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Challenges in Higher Education for Sustainability pp 217–229Cite as

Sustainability and Performativity

Challenges in Curriculum Design for Sustainability in Higher Education

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Part of the book series: Management and Industrial Engineering ((MINEN))

Abstract

This chapter adopts the concepts performance, performing, and performativity to refer to the three domains of learning—cognitive, psychomotor, and affective—that are considered central to the realization of Education for Sustainability. Educating students in all three domains presents particular challenges in the higher education sector where the dominant approach to education for sustainability remains in the cognitive domain or the realm of performance (Shephard in Int J Sustain High Educ 9:87–98, 2008). Students, it is argued here, often arrive at Universities well schooled in the established ‘mantras’ of sustainability gleaned from the media and previous courses of study. These understandings are not neutral or are they value-free. Drawing on Butler’s (Bodies that matter on the discursive limits of sex. Routledge, London, 1993) employment of the concept performativity as constitutive of identities, it argues that understandings of the sustainable citizen are constructed through discourse and that these constructions need to be interrogated and challenged if education for sustainability is to lead to transformation and change for all. The chapter begins with a brief overview of sustainability—what it is and how the concept has been mobilized—before turning to a discussion of sustainability education or education for sustainability that links such education with the concepts employed here—performance, performing, and performativity . Three examples of curriculum development are then introduced and discussed within the context of this framework.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RMIT University, Swanston Street, Melbourne, Australia

    Judy Rogers

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  1. Judy Rogers
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Correspondence to Judy Rogers .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    J. Paulo Davim

  2. Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

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Rogers, J. (2016). Sustainability and Performativity. In: Davim, J., Leal Filho, W. (eds) Challenges in Higher Education for Sustainability. Management and Industrial Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23705-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23705-3_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23704-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23705-3

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