Higher Education’s Commitment to Sustainability: from Understanding to Action

5th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education: Higher Education’s Commitment to Sustainability: from Understanding to Action.
From 23-11-10 to 26-11-10, PLACE: Barcelona, Spain. ORGANIZED BY: Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI).
The 5th International Barcelona Conference on Higher Education is designed to deepen the conceptual definition of the lines of change in higher education to respond to the challenges of sustainability, as well as to identify ways for action. Both facilitate the transition between existing and new educational scenarios consistent with the vision of the sustainability paradigm to move from understanding to action.
It is time to ask: How can we teach a holistic vision of reality? How can we learn to work in a transversal manner? What new competencies are needed for future citizens? What do we research and how do we research it? How can the collective consciousness, democratic processes and the citizenry be reinforced? How to foment cooperation and working in group networks? All these aspects form part of the challenge of sustainability and it is necessary to clarify them in order to have a clear vision about the direction of where we are headed as a planetary society.
Higher education should incorporate new, cross-disciplinary curriculum contents that equip people with new tools that are more suited to the context in which they will carry out their professions. One key learning need is the ability to make connections between many types of knowledge, giving equal value on the quality of our relationships with the world at large.