodoxy. The paper finishes with suggestions for practices that materialize sustainability in co-created sites of change.

Keywords: sustainability; education; professional communication; unlearning; agency; radical pedagogy; orthodoxy; reconstruction interview (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/6878/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/15/6878/ (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:17:y:2025:i:15:p:6878-:d:1712751

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 ().