A ‘career development for sustainability’ masterclass was originally designed in 2022 as part of a ‘Professional Practice and Development’ module offered within BA Business and Management at Oxford Brookes University. This aligned with the Business School ‘golden thread’ of Ethics, Responsibility, and Sustainability (ERS), within the broader context of the IDEAS framework elements of ‘employability learning’ and ‘sustainability mindset’. The masterclass was inspired to address the nexus of employability and sustainability, facilitating transformational learning opportunities by inspiring students on a deeply personal level about sustainability and career opportunities.
The premise of the masterclass was to bridge the formal curriculum discipline-based focus related to Education for Sustainability (EfS), with employability-related learning, so as to enhance how students leverage this connection as they formulate career plans. Feedback from students on this masterclass was very positive, and the pedagogic experience could be seen to align well with accreditation body requirements, and subject benchmark standards concerning employability and EfS-related outcomes (Cripps and Velasquez-Hoque, 2023). In particular, it laid the groundwork for applying Kumar’s (2008; 2022) SOAR employability framework (Self Awareness, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results) to sustainability-related career learning. The full resource pack of this masterclass is available through Advance HE’s ‘Guide to ESD in Practice’ (Cripps, 2024).
The masterclass was further developed through gaining seed funding for ‘Innovative pedagogy and teaching methods’ from the United Nations-supported ‘Principles of Responsible Management Education’ (PRME) in 2023. It adopted a co-created approach to the design and delivery of the masterclass that is now known as ‘Career Story Telling for the Sustainable Development Goals’. Full resources are available including powerpoint slides, a student worksheet, educator guidance, and an accompanying website with student and educator feedback statements (Cripps, d’Abreu and Bobeva 2024).
Over 6 months (2023-24) the masterclass was delivered at almost 20 universities, reaching over 800 students. This enabled the ongoing refinement of resources and approaches based upon educator pedagogic reflection and feedback gained from students. Its key contribution to sustainability-related career learning is the adoption of a narrative approach of storytelling for sustainability (Leinaweaver 2015), informed by career construction theory (Savickas 2009). It adopts an ‘inside-out’, whole-person pedagogic approach to careers, by encouraging students to connect their interests and experiences to building careers with positive social and environmental impact. This is achieved through the Sustainable Development Goals as a guiding framework, coupled with SOAR (Kumar 2015; 2022), UNESCO sustainability competencies (2017/QAA and Advance HE 2021) and the twelve Sustainability Mindset Principles set out by Rimanoczy (2021).
Alongside educator feedback testimonies provided in the online resources, the resource design has been positively affirmed through just over 250 student feedback responses, in which 86% of students found the session to be extremely or very interesting and/or helpful. Of particular note, is the overall support for all learning components of the workshop. This is of course positive news, although it provided some challenges when the workshop was restricted in delivery time available, to know which selected areas to focus on. The workshop was intentionally designed to be applicable across disciplines and levels. The research project included teaching groups from foundation through to PhD, and while focused primarily on business and management cohorts, also included multi-disciplinary extra-curricular sessions, often delivered alongside professional careers services teams.
While the workshop offers some element of ‘practical’ career-search advice, its focus is primarily on the self-discovery of values and interests, and how to nurture and further develop these as part of ongoing career growth. It is therefore complementary to sessions that are commonly run by careers services on ‘green jobs’ and similar institutional initiatives. From a Brookes perspective, it has been positive to have been well-received and encouraged from its inception within a module through to its inclusion on teaching and learning pages. By sharing the resources, the team hopes to connect and engage with others in the ongoing development of this project, thereby enabling more students to discover and engage in a sense of ‘purpose’ in shaping careers, aligned to addressing societal and environmental global needs.
References
Cripps, d’Abreu and Bobeva (2024) Oxford Brookes University IDEAS: Sustainability Mindset – Faculty projects – ‘Career Story Telling for the Sustainable Development Goals – a PRME cocreated masterclass’
Cripps, K. and Velasquez-Hoque, S. (2023) Career development for sustainability: an employability masterclass in Donald, W.E. (ed.) ‘Establishing and Maintaining Sustainable Career Ecosystems for University Students and Graduates’. Hershey: PA USA IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/book/establishing-maintaining-sustainable-career-ecosystems/307986
Cripps, K. (2024) ‘Addressing the employability-sustainability curriculum gap: a masterclass’ in Advance HE ‘Guide to ESD in practice’. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/guides-esd-practice#:~:text=This%20set%20of%20ESD%20practice,into%20teaching%2C%20learning%20and%20assessment
Cripps, K., d’Abreu, C. and Bobeva (2024) Faculty projects – ‘Career Story Telling for the Sustainable Development Goals – a PRME cocreated masterclass’
Kumar, A. (2022) Personal, Social, Academic and Career Development: SOARing to Success (2 ed.). London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis
QAA and Advance HE. (2021) Education for Sustainable Development Guidance Retrieved from https://www.qaa.ac.uk/quality-code/education-for-sustainable-development
