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Engaging students with sustainability issues

Abstract Particularly since the launch of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) in 2005, sustainability has become a key concept in government policies. The Department for Education and Skill (DfES) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), amongst others, are looking to educators to take the lead in integrating these issues in the curriculum. Although a lot of valid research about what sustainable development means and how it should be embedded in education has been published, it still remains unclear how teachers and lecturers should be convinced of the importance of sustainability, and how students could be engaged with an issue that is not necessarily clearly linked to their subject of study or a successful career. Although lecturer and student commitment cannot be separated completely, I focus in this article on the latter since universities and colleges cannot claim to promote sustainability if student engagement is not considered seriously. Over the last four months I have worked with student focus groups at University of Plymouth (UoP) Colleges to find out how students engage with sustainability and what colleges should do to encourage it. As the research is still ongoing it is too early to draw strong conclusions, however clear themes are emerging from the discussions, which are interesting enough to publicise in the hope of starting a debate on student engagement in sustainability.