Sustainability is crucial in today’s higher education teaching, but it remains elusive as a concept and often scattered among departments across institutions. Associate Professors Dr. Lory Barile, University of Warwick, and Dr. Bo Kelestyn, Warwick Business School, share their pioneering approach that brought students and stakeholders together to tackle sustainability on-the-ground.
The 3Cs: A pioneering approach to co-creating sustainability education through design thinking by Lory Barile and Bo Kelestyn.
Imagine a classroom. What does it look like? Who is in the room? What is being taught?
Perhaps you are a student now, or a recent graduate. Or perhaps you are transported to a memory of a classroom from a decade or a few ago…
Now conjure up and hold a thought of education for sustainability.
Go on, take a few minutes to really imagine and visualise what that looks or feels like for you. You might feel the urge to close your eyes. Perhaps you are studying sustainability, or a module related to it, and a complex yet clear definition or image comes to mind. Perhaps nothing other than a green field, hands holding a planet, or wind turbines come up. That’s ok. Or perhaps nothing at all comes up. That’s ok too.
Unless our education or work included elements of sustainability, we tend to have a one-dimensional definition of it, and certainly struggle to conceptualise what education for sustainability looks or feels like.
And those that were lucky enough to imagine a classroom and education where sustainability is a central notion, there might be more to reflect on, such as, for example, the ‘unstructured’ nature of sustainability issues.
Why is that?
The challenges for sustainability education
Sustainability is a problematic term, which is by nature controversial. It addresses the tensions between economic, social and environmental development and combines them into a single concept.
An emergent concept in (Warwick) education, sustainability has a home in several academic and non-academic departments, at times lacking visibility and impact on the learning community, the campus itself and the local community it is a part of. This can lead to the creation of silos, missed interdisciplinary learning opportunities, and lack of well-articulated signature pedagogies.
As a collective across the institution, we need to engage in a critical discourse on the challenges of educating for sustainability and integrating it into the curriculum to create globally aware and responsible graduates and citizens. Student feedback at Warwick tells us there remains a lack of deep engagement with sustainability education, and a perceived disconnect between the various on and off campus communities that all have a stake in sustainability.
Dr Lory Barile, behavioural and environmental economics expert in charge of the WIHEA Education for Sustainable Development Learning Circle, developed a project aiming to bring down the silos, generate an authentic student-staff dialogue and promote education for sustainable development at Warwick. With support and funding from WIHEA, and input from a design thinking consultant Dr Bo Kelestyn, the Warwick Sustainability Challenge (WSUsC), a Curriculum-Campus-Community (3Cs) approach to sustainable teaching & learning, was born.
The project had two key objectives. Firstly, to provide a whole-higher education approach to sustainability, linking teaching and learning to values and ways of working and studying on campus – as well as with the local community by engaging with local people and partners. Moreover, Dr. Lory Barile conceptualised this as the 3Cs approach, a novel way of thinking about sustainability education that challenged the project team to look for tools and pedagogies that weren’t traditionally associated with this area. A second objective was to raise the profile of the importance of education for sustainable development, and do so in interdisciplinary, student-centred and led ways.
Taking the sustainability challenge to on-the-ground reality
The Warwick Sustainability Challenge saw students and staff working in interdisciplinary teams to co-create ideas that would tackle a real sustainability challenge in Coventry. Built on an experimental methodology with elements of design thinking, it was to prototype and test a more holistic approach to sustainability in higher education. The Challenge engaged participants in two 3-hour online workshops in June 2022, supplemented with support sessions, drop ins and nudges from a team of facilitators, coaches, and a panel of alumni sustainability experts. Also included in the initiative was thought leadership from the Coventry City Council, Warwick Estates, and the Global Sustainable Development Department.
The workshops, inspired by the Warwick Employability Challenge and built on the design thinking methodology, facilitated a collaborative approach to reframing a sustainability challenge, and coached participants to explore it in an innovative way. After the workshops, the Challenge lasted for an additional 10 days, with teams collaborating asynchronously. The Challenge culminated in the submission of teams’ outputs and ideas either in the form of an e-poster or a presentation, and a video.
The project was expected to generate impact in several ways starting from prototyping and testing a learning experience that would support critical engagement with sustainability and deep collaboration between staff and students. A collaboration with the City Council and various departments at Warwick was to generate an authentic challenge with a focus on buses in Coventry, curate and showcase the work undertaken by the project teams, and raise the profile and the importance of sustainability and co-creation in (Warwick) education. The final Showcase and awards ceremony helped us share and disseminate the learning from the Challenge, formalising it as an approach for co-creation and sustainability education.
So, our hope is that as education for sustainability grows in its maturity, so does our imagination and ability to define and redefine what sustainability is. Learning experiences such as the Warwick Sustainability Challenge , even whilst in its prototyping and testing stage, have the potential to turn every one of us into agents of change as sustainability becomes an integral part of our thinking, learning, and teaching. So that every learner at Warwick and beyond can tell what education for sustainability is and what it feels like without having to close their eyes.
Useful links:
- Link up with Dr. Lory Barile and Dr. Bo Kelestyn on LinkedIn
- Visit the Warwick Sustainability Challenge page
- If you want to learn more about the Challenge or replicate it in your institution, feel free to contact Lory and Bo at: Lory.Barile@warwick.ac.uk / Bo.Kelestyn@wbs.ac.uk
- Read a related post: Sustainability: Challenges and incentives
- Discover and study at Warwick Business School and the University of Warwick.
Learn more about the Council on Business & Society
The Council on Business & Society (The CoBS), visionary in its conception and purpose, was created in 2011, and is dedicated to promoting responsible leadership and tackling issues at the crossroads of business and society including sustainability, diversity, ethical leadership and the place responsible business has to play in contributing to the common good.
Member schools are all “Triple Crown” accredited AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA and leaders in their respective countries.
- ESSEC Business School, France-Singapore-Morocco
- FGV-EAESP, Brazil
- School of Management Fudan University, China
- IE Business School, Spain
- Keio Business School, Japan
- Smith School of Business, Canada
- Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa
- Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- Warwick Business School, United Kingdom.
