Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 4.7 promotes education for sustainable development (ESD), urging higher education institutions (HEIs) to prepare students to address global sustainability challenges. Currently, the target indicators do not assess how ESD is enacted in HEIs, making ESD provision a black box in achieving SDG 4.7. This…

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are either in the public domain or published on an open licence which permits various forms of redistribution, reuse and repurposing. Many organisations and higher education institutions around the world are using such resources, and anecdotally many believe this is…

A good education is the necessary element at the foundation of efforts to lift people out of poverty, reduce inequalities, tackle prejudices, skill the next generation to face a job market being transformed by technology, and train the scientists and leaders who will answer the enormous challenges society faces from climate change to pandemics and…

Many studies highlight positive outcomes from curriculum co-creation including its transformational potential for students. In this paper, we explore how curriculum co-creation transforms students, drawing on Johansson and Felten's (2014. "Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education." Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins…

Learning for Sustainability (LfS) is a key component of Scottish Education. However, policy interpretation and enactment is a complicated process and there can often be a difference between policy intentions and implementation. The following research explores how one campus (for pupils aged 2-18) in Scotland undertook a year-long all staff career…

This paper reports on how varied study abroad experiences transformed understanding of difference of student-teachers from two universities. Data were collected through a qualitative questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with 14 Chinese and Scottish student-teachers who presented what they had experienced and how they had made sense of…

Research in outdoor education and more specifically on wilderness expeditions has almost exclusively focused on short-term benefits (<5yrs) despite their findings suggesting these are "life-changing" experiences. This study examined long-term outcomes (40 years later) of three (month-long) adventurous school expeditions to mainland…

This paper investigates how academics in the current global higher education system -- which often prioritises metrics of research activity and income generation over rich conceptualisation of transformative teaching -- can sustain identities that encompass deep care for teaching. This is a significant area that has been little researched,…

This article is actually a story, a story of our experiences of transforming teacher education. In this story I (Aileen) narrate a journey that led to the development of a completely new two-year initial teacher education programme: the MSc Transformative Learning and Teaching. The story traces my first intellectual connection with the concept of…

Objective: The aim of this article is to extend and elaborate ways of conceptualising, enabling and practising peer leadership in whole-school alcohol education programmes. Design: Qualitative study involving individual and group interviews. Setting: The AlcoLOLs project took place in six secondary schools in North East Edinburgh (Scotland) from…

This article reports on the findings from an interview-based, qualitative study of adult learners in Scotland participating in the MITx u.lab massive open online course in 2015 and 2016. It focuses on interviewees' accounts of the impact of participating in u.lab on their work and lives. Using grounded theory as an analytical guide, we explore…

This paper draws on sociological and critical educational frames, particularly Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, in order to contest the dominant model of literacy education that is driven by the premise of a 'knowledge economy'. Instead it foregrounds the political, social, and economic factors that marginalise learners. Data from two…

Little is known about how language teacher educators become, and also develop professionally as, teachers of teachers. One avenue for teacher education professional development is that of teacher research, whereby teacher educators can not only improve their practices in their immediate context but also help develop transformative pedagogies in…

It's been 20 years since the last 'National Debate' on education led to the launch of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence with the four capacities in 2004. The curriculum was conceived to 'fully prepare today's children for adult life in the 21st century' (Scottish Executive, 2004, p. 3). These four capacities articulated the aspirational purpose…

This article reports on the research findings from a qualitative study of adult learners in Scotland taking part in a u.lab MOOC. As a new phenomenon in adult learning, u.lab has been extremely popular yet, at present, there exists little empirical data about either the process or outcomes of the learning experience. This study aims to provide a…