Emerging themes in sustainability education in higher education institutions: a scoping review of reviews

Higher education institutions have a critical role to play in enabling future graduates to critically respond to a range of sustainability-related challenges and transition to more sustainable futures. There has been substantial progress in scholarship on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and several reviews have recently been published. This study provides an overview of recent reviews of research on sustainability education in higher education, with the aim of exploring the opportunities for the advancement of ESD research. It has identified research topics on which there is currently substantial or growing scholarship, including, the role of pedagogy and transformative learning, sustainability competencies and assessment tools, inter/transdisciplinary work, integration of sustainability across higher education, and geographical concentration of scholarship in the Global North. The review also identifies notable research gaps, and provides insights for higher education decision makers towards setting future educational research agendas.