Can Education for Sustainable Development Address Challenges in the Arab Region? Examining Business Students’ attitudes and Competences on Education for Sustainable Development: A Case Study

The population growth together with the unsustainable consumption pattern is putting increasing stress on the planet’s natural resources. The increasing realisation that humans are harming the environment is taking the form of a global movement intended to change behaviour towards sustainability, now recognised as a framework that links humans to nature. Continuous exploitation of natural systems in the Arab region leads to environmental damages that negatively affect human well-being. This article presents a case study from the Reorient University Curricula to Address Sustainability (RUCAS) Tempus project funded by the European Commission. It highlights the results of an empirical study in the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics (FBAE) at Notre Dame University -Louaize (NDU) in Lebanon. The main objective is to assess the need for education for sustainable development (ESD) through an examination of students’ attitudes and competences with the aim of reorienting university curricula to address sustainability. A framework based on the pillars of learning set by UNESCO was developed to measure ESD attitudes and competences. The main findings reveal the need to reorient university courses to address sustainability issues. Attitudes questions suggest that relatively high numbers of students are not aware of their responsibilities for environmental problems, which imply the necessity for a revised curriculum where courses are restructured to inform students of their responsibility for their environment and the quality of life. The results show that the disciplinary competences are significantly lower than the five pillars of learning (general competences) which indicate that the FBAE needs to reorient its curricula to infuse ESD into its programmes through the development of effective pedagogical approaches, teaching methodologies as well as learning materials.