To partner, or not to partner? Assessing the role higher education institutions’ partnerships play in education for sustainability

Abstract

Implementing education for sustainability demands higher education institutions to overcome various challenges, such as understanding the concept of sustainability, training change agents, curricular changes, among others. In this scenario, partnerships show themselves as important facilitating elements to mitigate such challenges. Thus, this study seeks to assess, empirically, a conceptual model regarding partnerships being used as facilitating elements to overcome challenges faced by higher education institutions during education for sustainability’s implementation. To do so, a qualitative research, of a descriptive nature and that used a multicase study as a research strategy was carried out with six Brazilian higher education institutions. The results showed that partnerships are used to minimize challenges related to the identification on higher education institutions’ stakeholders’ demands, to the formalization and institutionalization of sustainability and education for sustainability and to changes in the curricula and teaching methodologies. It was also possible to observe that the challenges faced by higher education institutions can be grouped in five fronts, as recommended in the framework available in the literature and assessed in this research for its validation.