ESD Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Building on learner-centred, action-oriented and transformative pedagogical approaches, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) encourages teaching, learning and assessment practices that support students to engage with complex sustainability challenges in meaningful and applied ways.
Because sustainability challenges are often interdisciplinary, uncertain and contested, ESD frequently benefits from learning environments that encourage students to explore multiple perspectives, work across disciplinary boundaries and consider social, environmental and economic dimensions together.
Teaching, learning and assessment approaches can therefore play an important role in supporting students to develop sustainability competencies such as systems thinking, collaboration, ethical reasoning, critical reflection and integrated problem-solving.
Teaching and Learning Approaches
There is no single model for embedding ESD within curricula. Approaches will vary depending on discipline, professional context, learning outcomes and student needs. However, ESD often draws on participatory, applied and reflective approaches that support active learning and competency development.
Approaches may include:
- enquiry based and problem based learning
- case studies and real world challenges
- interdisciplinary and systems based learning
- collaborative and group based projects
- experiential and community based learning
- reflective practice and critical discussion
- simulations, scenarios and futures thinking activities
- challenge based learning and living labs
- placements, fieldwork and applied research
These approaches can help students connect disciplinary learning to wider sustainability challenges, while also developing competencies such as systems thinking, collaboration, ethical reasoning and integrated problem solving.
The QAA and Advance HE guidance also highlights the value of learning environments that support interdisciplinary learning, inclusive participation, reflection and engagement with real-world sustainability issues.
The Learning Environment
ESD is often strengthened when learning extends beyond traditional classroom settings and enables students to engage with authentic sustainability challenges.
This may include using:
- campuses as living laboratories
- local communities and civic partnerships
- work-based and placement learning
- interdisciplinary collaboration
- co-curricular and extra-curricular activities
- digital and blended learning environments
These approaches can help students apply learning in practice, connect theory with action and recognise the wider societal relevance of their discipline.
The QAA and Advance HE guidance emphasises that ESD can be embedded across formal curricula, co-curricular activities and wider student experiences, helping students develop agency and opportunities for practical action.
Constructive Alignment and ESD
Embedding ESD within curricula is often most effective when sustainability related learning outcomes, teaching activities and assessment approaches are constructively aligned (Biggs, 1996).
This means ensuring that students are given opportunities not only to learn about sustainability challenges, but also to develop and demonstrate relevant sustainability competencies through learning activities and assessment.
This may involve moving beyond learning about sustainability towards approaches that also support learning through practice, reflection, collaboration and engagement with real world sustainability challenges.
For example, if a programme aims to support systems thinking, collaboration or ethical reasoning, students may need opportunities to engage with interdisciplinary problems, collaborative inquiry, reflection and applied assessment tasks.
Constructive alignment can help ensure that sustainability competencies and SDG related learning are meaningfully integrated within curricula rather than treated as additional or disconnected content.
Assessment and ESD
Assessment plays an important role in supporting sustainability learning and competency development. Within ESD, assessment approaches often move beyond knowledge recall alone to include reflection, collaboration, application and engagement with complex problems.
Assessment approaches may include:
- reflective writing and portfolios
- group and collaborative projects
- presentations and stakeholder engagement activities
- problem based or challenge based assessment
- community or applied projects
- systems mapping and scenario analysis
- synoptic and interdisciplinary assessment
- authentic assessments linked to professional or societal contexts
Assessment can also support students in recognising the process of learning, including critical reflection, values exploration, collaboration and the ability to work with uncertainty and complexity.
ESD aligned assessment often places greater emphasis on the process of learning as well as final outputs. Reflective activities, portfolios and collaborative assessment approaches can help students engage with complexity, values, participation and real-world application alongside disciplinary knowledge.
In some disciplines, sustainability challenges or SDG related themes may also provide applied contexts for assessment tasks, allowing students to address real-world issues through disciplinary perspectives and professional practice.
For professionally accredited programmes, sustainability related learning outcomes may already be reflected within professional standards, competencies or graduate expectations using discipline specific language and frameworks.
The QAA and Advance HE guidance highlights the value of assessment approaches such as self and peer assessment, synoptic assessment and assessment for learning in supporting sustainability competencies and transformative learning.
Embedding ESD in Practice
Embedding ESD does not necessarily require entirely new modules or programmes. In many cases, sustainability can be integrated through existing teaching, learning and assessment practices by making sustainability challenges, systems connections and ethical dimensions more explicit.
This may involve:
- integrating relevant sustainability challenges and SDGs into examples and case studies
- encouraging students to consider environmental, social and economic dimensions of problems
- connecting learning to professional responsibilities and societal impacts
- incorporating opportunities for reflection, collaboration and applied learning
- drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives and diverse voices
Small curriculum changes can often help students recognise sustainability connections within existing disciplinary learning while supporting the development of sustainability competencies and future focused graduate capabilities.
References and Further Reading
- Biggs, J. (1996), Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment
- QAA and Advance HE (2021), Education for Sustainable Development Guidance
- Rittel, H. & Webber, M. (1973), Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning
- UNESCO (2017), Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives
- UNESCO (2020), Education for Sustainable Development: A Roadmap