Digital sustainability kindles agency in education and teacher training

Digital sustainability is an emerging concept that combines environmental, social, and economic dimensions to ensure that digital transformation supports long-term well-being and planetary health. It is part of the broader shift toward digitalisation and sustainability across society.

A significant part of the work in Haaga-Helia School of Professional Teachers Education is already tackling with sustainability challenges and the innovation and development of digital solutions in education. Digital sustainability is also intertwined with the pedagogy of our teacher education programmes and continuous education offerings. However, there is always a call for further development and engaging new communities into action. One essential aspect of digital sustainability apart from engaging local communities is fostering the sense of agency in individual human actors in the global community.

In a new research, development and innovation initiative Haaga-Helia School of Teacher Education is co-designing and facilitating digital sustainability in South Africa from both perspectives.

DIPSU project for agency in sustainability

The Digital pedagogy as capacity building for sustainability agents in South Africa (DIPSU) project combines the dimensions of digital transformation for sustainability, education and teacher training. A multidimensional team of professionals from Haaga-Helia, University of Johannesburg (UJ), Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and University of Tampere (TAU) are launching into a dialogue for building agency in sustainability.

Working with a diverse team who evidently approach digital sustainability from different cultural and situational realities, one crucial point of the process is having enough space and time for creating a shared understanding. In DIPSU this is enabled by staff mobilities that allow the participants to meet face to face and have a dialogue during the next three years. It is also vital how this dialogue will be facilitated. Haaga-Helia teacher education has a leading role in providing the team with tools for bridging the participants insights and strengths for creating novel common methods for digital sustainability.

The DIPSU project aims to enhance sustainability awareness, competencies, and literacy as well as digital literacy, and ethical digital citizenship among staff and students at partner universities. The project specifically targets the development of trainers in advanced digital sustainability skills and ethical digital practices, aligning with global sustainability and educational transformation goals. These goals can only be reached together in a pedagogically significant interplay between reflection and action where all participants feel safe and valued, and where everyone’s strengths become the foundation for the growth of agency for every participant.

Digital sustainability in education

Digital sustainability refers to the responsible and sustainable use of digital technologies. It includes the following (Stuermer & Dapp 2023).

• Environmental sustainability: Reducing energy consumption, minimizing e-waste, and using eco-friendly digital infrastructure.
• Social sustainability: Ensuring digital inclusion, accessibility, and equity in technology use.
• Economic sustainability: Promoting cost-effective, scalable, and long-lasting digital solutions.

In education, digital sustainability means using digital tools to teach sustainability topics (e.g. climate change, human rights), to promote inclusive and accessible learning environments, and to reduce the carbon footprint of educational activities (e.g. virtual mobility instead of travel). Pedagogically a digitally sustainable practise means aligning the methods with the content that is taught. Thus, in the DIPSU project the interactive learning workshops, AI integration toolkit and open educational resources will reflect the pedagogical principles and values of digital sustainability.

By bringing about inclusive learning experiences in various facilitation activities, making sustainable choices in the implementation, such as using the virtual online mode, and applying a wealth of different digital tools the project will practise what is preaches.

Examples of sustainable digital practices in education include the following (Sekin 2025).

• The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to simulate environmental scenarios.
• Gamified learning to engage students in sustainability challenges.
• AI and big data to monitor environmental changes and online learning (MOOCs and COILs) to democratize access to sustainability education.

These and many other devises for educational digital sustainability methods will be used throughout the DIPSU process.

Digital sustainability in professional teacher education

In vocational education and teacher training, digital sustainability supports transformative learning where teachers and students co-create knowledge around sustainability. It fosters competence and ability to work across disciplines, cultures, and institutions. The expertise will now be shared with future sustainability agents in our South African partner communities. Two masterclasses in hybrid mode for teachers and students will be facilitated, one on digital pedagogies for sustainability and another on ethical digital citizenship for sustainable futures in higher education institutions.

Digitally sustainable teacher education is also site-specific. It connects sustainability education to local contexts and communities. And it connects sustainability agents from the two continents into a network of professionals in pedagogy and education. In DIPSU a road map for digital pedagogy will be created to reach wider communities. Collaborative knowledge creation gives learners and teachers as co-learners a shared and safe space for jointly exploring sustainable solutions (Weijzen & al. 2024). The world constantly needs new solutions that can be discovered in the spaces that projects like DIPSU open.

Creating sustainable solutions

Digital sustainability as an approach is strongly connected to UNESCO’s Sustainability Development goals (the SDGs) and the ideals of Global Citizenship Education, which encourages vocational education to shift from being economy-centred to human-centred, emphasising sustainability, inclusion, and global responsibility (UNESCO 2015; 2017).

In the DIPSU project these challenges will be addressed with tenacity and enthusiasm of the diverse project team. During the three-year period from August 2025 to December 2027 the participants have the space for crafting collectively new resources for learning about digital sustainability. In the end the open resources will benefit a larger community of world’s citizens. Hopefully, the community of digital sustainability agents will have capacities for spreading the skills and hope for a sustainable future.

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