ABSTRACT
Quite early in the debate on higher education for sustainable development, it was found that to advance the implementation of sustainability into the curriculum it was pivotal to know exactly what were its drivers and barriers. Looking at research carried out in the first decade of the evolving area of higher education for sustainable development, John Fien recognized four categories of research:
arguments about the need for reform of curriculum and environmental management practices in higher education [or what Lidstone (1988) called research of the ‘good advice type’];
surveys, summaries and descriptions of sustainability initiatives in one or more institutions;
narrative accounts of the experience of institutional change;
audit reports of the economic and ecological benefits of successful projects and programmes.
(Fien 2002: 144)