Assessing Cardiff University’s Curricula Contribution to Sustainable Development Using the STAUNCH(RTM) System

This article presents the results of the sustainable development curricula assessment undertaken at 19 of the 28 schools of Cardiff University using the Sustainability Tool for Assessing UNiversity’s Curricula Holistically (STAUNCH(RTM). STAUNCH(RTM) was developed with two objectives: (1) to systematically assess how and the extent to which a university’s curricula contributed to education for sustainable development (ESD) by assessing its modules, degrees and schools, and (2) to facilitate consistent and comparable as-sessment efforts capable of handling a large quantity of modules and of being applied across multiple institutions. STAUNCH(RTM) follows four steps: (1) criteria selection, (2) data collection, (3) data input and grading against the selected criteria, and (4) analysis and results of degrees, schools and the university’s contribution to sustainable development (SD). The results from the assessment show that currently SD in the curricula is being addressed mainly through portfolio approaches, where each school focuses on its discipline or areas of disciplines, but fails to connect with the broader SD context through inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives. The results from this research could be used by other universities to look for ways to better integrate SD into their curricula, and thereby be-come better aligned with the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD).

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