Education plays a central role in enabling sustainable societies, as highlighted by the emergence of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) following the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development. Within higher education, sustainability-focused programs, referred to in this study as sustainability higher education (SHE), aim to equip students with key competencies needed to address complex sustainability challenges, often requiring transformative and interdisciplinary pedagogical approaches. In this context, art-based teaching (ABT) has gained attention as a method that can enhance learning by encouraging creativity, critical thinking, emotional processing, and collaboration, while addressing diverse sustainability topics. Industrial Ecology (IE) programs provide a pertinent case study for exploring ABT integration, given their interdisciplinary approach to complex environmental challenges and the current lack of research on ABT in this domain. Despite growing interest, knowledge gaps remain regarding the contextual factors influencing ABT integration, its benefits and challenges, and how these practices contribute to sustainability key competencies. This study addresses these gaps by combining through a systematic literature review of 11 peer-reviewed articles on SHE and 14 interviews with educators and students from four Northern European IE programs, aiming to provide educators with evidence to support the transformative potential of ABT in sustainability higher education.
The study first investigated how and why ABT practices are incorporated in SHE. Analysis revealed a wide range of practices across disciplines, highlighting the influence of contextual factors such as group size, teaching team expertise, and co-teaching with artists. Active student participation was common and enhanced engagement and ownership, while non-participatory approaches also provided value. Purposes of ABT interventions such as mapping systems, expressing emotions, and generating ideas, aligned with literature on higher education goals while reflecting research-oriented objectives, particularly from the empirical data in IE.
The study then identified 26 potential benefits and 15 challenges of ABT integration. Benefits demonstrated the broad potential of ABT for sustainability education, whereas challenges highlighted pedagogical and implementation barriers and raised questions about cultural and educational paradigms in Western higher education.
Linking these benefits to the Brundiers et al. (2021) sustainability key competencies framework confirmed trends observed by Heras (2022): ABT particularly supports intrapersonal, interpersonal, and normative competencies. Additionally, this study highlighted the potential for ABT to contribute to futures-thinking and systems-thinking competencies, especially as reported by educators in IE. No clear evidence was found regarding the contribution of ABT to implementation competencies.
Future research could broaden the scope by including participants from diverse disciplinary, cultural, and educational contexts, particularly non-Western or Indigenous traditions where art is central to knowledge transmission. Long-term impacts of ABT on student engagement, behavior, and professional practice should be investigated, along with institutional factors such as curriculum design, assessment systems, and educator training that could support the integration of art in higher education.