Vol. 14 No. 2 (2023):
Research Article

Global Change Challenge in the Higher Education Curriculum on the approach of Blended Learning

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Caroline Leininger-Frézal
Université Paris Cité, France
Sandra Sprenger
Associate Professor, Universität Hamburg, Faculty of Education, Germany.
Maria Luisa de Lázaro Torres
Professor, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
María Ángeles Rodríguez Domenech
EUROGEO, Belgium and Associate Professor, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Department of Geography in Faculty of Education, Spain.
Neli Heidari
Research Associate, Faculty of Education, Universität Hamburg, Germany.
Maria Pigaki
Laboratory Teaching Staff Member (ΕΔΙΠ), National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
Cédric Naudet
Associate Researcher, Université Paris Cité, Univ Paris Est Creteil, CY Cergy Paris Université, Univ. Lille, Univ Rouen, LDAR, France.
Aurore Lecomte
Associate Researcher, Université Paris Cité, Univ Paris Est Creteil, CY Cergy Paris Université, Univ. Lille, Univ Rouen, LDAR, France.
Marta Gallardo
Associate Professor, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.c.lei.14.2.001.014
Categories

Published 2023-05-15

Keywords

  • geography education,
  • education for sustainable development,
  • curriculum, higher education,
  • blended learning

How to Cite

Leininger-Frézal , Caroline, Sandra Sprenger, Maria Luisa de Lázaro Torres, María Ángeles Rodríguez Domenech, Neli Heidari, Maria Pigaki, Cédric Naudet, Aurore Lecomte, and Marta Gallardo. 2023. “Global Change Challenge in the Higher Education Curriculum on the Approach of Blended Learning”. European Journal of Geography 14 (2):1-14. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.c.lei.14.2.001.014.

Copyright (c) 2023 authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Received 2023-02-14
Accepted 2023-05-03
Published 2023-05-15

Abstract

Global change is one of the greatest challenges facing societies today. Higher education plays a crucial role in providing knowledge on global change, contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. How is global change integrated into the planned, delivered and achieved curriculum? Has the pandemic promoted the development of blended learning courses on global change? To answer these two research questions, we conducted 25 interviews with academics about the prominence of global change in their courses and curriculum. We also analysed several geography curricula. It emerged that universities play a central role in mainstreaming global change into curricula in the context of education for sustainable development (ESD) and climate change. There were two main findings: (i) ESD has been implemented selectively in higher geography education, with a focus on environmental issues and different approaches and (ii) blended learning is a useful approach to develop new curriculum structures and content to educate students about global change.

Highlights:

  • To date, higher education has dealt with global change in a fragmented way in the higher geography curriculum
  • Higher education is a powerful element in preparing societies for global challenges
  • The aim is to develop and share a common long-term, structural, sustainable and systemic cooperation on education, research and innovation in teaching ESD
  • Blended learning approaches to higher education could incorporate a whole-system new curriculum structure in the context of global change
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