Diffusion of sustainable development in universities’ curricula: an empirical example from Cardiff University

During the last decade an increasing number of higher education institutions (HEIs) have been incorporating and institutionalizing the principles of Sustainable development (SD) into their curricula, research, operations, outreach, and assessment and reporting.This article focuses on the adoption and diffusion of SD in curricula by analyzing the results from the curricula audit of over 5800 course descriptions from 19 of the 28 schools from Cardiff University. The audit was done using the Sustainability Tool for Auditing UNiversities Curricula in Higher Education (STAUNCH©). The STAUNCH© analysis results are analyzed using a combination of diffusion of innovation theory with systems thinking.The analysis of the SD adoption and diffusion indicates that although some of the schools might be ‘innovators’ in a particular dimension, when the overall SD contribution is considered (i.e. the inter-connectedness and synergies among economic, environmental, social, and cross-cutting themes) they do not necessarily fall into the ‘innovators’ category. This indicates that to better incorporate SD into curricula, a transformation from compartmentalization, over-specialization, and reductionism towards more balanced, synergistic, trans-disciplinary, and holistic perspectives, is required.