Exploring higher education for sustainable development in Chinese universities from the perspective of a heuristic model

• In Event: Is China up for its responsibilities to globalization? Exploring Chinese higher education policies, practices, and programs from critical perspectives

Proposal

Context and Purposes:
In 1990s, some first-class Chinese universities such as Qsinghua University responded actively to global trend of sustainable development, shouldered historical mission and international responsibility to prepare global green citizens. Following Qsinghua’s pioneering practice, numerous universities in China have put their efforts to echo UNESCO’s sustainable agendas, and some national and international communities were established. As an active player in responding sustainable development in global scale, Chinese universities’ sustainable education implementation should not be neglected, especially the connotative meanings of “green campus initiatives”. The paper examines higher education for sustainable development in China with critical perspectives and discusses the power and pedagogy hidden behind, in the hope to provide a more thorough understanding of education for sustainable development in Chinese higher education.

Literature Review and Conceptual Framework:
Education for sustainable development (ESD) has always been regarded as the development of environment education (EE) and education for sustainability (EFS), while its core concepts showcase the ambivalent and vague nature of the sustainability. Since the concepts of ESD have broadened in scope and deepened in penetration (Sherren,2008) across the world all the time, it should be noted that the ambiguity possesses the heuristic characteristic and emancipatory perspectives (Wals&Jickling,2002). Hence, the gap between the UNESCO’s sustainable development goals and indigenous green achievements could be existed when different definitions and pedagogical approaches are taken into consideration. Some key elements such as thought of sustainable development, democracy, hegemony and education are deeply interacted with each other and play a different view of higher education for sustainable development(HESD) in Chinese higher education institutes(HEIs).
The study analyze HESD in Chinese HEIs with a heuristic model designed by Jickling & Wals (2008). They divided ESD pedagogy into four dimensions: the transmissive, the transformative, the authorative and the participatory (Jickling & Wals ,2008). The framework could help examine whether the elements from globalization and localization of HESD make HEIs an instrument realize their own values and missions, or a transformative agent towards sustainability.

Methods:
The study relies on content analysis to collect data from 10 years of literature on Chinese HEIs’ practice of HESD, and to analyze the data through a coding scheme. The samples include 25 HEIs, covering research-oriented, application-oriented and technician-oriented institutes. The study employs the heuristic model as coding frame, and counts the coding data to identify findings.

Findings and Discussions:
The study finds that HESD in Chinese HEIs tends to be more “authorative-transformative” and “authorative-transmissive” education, less “participatory” education. In addition, HESD, or the “green campus initiative” in China, relates more with professional education instead of multidisciplinary and general education, and the approaches tend to be top-down instead of bottom-up, so that the grassroots’ voices are neglected and participation is under-motivated.

Conclusion and Implications:
The results suggest that Chinese universities should increase participation of teachers and students and create conditions and environment of “participatory-transformative” education. Only by doing so, can higher education institutions in China truly contribute to sustainable development.

Author

• Fang Huang, Institute of Education, Xiamen University, China