Two approaches to curriculum development for educating for sustainability and CSR

The purpose of this paper is to report on efforts to develop two stand‐alone subjects on sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a mainstream business curriculum at Monash University, Australia.

This paper presents details on the educational rationale and design of the two subjects in corporate sustainability and CSR.

Although many universities offer support for education for sustainability, previous research indicates that most curriculum initiatives in this area have been driven by individual faculty. This paper provides examples of curriculum development that emerged from the grass‐roots initiative, in the absence of an integrated and mainstreamed programme for sustainability.

The paper encourages all faculty, no matter their circumstances, to consider the development of curriculum for sustainability. While individual subjects cannot effect wholesale change, each effort can, no matter how piecemeal, make a difference.

The cases in this paper highlight the importance of skills, knowledge and values to the curriculum for sustainability and CSR. Because there is no formula for how these are integrated into the curriculum, the paper illustrates how individual faculty members have brought their own disciplinary and pedagogical backgrounds to their curriculum design.