Abstract:

Through the UN's sustainability goals, universities and teachers are increasingly asked to incorporate the content of sustainable development issues into their teaching. The "Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI 2016)" expresses this intent and explicitly aims to support the implementation process of the sustainability goals by universities. A main aspect is, among others, the universities' obligation to integrate sustainable development topics into all their degree programmes. Therefore, there is a marked need for new or modified didactic concepts.

Beyond considering the demands for modern higher education being urged by the concept of education for sustainable development (ESD), this article particularly deals with their practical implications for everyday teaching. On the basis of three exemplary seminars, which were realised at the Bochum University of Applied Sciences during the last semesters, the combination and unification of sustainability issues and specialised topics will be discussed. Due to the complexity of underlying approaches and normative policies from the field of sustainability, new requirements for the design of reflexive and (value-) integrative teaching concepts are necessary. In the actual teaching situation, this strongly affects the role of the teacher and to a large extent leads to promoting the students' creative and personal competences.

A reflexive and value-integrative teaching should therefore not be understood as axiomatically closed teaching. Although the discussions on sustainable problems, solutions and values held in the seminars have to underly respectful and basic democratic principles and have to be conducted in a technically and scientifically sound manner, they must nevertheless remain largely open in terms of the results. Thus, it is guaranteed that the opinion of the students is adequately considered and in longer terms, and therewith their development to a “shaping or designing competence” is promoted. The German term of “Gestaltungskompetenz” (de Haan 2008) has become broadly recognized in German language ESD publications in order to find an expression, comprising the multiple different skills needed for working on global and sustainable challenges.

For teachers, dealing with technical and methodical contents on the one hand and including reflexive and systemic sustainability topics on the other hand, remains a quite noticeable challenge.

However, the results of two student surveys from the Bochum University of Applied Sciences show, that precisely this integrated approach remains to be the key to a permanent and overall understanding of ESD at universities, following on from everyday teaching practice.
Thus, as sustainability science is characterised through its normative claim, it is important not only to focus on the training of specific knowledge, but also of norms and values, and their reflexive relation to each other. The complexity of the current global challenges require inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives for solutions.

Finally, the three seminars conducted at the Bochum University of Applied Sciences will illustrate how exactly the triad of:
(1) communicating and reflecting values and norms of sustainable development,
(2) orientation towards concrete social challenges and
(3) the claim of inter- and transdisciplinarity in teaching can be fulfilled.

Keywords:

ESD, Value-integrative Education, Teaching Sustainability.