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The purpose of this paper is to posit that a key sustainability tool can help provide a needed guide for the many forms of new curricula for academic, public and professional learning communities. The authors demonstrate that key sustainability competency (KSC) research can highlight and provide an array of learning outcomes that can be back cast to co-design flexible, detailed curriculum, pedagogy, practice and assessment structures. They also briefly outline the connection of KSC to education for sustainability (EfS) to provide the educational basis for designing and facilitating classrooms that contribute directly to the sustainability movement.

This paper is a review of literature with a specific focus on Glasser's (2018b) promising use of the tree as an analogy and metaphor for KSCs.

Some, for example, Glasser and Hirsh (2016) claim significant progress in identifying a KSC framework (Wiek et al., 2011) However, the authors raise concerns about the impasse that the literature has demonstrated because these stand in the way of the co-creation of sustainable societies by adjusting how we learn and interact with the world. The authors argue that we must realize and disrupt the destructive actions that form their usual approach and replace them with sustainable habits (Glasser, 2018a), and this requires the emergence of a new class of sustainability practitioners with the skills, attitudes and dispositions that are consistent with being wise, future-oriented, interdisciplinary and global decision-makers (Biasutti, 2015; Biasutti and Frate, 2016; Corney and Reid, 2007; McNaughton, 2012; Scoullos, 2013).

Using Glasser’s metaphor, the authors assert a process through which the future sustainability practitioner might shift their values and understanding such that their habits and norms shift to create a new, sustainable way of being. The practitioner might demonstrate the competencies of implementing transformative change, modelling sustainable behaviour and wise decision-making. The competency of “empathy, mindfulness and social learning” implies critical reflection on one’s actions in comparison to their social context. Thus, reflection at this stage (tree branches and fruits) could create transformation that shifts one’s values and commitments (tree roots); the cyclical process could potentially begin again.

An adaptive and flexible framework of KSC could provide learning benefits by building the capacity for learners to think critically and tackle complex sustainability problems in novel ways (Brown, 2017; Glasser and Hirsh, 2016; Sterling et al., 2017; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 2017; Vare and Scott, 2007). Innovation and knowledge generation are possible since the KSC could teach “students how to think, rather than what to think, while letting [them] apply this thinking to real-world sustainability problems” (Wiek and Kay, 2015, p. 29). Through the KSC, people could also learn how to transform knowledge into action in their communities (Sterling et al., 2017, p. 160) and create real-world change. This is important, since unsustainable habits that comprise the “business-as-usual” case must be replaced with life-affirming actions and facilitate a new way of being in the world. After all, “[g]ood ideas with no ideas on how to implement them are wasted ideas” (Scott, 2013, p. 275).

The authors have asserted that the implementation of the KSC could have social benefits because its associated pedagogies aim to actively involve learners in transforming society. The sequence sees the individuals’ reflecting upon and evaluating one’s growth vis-à-vis KSC and promotes the development of learning and other habits that betters ones’ competencies (Rieckmann, 2012). Such reflection and empathy are more likely to be inherent to people who contribute to their own learning about the need to be truly compassionate for each other and the planet (Glasser and Hirsh, 2016). In achieving this level of empathy, it is a relatively simple matter then to understand that technology and policy alone are not adequately able to facilitate large-scale and positive change; unsustainability is a problem created by human action and therefore must be counteracted with theories of and solutions to unsustainable behaviours. Integrating a responsive KSC tool into higher education could help build the capacities, capabilities, competencies and eventually mastery and habits of mind and body that give rise to sustainable well-being societies.

The authors summarize and critique the KSC literature with an eye to creating a flexible and adaptive tool for individuals to chart their own path towards being a sustainability practitioner. The conceptual work herein is the first of its kind, and it will assist program who wish to accentuate contextual factors and individual learning objectives into their design.

CityStudio is an adaptable, plug and play model that helps global cities create a permanent partnership with local higher education institutions (HEIs) for collaboration, projects, and mutual benefit. Since launching, CityStudio has seen well over 906 city staff working with 16,861 students on 3,578 projects, contributing well over 300,000 student hours to local civic priorities in three countries. CityStudio assists cities to identify and distribute priority needs to local HEI’s universities, providing increased capacity for cities and work-integrated learning opportunities for students on real-world projects in areas such as sustainability, equity, livability, and social justice. While projects directly support local strategic planning goals, they also align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). The dream of CityStudio is that students take a seat at the table of civic power, joining and helping the city with their needs and challenges for a better planet. But we find ourselves asking, will tomorrow be worse? Worse for democracy, worse for the environment, and worse for equity and choice? In our unique facilitator and translator position between large public institutions, across a growing network, we explore daily how to meet this moment meaningfully.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existence of patterns that combine innovation and information and communication technologies (ICT) use, and the factors explaining them in the European Union.

The authors use data for firms and households at the regional level in the EU-27. Factorial and cluster analyses are used to the determine combined patterns for both dimensions and to elaborate a taxonomy of the European regions, respectively. Finally, the multiple discriminant analysis serves to identify the factors that characterize the patterns detected.

The results show the existence of three regional clusters that capture different combinations of patenting and ICT use. Research and development (R&D) expenditure in the business sector, government quality, gross domestic product per capita, the number of researchers, and employment by the highest level of education attained are the key variables explaining the disparities in innovation and ICT use in the European regions.

The conclusions point to the key role played by business R&D and knowledge resources within an institutional framework that facilitates actions oriented to benefiting regions through both knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion derived from the combined activities of innovation and ICT use.

The paper provides for the first time a characterization of the European regions that jointly considers innovation and ICT use. It also contributes to the literature by exploring differences in ICT use by households and firms, and the factors explaining them. The study can provide new insights into the design of public policies that may consider the common factors that explain combinations of innovation and technology use.

During the many years of peace perhaps the most depressing thing about libraries was the absence of public interest in them. The newspapers, public men, writers on education, amongst whom were many people who made daily use of libraries, in their public utterances completely ignored them or confined their mention to the mendacious archaism that they were merely purveyors of poor fiction. This was most unsatisfactory, for no institution can rise to its full possibilities unless it is the subject of encouragement and healthy criticism. Now affairs are different. The war has been a crucible in which most things have been tested, and libraries are proving to be no exception.