ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
This article is part of the Research TopicEducation for Sustainable Development in Formal and Higher Education: Emerging Trends, Pedagogical Innovations, and Global ChallengesView all articles
The Grateful Eight: Perspectives on Higher Education Affordances and Tensions and Didactics Role in enhancing Learning Experiences towards Sustainability
Provisionally accepted
Birgitta Nordén1*
Pia Ulvenblad2
Antti Mäenpää3Areti Vogopoulou4Alcina Dourado Da Silva5Agnieszka Merkisz-Guranowska6
Anna L.V. Lundberg7
Helgi B. Schiöth8,9Helgi B. Schiöth10- 1Centre for Teaching and Learning (CAKL), Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
- 2Halmstad University, Sweden, Halmstad, Sweden
- 3University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
- 4University of the Peloponnese, Kalamata, Greece
- 5Polytechnic University of Setúbal, Setúbal, Portugal
- 6Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland
- 7Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
- 8Department of Surgical Sciences, Functional Pharmacology and Neuroscience, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
- 9Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis, Riga, Latvia
- 10Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis, Latvia, Riga, Latvia
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Sustainability actions have the potential to exert a lasting impact on higher education didactics. Universities are often regarded as key actors in educating the next generation of decision-makers who are capable of making more informed choices from a sustainability perspective. However, significant challenges remain regarding the understanding about how sustainability can be integrated into higher education, and disciplines differ considerably in how they engage with the topic. To address these issues, we employ collaborative auto-ethnographic approach to examine how eight lecturers from different disciplinary backgrounds approached sustainability education, and what affordances and tensions they encountered during and after a joint international course on Higher Education Didactics for Sustainability organized by Karlstad University in Sweden. The findings indicate that substantial challenges persist, despite participants' high levels of motivation and transdisciplinary mindsets. These challenges appear to be linked to disciplinary differences in approaches and emphasis regarding which aspects of sustainability education are considered applicable to the participants' teaching practices.
Keywords: affordances, didactics, HEDs, higher education, stem, sustainability, tensions, Transdisciplinary teaching approaches
Received: 07 Jan 2026; Accepted: 09 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Nordén, Ulvenblad, Mäenpää, Vogopoulou, Dourado Da Silva, Merkisz-Guranowska, Lundberg, Schiöth and Schiöth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Birgitta Nordén
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