Nature at Work: Embedding ecological sustainability across the curriculum

The completed work is a sub-project within the overall Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) programme at the University of Galway. The University campus is recognized as the most biodiverse campus in Ireland due to its species-rich habitats, including meadows, woodland, reedbeds, and the River Corrib. The aim of the Nature at Work initiative was to enhance opportunities for experiential and transformative learning for ecological sustainability. This was achieved by strengthening the campus community relationships with biodiversity, to recognise the interdependencies between human health and wellbeing, and the practice of preserving the health and resilience of natural ecosystems for the long term. Formal teaching (microcredential); public talks and discussions; lunch-time gatherings and three conferences utilized the rich, biodiverse campus of the University, by embedding the guided University biodiversity trail. The biodiverse campus and associated biodiversity trail are a very significant place-based element in operationalising the pedagogical approaches for ecological sustainability.

SATLE priority area: Educational for Sustainable Development

Context and needs addressed

In line with the National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and building on previous and existing work across the institution, the University of Galway aims to provide opportunities for all staff and students to develop the knowledge, competencies, values and motivation they will need to be agents of change in creating a sustainable future.

In 2023 the University of Galway was successful in obtaining funding for two Sustainability/Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Lecturers, based in the Centre for Excellence in learning and Teaching (CELT). Sustainability and ESD play a prominent role in the university’s strategy, which also recognises the importance of our graduates being equipped to work and lead in a world under pressure from interconnected global challenges. SATLE funding currently supports these two lecturers in the development of a holistic approach to sustainability and ESD in the institution. The lecturers work with Schools and academic staff across the colleges and disciplines. They explore the opportunities to embed ESD across all programmes, supporting the enhanced use of open educational materials, modes of active and experiential learning, and make connections between teaching, research, and university operations in regard to sustainable and environmentally conscious practices.

Goals and key activities included

Specifically for the overall Nature at Work programme the goals are threefold:

• Support for the development of new course options, new pedagogical approaches, and stronger connections with nature and the institution’s commitment to wider society.
• Greater awareness and understanding of the challenge of sustainability, the climate and nature crises, and issues of justice.
• Scope for co-production of open learning resources and the building of peer communities around these important issues, both internally in the university and through external collaboration.

The main vehicle for ESD is a new staff course with the title ‘Embedding Sustainability in the Curriculum’. In the 2024/2025 academic year, the course was available as a new module in the Diploma in Academic Practice plus as a microcredential/module (10 ECTS) for and with staff at the University of Galway.

The course is organised as a series of stand-alone workshops, involving guest lecturers, online resources, demonstrations, practical sessions, discussion, research, and reflection. As part of this course, a guided biodiversity walk and mindful restoration activities were carried out with participants, plus a session on relational pedagogies and more than human pedagogies with colleagues from the School of Philosophy and the School of Education.

In addition to the microcredential/module, we co-hosted eight new activities/events in the 2024/2025 academic year; a lunch-time research gathering on wellbeing and nature (N=25); a CPD event on how nature can support those dealing with eco-distress (N=30); two public panel discussions on nature and society (N=50+);  and a one-day conference in May 2025, ‘Supporting Students in a Challenging World: ESD and the socio-emotional domain’, with sessions on relational pedagogies (N=100). In July 2025 we held a two-hour Pluriversity podcast with staff and PhD students on diversity, inclusion and the more-than-human in their research (Flirt FM Student and Community radio). In October 2025, the annual Irish Philosophical Society conference commenced with a campus Biodiversity talk (N=50+); and a one-day conference ‘Nature Works’ was co-hosted by the Lecturer in Sustainability (N=150). This conference brought together academics and practitioners from the University and across Europe to gather collective intelligence on how nature can be part of a ‘ground truthing’ for ecological sustainability. Also, in late October 2025 ESD team members embarked on a public sustainability course with communities in Co. Galway and Co. Mayo to co-create a new collaborative course with and for communities covering aspects of nature and belonging (N=35). This course enhances collaborations and networks in the region, bringing place based and experiential learning, enhancing community partnerships.

Key stakeholders involved

The four applicants as detailed in section 1 above have been actively involved in all of the above activities. To proceed further with the work in bringing learning for ecological sustainability to all courses, a wider team is in place and has not yet been activated. These are members of the Community University Sustainability Partnership (CUSP) Nature and Ecosystems group and the CUSP Research, Teaching and Engagement group, plus community members.

Any challenges encountered and how they were addressed

The main challenge in engaging teaching staff around ESD is time, specifically a lack of time to attend training and integrate anything new into a timetable/curriculum. A dual approach of activating staff and enhancing staff wellbeing through Nature at Work, provides a multipurpose approach for staff engagement. A focus on the socio-emotional domain of has ESD ensured a holistic approach integrating cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural learning domains. Nature restoration and learning through nature are avenues to enhance ecological and nature literacy amongst staff and students. This Nature at Work approach also feeds into the Universities commitment to a biodiverse and nature positive campus.

Strategic alignment with national policies and relevant SATLE priority area

The 2nd National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Ireland to 2030 sets out five key priority action areas focusing on advancing policy, transforming learning environments, building capacities of educators, empowering, and mobilizing young people, and accelerating local level actions. These priority action areas are interrelated and cannot be viewed in isolation, as ESD spans the continuum of education in Ireland.

This strategy provides a key reference point to develop an ambitious, inclusive, and collaborative ESD roadmap across the education sector. Complementary work includes the Council Recommendation (2022) on Learning for the Green Transition and Sustainable Development, the European Sustainability Competence Framework (Bianchi et al., 2022), Education for Sustainable Development: A Roadmap (UNESCO, 2020), and Education for SDGs: Learning Objectives (UN, 2017).

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) highlights the vital role of higher education institutions in embedding ESD and responding to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through curricula, research, and campus practices, addressing key global challenges and driving transformative action that benefits students, academic communities and society at large.

Sustainability problems are stubborn, ‘wicked’ problems, distributed across complex interconnected systems, dynamic, ambiguous, unfamiliar, lacking definitive answers. They have multiple stakeholders who draw on different sources of information, making them prone to conflicts of interest (Gulikers and Oonk, 2019). Addressing such ‘wicked’ problems requires the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural dimensions of learning often referred to as sustainability competencies. The ESD team at the University of Galway use the UNESCO (2017) framework for embedding sustainability across the curriculum. These competencies are collaborative; normative; self-awareness; anticipatory; problem-solving; strategic; critical and systems thinking. The competencies span the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural domains and these competencies weave through academic programmes. Working knowledge about the SDGs – the cognitive dimension in the UNESCO (2017) definition – is not, on its own, ESD (Vogel, 2023). The competencies associated with the socio-domain (especially self-awareness and normative competency) – are most difficult to operationalise. Placing a stronger emphasis on these competencies in particular, enabled the team to chart out an avenue for deeper and more meaningful learning and engagement that focuses on the campus and on the nature that is all around us. In this way ESD encompasses a whole of staff; whole of student; whole of campus and whole of community approach – linking the campus to the wider landscapes of learning in the wider city, county and region.

Innovation in specified SATLE priority area

The way in which sustainability is defined and understood is critical to the design of appropriate educational pedagogies, their implementation and their potential to deliver what they are designed for. There are complex interactions between system parameters and conditions, with education guiding the transformational process for society. In ESD there is no end state – no ideal – but we are constantly working with ‘appropriate values’. In terms of ESD competency development, systems thinking is the most operationalised, established competency (Wiek and Redman, 2022). The interpersonal competencies and values thinking are operationalised and embedded into the curriculum to a lesser extent – however, they are very necessary for transformative change. Nature at Work provides a space to integrate competencies across the three domains (cognitive; socio-emotional and behavioural) and transform learning.

The diversity of value systems that are present need to be recognised and shared value systems are constantly negotiated and revised. We need an ethical compass to address changing discourse and the interface between socio-ecological, deep knowledge of standards, ability to judge standards, and reflect on plurality of value systems and materialise actions based on standards. Authentic learning environments carefully developed by scientists, philosophers, health experts and educators are enabling actors here - working with inter/transdisciplinary teams to overcome sustainability challenges with mutual ecosystem benefits for all.

Wicked problems can be addressed in Nature at Work through an ontological, epistemological and axiological lens (McCowan, 2023). These include ontological aspects – who are we and how do we relate to the natural world (interconnectedness); epistemological aspects (different knowledges e.g. tacit, intuitions, imagination); axiological aspects (what are the values that underpin what we do; forms of living that are worthwhile; what is the fair distribution of ecological change). The teaching of these areas is underpinned by the complementary pedagogical foundations of critical questioning and deliberation, leading to a virtuous cycle of deepening of understanding and connection. Working in transdisciplinary teams in integrating nature and eco-systems into teaching is a significant part of this learning journey.

Outcomes

Impact

The pedagogical spaces and, in turn, learning techniques associated with sustainability competencies are currently underdeveloped in ESD literature and practice. Pedagogies associated with nature contact, emotion, meaning, compassion, and beauty (e.g. wild/eco pedagogies for transformative learning) are pathways to improving nature connectedness as well as enhancing learning. Attention to nature intrinsically motivates curiosity, exploration, and discovery. Learning spaces for ESD (McAvinia 2024) need to be appropriate to the associated competencies and pedagogies, including access to outdoors and more experiential learning in nature. The inside out/flipped classroom can breathe ‘life into learning’ (Miklstein et al. 2017). The University of Galway have a new outdoor space planted in 2025, a large willow structure, infilled with a 100m2 Pocket Forest. The structure also has sensors to gauge ecological change that can be used as a learning tool. Since February, the Pocket Forest has been used in teaching environmental and human resilience (N=22); a mindfulness walk on attending to nature for staff and students (N=47), an interdisciplinary session on community psychology and sustainable environments (N=24); and introducing first year environmental science students to native trees (N=36).

In terms of learning and learning environments, from the outset, students need to be in a physical and emotional place that is conducive to learning and self-efficacy, so they emerge with whatever issues they find, in their own way, in their own terms. We can support student wellbeing, centre their own identities and experience, and simultaneously emphasize community and relationships to help them find a sense of purpose – pedagogies of restoration (Krzezni, 2015).

Such inner transformation cannot be ignored as a core element of education for sustainable development and particularly climate action pedagogy. Inner transformation is to care, commit, and effect change. It is the core of the Inner Development Goal Framework (IDGs). The IDG framework outlines the inner skills needed for sustainable development, in particular collective abilities to work with complex challenges; a foundational shift in human values, co-creating an essential roadmap for inner change, culminating in 5 dimensions plus 23 skills for the inner development goals. The IDG framework is being practiced in HEIs across the world with associated tools and literature.

Alternative University models such as the Pluriversity are also relevant here – an institution turned towards social justice and ecology of knowledges and/or a Subversity – counterhegemonic spaces and a new form of higher education with assertions that coloniality, exploitation and separation have given rise to climate change, with calls to decolonise the curriculum. The curriculum is slow to change but now needs to. McCowan (2019) expands upon the idea of the ‘developmental university’, characterised by porous boundaries with society and community engagement for transformative change. Partnerships have emerged within the University between the discipline of natural science; philosophy; psychology, education; equality diversity and inclusion and student counselling services to enhance ecological sustainability in teaching and learning. New partnerships have also emerged with the social enterprise Pocket Forests and their funder (the Lifes 2 Good Foundation). The public sustainability course has been developed with community groups and organisations in Co. Galway and Co. Mayo such as Údarás na Gaeltacht, and community development companies, in co-creating a course that centres around ecology, place and belonging, bringing in aspects of the Irish language to interpret meaning.

At this moment ecological and nature literacy is part of the Embedding Sustainability in the Curriculum microcredential and practiced through events, course specific teaching and learning in ecology and environmental science, a public sustainability course in the region and discrete ad-hoc trainings on relational and more-than-human pedagogies. The targeted integration of place based nature and ecological literacy across courses and curricula in future would provide a focus for embedding ESD with multiple benefits in terms of both restoration and learning, supporting a whole of student/staff; whole of campus; whole of community approach to ESD in the University of Galway.