Education for sustainability as a way-out to nurture citizens: a reframing in policy practices of Chinese higher education

This study examines education for sustainability (EfS) within the Chinese context, to specifically enrich the understanding on how EfS is structured and implemented to nurture citizenship in the policy practices of universities in Mainland China and Hong Kong.
A cross-case analysis is recruited to examine the commonalities and differences between two universities and identify patterns in cultivating sustainability citizenship within HEIs in China. Data were collected through reviewing documents, including two universities’ strategic plans, action plans, department meeting memos, program introductions, course outlines, and publicity coverage. Observation is also adopted to enrich the data for analysis, covering meetings, speeches by senior management, university events, and informal conversations about university operations.
Citizenship and sustainability in university strategic planning, curriculum and instruction, carriers of EfS institutionalization, and resources and impacts of EfS beyond the institutes were analyzed in a comparative manner, offering valuable insights into how EfS can be institutionalized in different universities based on their unique appeals, existing curriculum, and management systems.
By exploring these intra-national distinctions in EfS, the study sheds light on the variation within China's citizenship education, which is traditionally seen as highly unified with limited room for differences. The detailed exploration of university strategies and program/course content enriches the literature of sustainability as an educational phenomenon on an international scale and modernized citizenship education in China.