Systems Structure of Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education Institution

Abstract

To understand the enactment of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in higher education institution (HEI) and why very unequal ESD activity that mostly focused on campus greening rather than on pedagogic reform in HEI requires more than simply an examination of the ESD curriculum and pedagogy. To grasp why and how ESD is implemented in a HEI, the contexts in which it was created and implemented should be considered. Systems structures that include the context of the phenomena can show how the interaction between various factors gives rise to the outcomes that can be observed at the event level which is the enactment of ESD at the HEI. This paper presents a finding of the case study concerning systems structure of ESD conducted at one Malaysia university. This study is explanatory and may give insight to understand ESD enactment in HEI especially in Asian and developing country context. The findings from this study demonstrate that the agents’/ lecturer’s individual systems and the organisational/university system are co-evolving with their environment. The changes in the environment, such as the accelerating sustainability crisis and global influence, are perceived by the lecturers as stimulating ESD enactment in the university. The university’s response to the sustainability agenda involves temporality and selection. This explained the university’s delayed response to the sustainability agenda, until sustainability agenda gained attention globally after the Brundtland Report in 1987.Despite the forces to adapt to environmental changes, within a system there is resistance to change. In this study, it included: the lecturers’ perceived lack of sustainability awareness; sustainability acceptance influenced by disciplines; limited financial support from the university; a compartmentalised education system; bureaucratic tensions; and lacking of teaching skills among ESD educators.