Abstract
This paper reflects on the role of universities in social changes, particularly in processes of societal transformation towards sustainable development. It is based on the document Peoples' Sustainability Treaty on Higher Education Towards Sustainable Development, produced for and introduced on the occasion of the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, which presents a vision for an overall transformation of universities related to the society-wide requirement for sustainable education involving every aspect of higher education institutions (curricula and teaching, campus operations, community engagement, cultural change).
Within this framework, the authors demonstrate the main changes currently under way in higher education within six spheres that include: value-based preconditions for action, a holistic approach, knowledge management, an emphasis on learning processes and competencies (the importance of which is growing among education objectives), and methods of evaluating quality of learning process and learning outcomes. They recapitulate the impact of these trends within the Czech education environment and opportunities for future development; they show how real world changes in progress are related to the transformation of both scientific paradigms and education theories.
They propose describing this development as a change of education genre, primarily with respect to how knowledge is communicated. They show what new processes in education will gradually have to be taken into account, and offer potential future research topics related to these.