The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are everywhere: on posters, in PowerPoint presentations, in strategy documents and in module specs. They’re urgent and important, but for many students, they sit in the background. Like any poster that hangs on the wall for long enough, they risk becoming wallpaper, present but ignored.
I realised that if I wanted my students to genuinely care about the SDGs, I needed to stop teaching them and instead embed their principles into assessments, opportunities and classroom conversations.
Here’s how I did it:
Start with local, not global, businesses
I start with something close to home: a local car wash, cafe, retailer or social enterprise. We look at one organisation and ask:
- What keeps this business going?
- Who benefits – and who might be left out?
- What would happen to the community if it closed?
Where possible, I go a step further and bring the business into the conversation for real. That could mean:
- Inviting the owner in for a short Q&A
- Arranging a project, placement or internship linked to a live issue or issues the business is facing.
Of course, most businesses aren’t thinking in SDG language. They’re thinking in terms of survival, staffing, cash flow and reputation. As the students learn to translate between the two, the business also gets fresh thinking and, often, its first exposure to SDG-framed ideas. It leaves an impact on both sides.
Only after that do I bring in the SDGs and ask students to map the issues they’ve already identified to specific goals. They quickly see that “decent work”, “responsible consumption” or “sustainable cities” actually mean something.
- Embedding the SDGs into curricula via an interdisciplinary approach
- We won’t get anywhere without placing the SDGs in local contexts
- Sustainability education needs to go beyond the SDGs
Design SDG-shaped assignments without overusing the language
In the past, I would create an SDG-themed brief that asked students to respond directly to a global challenge. Many students found it worthy, but distant. So now, I encourage students to write a plan for a local or small-scale organisation that aims for long-term sustainability.
Here, sustainability is framed broadly:
- Financial resilience
- Ability to adapt to change
- Contribution to the local community.
The SDGs aren’t listed, but their spirit is woven into the task and marking criteria. In some cases, students have gone on to share their plans with the businesses themselves, or to develop them further through voluntary roles, internships or follow-on projects.
This is about giving students a real problem and room to work things out for themselves, reminding them of the tools at their disposal. I find increasingly when doing this, that the SDGs act as scaffolding for the ways in which they approach the issue.
Use the SDGs as a reflective lens, not the starting slide
Let students apply themselves to the completion of a task, long before they see the grid of coloured boxes. After they have had the chance to hear from a business owner or take part in a live opportunity, only then do I introduce the SDGs and ask:
- Which goals does your idea touch?
- Which goals did you ignore – and does that matter?
- What might change if you tried to align more closely with one or two specific goals?
The SDGs become a way to interrogate their work, rather than a list to memorise.
Build macro-understanding from micro-observations
People may care deeply about the issues but find it hard to connect with “ending global poverty” or “solving climate change”, but they are very capable of noticing the overflowing food waste bin in a cafe or the lack of accessibility to a shop.
I ask students to bring one such observation to class: “Spot an SDG in the wild!” From there, we connect their example to wider themes: inequality, responsible consumption, decent work, sustainable cities. Over time, the SDGs become a vocabulary for things they already care about, rather than a separate agenda.
Let the SDGs shape the conversation, not dominate it
I’ve learned that if I lead with “this session is about SDG X”, engagement drops. If I lead with “this business may not survive the next five years”, curiosity soon rises.
So, when planning teaching and assessment, I start with the decision, dilemma or problem I want students to wrestle with, and then ask myself which SDGs it naturally intersects with as a design principle:
- Are students thinking beyond short-term profit?
- Have they considered who is included or excluded by their ideas?
- Is there space to bring in environmental or social dimensions, even briefly?
Reinforce SDG thinking through feedback
Finally, I’ve started to reference SDG-aligned thinking directly in feedback – as much for me as the students!
While using this less direct approach to introduce SDGs, coupled with a desire to avoid using the red pen on a student’s work, one will remain conscious of getting the feedback to hit the right note.
Ultimately, the SDGs will be kept alive on posters and in policy documents, and that’s great. But if we want them to matter to our students, we need to put them into business plans, projects, placements and reflections, where people learn by doing, reflecting and redesigning the world immediately in front of them.
A poster can always become wallpaper. The assignment that changes how a student sees and works with their local and the wider world is much harder to ignore.
Robyn Griffiths is a programme manager and lecturer in business management at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.
comment