This article aims to contribute to the debate about the moral and ethical aspects of education for sustainable development by suggesting a clarification of ethics and morals through an investigation of how these aspects appear in educational practice. The ambition is both to point to the normative dangers of education for sustainable development…

The United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) has launched an initiative to build academic alliances among leading universities in the Asia-Pacific area to promote the sustainability paradigm in postgraduate education and research. The initiative, still in its formative stages, is called ProSPER.Net, which stands for…

Professor Hans van Ginkel, Rector of the United Nations University, Tokyo, (1997-2007) and president of the International Association of Universities (2000-2004), pioneered the concept of Regional Centers of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development (RCEs) as a strategy for meeting the goals of the United Nations Decade of Education for…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the development and the structure of a new international master on the subject of urban quality development and management (UQDM), and explore the potential of the process and the outcome in serving as models adoptable by faculty at other universities. Design/methodology/approach: The…

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a UK-wide organisation that works with higher education institutions and 24 discipline-based Subject Centres to improve the student learning experience. This paper outlines the work of one of its initiatives, the HEA ESD Project. While a small part of the Academy's overall work, the Project is attracting…

Land management and land administration are defined as a system of planning, management and administration methods and techniques that aims to integrate ecological with social, economic and legal principles in the management of land for urban and rural development purposes. The main objective is to meet changing and developing human needs, while…

This article places action learning in the context of system innovation, as it studies the potential use of action learning for system change. In order to effect such system change, collaboration between actors from different institutional backgrounds is essential. To gain insight into if and how action learning can be applied for system change,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of Universiti Sains Malaysia in promoting the sustainable development agenda through its leadership role in the Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) Penang using an "inside-out approach". Design/methodology/approach: This paper describes the institutional structure, policies and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the case of the cross-border RCE Rhine-Meuse established as the first Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development in Europe. RCE Rhine-Meuse is an initiative of two institutions of higher education in the South of The Netherlands, but reaching out to the German and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to open up a discussion about the roles and responsibilities of universities in society. Design/methodology/approach: The vision of the Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) Skane a leading example on how to develop new knowledge about education for sustainable development (ESD) at all levels. The paper poses the…

Each year, the world evolves, but for education institutions, the cyclical nature of the school calendar means administrators come up against the same issues and challenges again and again. In 2008, schools and universities must deal with most of the same facility issues that they have addressed in some fashion before--how to provide safe and…

Technology has dramatically changed the world--now almost anyone can "move" at Internet-speed; people who were marginalized are able to find information on acquiring micro-loans to start businesses, and villages previously unconnected to the telecommunications grid now have affordable cell phone access. As technology becomes easier to…

The aim of the reported study was to explore how science teachers made sense of their roles and responsibilities in teaching and assessing science coursework. The focus was on the teacher assessment, the feedback that teachers gave to students and, how they perceived their role when they taught and assessed students' science coursework reports.…

In the Operations Management field, sustainable procurement has emerged as a way to green the purchasing and supply process. This paper explores issues in sustainable procurement training. The authors formed an interdisciplinary team to design, deliver and evaluate a training programme to promote and develop sustainable procurement in the United…

This brief report, delivered after the completion of the 1st year of the United Nations (UN) Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) (2005-2014), highlights the recent developments regarding the Decade (2005). It reports on the documents prepared, the regional and national launches of the Decade held so far and presents relevant…