Implementation of SDGs in University Teaching: A Course for Professional Development of Teachers in Education for Sustainability for a Transformative Action

Abstract

The University Jaume I of Castellon (Spain) launched the “ImpSDGup” course in 2017. The aim of this training course on professional education for sustainable development (ESD) skills and competences for higher education teachers is to help academics in reorienting their subjects’ curricula in order to contribute to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. The “ImpSDGup” course is based on the Training Model in Transformative Action for Sustainability (TMTAS) model that is structured in three main areas: the content on sustainability, the theoretical approaches, and the ESD teaching and learning methodologies. In this paper, we describe the design and the contents of the training course and we investigate the changes that participants of the course implemented in the design of their subject programs. The methodology of the study was based on content analysis. The main results show that most of the 55 university teachers that undertook the course in its three editions succeeded in transforming course objectives and that they incorporated some of the SDGs and several ESD active learning methodologies in their teaching. As a consequence of this, we consider that the course helps in enhancing university teachers’ ESD professional competences