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Journal of Cleaner Production 61 (2013) 100e105

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jc lepro

Current status of green curriculum in higher education of MainlandChina

Huabin Xiong a,b, Denggao Fu a,c, Changqun Duan a,c,*, Chang’E. Liu a,c, Xueqing Yang c,Renqing Wang d

a Institute of Environmental Sciences and Ecological Restoration, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan 650091, Chinab School of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Yunnan University of Nationalities, Kunming, Yunnan 650500, ChinacYunnan Key Laboratory for Bioresource Conservation and Utilization, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan 650091, Chinad Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250100, China

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 31 July 2012Received in revised form17 June 2013Accepted 18 June 2013Available online 27 June 2013

Keywords:University curriculumEnvironmental educationGreen curriculum

* Corresponding author. Institute of EnvironmenRestoration, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan 665033547.

E-mail address: chqduan@ynu.edu.cn (C. Duan).

0959-6526/$ e see front matter � 2013 Published byhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.06.033

a b s t r a c t

Providing environmental education in colleges and universities is a major strategy to cope with themounting pressure of environmental problems that come with the rapid economy development in China.However, the provision of environmental studies and the incorporation of environmental protection andsustainable development into the academic curricula have not been reported. Here, we analyzed thecurricula of 267 out of 810 public universities and colleges in China- a sample of 30% from each of the 12different types (China’s universities are categorized 12 types as agriculture, forestry, engineering,comprehensive colleges, education, ethnic study, medicine, economics, law, arts, language and sports).The results showed that 19.47% of the sampled institutions failed to establish a comprehensive envi-ronmental education framework; the education is “greener” in agriculture- and forestry-based in-stitutions, while those focus on sports, art and linguistics are less successful in addressing environmentalproblems; the institutions funded by the Ministry of Education provide relatively “greener” educationthan those funded by local and provincial governments. Moreover, the institutions located in underde-veloped areas are less concerned with environmental education than those in more developed area, asreflected by their academic curricula. The level of environmental education is also significantly higher inthe “Project 985” universities (the top 39 universities in the country) and the “Project 211” universities(the top 116 universities in the country) than any other universities. The number of textbooks publishedthat address environmental issues showed an increase between year 2005 and 2010, but less signifi-cantly in literature, philosophy and education-related textbooks. Our results indicate that environmentaleducation needs to be improved in most of the institutions of higher education in China, and it should besystematically assessed and improved to meet the nation’s rising demands in sustainable development,nature and resource conservation.

� 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction

The rapid pace of social and economic development in Chinahave made a toll on the environment, air and water pollution, lossof biodiversity, land degradation, desertification and so on, havebecome serious obstacles to sustainable development of thecountry. Higher education plays important roles to educate the nextgeneration, not only to promote social and economic development,but should ensure these developments will be sustainable. The

tal Sciences and Ecological50091, China. Tel.: þ86 871

Elsevier Ltd.

experience of higher education are known to be highly crucial tothe future actions and careers of young people (Wade, 2002; Barthand Rieckmann, 2012). According to the 21st century declaration,education is crucial to promote sustainable development andimprove the people’s capacity for addressing environmental anddevelopmental problems (Gao et al., 2006).

Recently the concepts of “green university” and “green educa-tion” are addressed and promoted to incorporate environmentaleducation, environmental protection and sustainable developmentinto all disciplines of natural and social sciences, as well as all as-pects of campus life (Lu et al., 2007; Barth and Rieckmann, 2012).Creighton (1999) defined “green education” as “the process ofreducing the multitude of on- and off-site environmental impactsresulting from campus decisions and activities, as well as raising

H. Xiong et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 61 (2013) 100e105 101

environmental awareness within the human communities of acollege or university”, thus it should be integrated into all highereducation programs in all disciplines and fields of study(Wemmenhove and de Groot, 2001). Building “green curricula” isthe most critical part of raising students’ environmental awarenessand developing “green university” (Boks and Diehl, 2006). And thelevel of “green curricula” has direct influence on the level of “greeneducation”, and the sustainability of social and economic devel-opment (Lozano, 2010; Nejati and Nejati, 2013).

In China, “green education” have made considerable progress inthe past ten years, and a number of researches on how to construct“green universities” have also been conducted (Ferrer-Balas et al.,2009; Lozano-García et al., 2009; Barth and Rieckmann, 2012).However, these researches mainly focused on understanding theconcept of “green education” and discussed the implementation of“green education” (Sahin et al., 2009), while a comprehensive andquantitative analysis of the present status of “green education” and“green curriculum” has never been conducted. In this study, asample survey of higher education institutions in China was con-ducted to analyze the current status of “green curriculum”, whichmight provide some insights to “green education” in higher edu-cation of the country.

2. Data collection and analysis

2.1. The definition of “green curriculum” and selection of keywords

Until now the definition of “green curriculum” is not explicit(Collett and Karakashian, 1997; Wemmenhove and de Groot, 2001;Capdevila et al., 2002; Sahin et al., 2009; Müller-Christ et al., 2013).In this study, following the definition of “green university” and“sustainable university” (Creighton, 1999; Velazquez et al., 2006;Lozano et al., 2013), we refer “green curriculum” as the curricu-lum that are taking environmental protection, natural conserva-tion, resources saving and rational utilization, and advocacy ofenvironmental friendliness as the principal content and teachingobjectives.

In every university, numerous courses are provided to teachprofessional knowledge and technical skills for better prospects ofstudents (Lozano, 2010), and the sum of all the courses providedby an institute would be more than ten thousand, more so for topuniversities. Under this circumstance, the keyword search methodwas adopted to carry out this study. Lee et al. (2013) developed alist of 14 keywords that related to “sustainability”, these aresustain, responsible, equity, equitable, social, ethical, citizen,

Table 1Green curriculum index from various categories of universities and colleges.

Category of university Sum ofschool

Sampled schoolnumber

GSR (%)

Agriculture 31 14 100.00Forestry 6 6 100.00Engineering 191 57 96.36Comprehensive 148 44 95.35Education 140 42 97.50Ethnic 12 12 100.00Medicine 99 30 55.88Economic 85 26 83.33Law 25 8 44.44Arts 36 11 10.00Language 21 9 40.00Sports 16 8 0Sum 810 267Average 19.47

a A general rating of greening level (A > B > C > D) was given for each of the 12 cate

citizenship, global, environmental, stewardship, moral, planet, andcommon good. In order to analyze sustainable development, somerelated keywords, such as sustainable/sustainability, sustainabledevelopment, environment (al), ecology/ecological, green, socialand ethics/ethical were also adopted (Seuring and Müller, 2008).Hence the requirement of keywords, based on the abovementioned definition and researches, must interrelate closelywith environment, ecology and resource, and can express theidea of sustainability and environmental friendliness in all con-texts. Finally, some keywords and their combination were used indata collection, such as “green”, “environmental protection”,“natural conservation”, “sustain/sustainable”, “environment/envi-ronmental”, “pollution”, “energy-saving”, “low-carbon”, “ecology/ecological”, “recycling” and “resource”. Although these keywordscannot represent the entire contents of the curricula, they high-light the importance of “green education” and sustainable edu-cation and conform to the feature of “green curricula”construction in China.

2.2. Data collection and classification

Until August 2010, there are a total of 810 public colleges anduniversities in China. According to the characteristics of these col-leges and universities, they were defined into 12 categories:comprehensive, engineering, agriculture, forestry, medicine, edu-cation, art, ethic, economic, sports, language and law (CHSI, 2010).By using stratified random sampling method, 267 sampled uni-versities and colleges from 12 categories were sampled to analyzethe level of “green curriculum”, and the sampling ratio was no lessthan 30% (Table 1). All data of “green curriculum” of 267 univer-sities and colleges were obtained from their teaching websites.

These 267 institutions were also defined by three othermethods:

(1) Funding agency- most public education institutions are fundedby central and local governments. They are defined by theirfunding agency, which are Ministry of Education (MOE), otherministries of the central government (MCG), and local gov-ernment (LG).

(2) Academic rating- the institutions are defined as the “Project985” universities, the “Project 211” universities, and otheruniversities. The “Project 985” universities and the “Project211” universities refer to the top 39 universities with thehighest academic level and the top 116 universities withexcellent academic level respectively.

PGI SGI NECI AGI Analysis ofclusteringa

5.27 27.79 2.09 11.72 A5.33 21.55 1.80 9.56 A3.72 15.14 1.43 6.76 B5.39 12.05 1.40 6.28 B4.36 9.49 1.60 5.15 B4.08 10.88 1.50 5.49 B1.72 5.72 1.00 2.81 C2.41 5.99 2.00 3.47 C1.75 3.70 2.00 2.48 C1.00 0.56 0 0.52 D1.00 2.08 0 1.03 D0 0 1.00 0.33 D

4.48 12.67 1.32 4.63

gories of universities and colleges.

H. Xiong et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 61 (2013) 100e105102

(3) Institute locations’ level of development- the institutions arealso divided into three regions of development; region I-developed provinces and municipalities including Tianjin,Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Henan, Hubei,Hunan, and Guangdong; region II- moderately developed re-gions such as Hebei, Shanxi, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui,Jiangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, and Shaanxi; region III- leastdeveloped regions including Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Hainan,Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang.

Besides of the number of green curriculums in different collegesand universities, the number of excellent green curriculums andgreen textbook can also reflect the development and progress ofgreen education. Therefore, according to the same keywords abovementioned, the number of green excellent course in different uni-versities between years of 2001e2010 are collected from nationalcenter for excellent curriculum resources (NCECR, 2011) and thegreen textbook published between years of 2005e2010 wasinvestigated for complementary analysis (CBCHE, 2011; CBCIHL,2011). All publishers were divided into level A and level B, inwhich level A refers to the top 100 excellent publishers in China,and level B refers to other publishers.

2.3. Data analysis

We put forward some different indexes in order to obtain morecomprehensive information. They included: green school rate(GSR), program greening index (PGI), school greening index (SGI),national excellent courses greening index (NECI) and averagegreening index (AGI).

The calculation of all of these indexes are given as following:

GSR ¼ S1=S2

PGI ¼ CI=P1

SGI ¼ P1=P2� 100

NECI ¼ E1=S3

AGI ¼ ðPGIþ SGIþ NECIÞ=3

where:

S1: number of schools that offer green curriculumS2: number of sampled schoolS3: number of schools that hold excellent greening courseC1: Green curriculum numberP1: number of programs that offer green curriculumP2: number of programs of sampled schoolE1: number of excellent greening course

Statistical analysis, including clustering analysis of PGI, SGI andNECI among different categories of universities was conductedwithSPSS 18.0 software package.

Table 2Green curriculum index of universities and colleges with different sponsorship.

Sponsorship Sum ofschool

Sampled schnumber

Ministry of Education (MOE) 75 23Other ministries of central government (MCG) 39 13Local governments (LG) 696 231

3. Results

3.1. The construction of green curriculum from various categories ofuniversities and colleges

Green curriculum index from various categories of universitiesand colleges is presented in Table 1, and it showed that the greencurriculum is offered in all the sampled universities and colleges offorestry, ethnic study and agriculture. Due to the program featuresof constructional and developmental orientation, some universitiesand colleges remain short of green curriculum, e.g. GSR of univer-sities and colleges of medicine, law, language, arts and sports is lessthan 50%. None of the sports universities and colleges has any greencurriculum. In general, 20% of all universities and colleges do notoffer any green curriculum.

As to PGI, comprehensive, forestry and agriculture universitiesand colleges reach more than 5, and are ranked the top of 12 cat-egories of universities. Furthermore, SGIs of agriculture andforestry universities and colleges exceed 20, but the best SGIs ofengineering universities and colleges is merely 15. For NECI, onlyagriculture, economy and law universities and colleges reached 2.Comprehensive analysis showed that the maximum values of AGIbelong to the universities of agriculture (11.72) and forestry (9.56),and the lowest for the sports colleges (0.33).

The 12 categories of universities and colleges are clustered intofour groups of greening levels, and the order of greening extent isA > B > C > D. The first level A belongs to forestry and agricultureuniversities and colleges, but sports, art and linguistic universitiesand colleges belong to D level of the lowest greening.

3.2. The construction of green curriculum of universities andcolleges with various funding agencies

Green curriculum index of universities and colleges withdifferent funding agencies is showed as Table 2. The results indicatethat GSRs of universities and colleges funded by the Ministry ofEducation (MOE) of China exceed 90%, and only 2 universities andcolleges lack of green curriculum. On the contrary, GSRs of uni-versities and colleges funded by other ministries of central gov-ernment (MCG) and local governments (LG) are relatively low, andGSR of MCG is even less than 70%. Likewise, the highest values ofPGI and SGI belong to the universities and colleges funded by MOE,and the lowest ones belong to the ones funded by MCG. AGIs showthe same situation as stated above, and moreover, the values of theones funded by the MOE are 3 folds higher than that funded by LG.

3.3. The green curriculum construction of various academic ratingof universities and colleges

The green curriculum construction of various academic rating ofuniversities and colleges is showed in Table 3. Only 1 of 12 uni-versities and colleges have not established green curriculum amongthe “Project 985” universities, and GSR of the “Project 985” uni-versities is over 90%. On the other hand, GSR of the other univer-sities is less than 80%, and among which 49 universities andcolleges are short of green curriculum. Similarly, PGI, SGI and NECI

ool GSR(%) PGI SGI NECI AGI

91.30 5.73 67.57 2.00 25.1069.23 5.12 22.46 1.00 9.5380.09 4.11 18.26 1.37 7.91

Table 3Green curriculum index of various academic levels in China’s universities and colleges.

Universities with differentacademic level

Sum ofuniversities

Sampled universitynumber

GSR(%) PGI SGI NECI AGI

“Project 985” universities 39 12 91.67 5.47 77.50 2.03 28.33“Project 211” universities 116 16 87.50 4.30 40.06 1.65 15.34Other universities 655 239 79.50 4.34 18.79 1.35 8.16

H. Xiong et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 61 (2013) 100e105 103

of the “Project 985” universities are more than the ones of the“Project 211” universities and the other universities. SGI of theother universities is less than one-quarter of the “Project 985”universities, and AGI is also fewer than one third of the “Project985” universities.

3.4. Green curriculum construction in different region

Green curriculum construction of the universities located indifferent regions is presented in Table 4. From Table 4 GSR is higherthan 80% among the three categories of universities at differentlocations, but PGI and NECI of universities and colleges from theregion I is 1.3 times of the region Ⅲ, and SGI of the universitieslocated in I region is 2 folds of the ones located in Ⅲ region.Therefore, AGI of universities and colleges at region I is muchhigher than the ones at region Ⅲ.

3.5. The greening of textbooks

Fig. 1 gives the number of green textbooks published in year2005e2010. During year 2005e2010 number of green textbookspublished in China increased, and there was a significant increasein 2010 that reached 1.38 times of that in 2009. By analysis of levelA and B publishers, it is observed that the increment of textbookpublication from level A publishers is higher than that from level Bpublishers.

Fig. 2 shows that number of green textbooks dealing with en-gineering discipline increase the fastest (reaching 700 textbooks),and the second fastest was the science discipline. The textbooksnumbers of literature, philosophy and education are less than 10.

4. Discussion

By analyzing a sample of 267 universities, it is found that agri-culture- and forestry-based institutions are the most successfulamong the 12 categories in providing environmental education indifferent academic disciplines. These institutions have developedtheir programs and curricula with a focus on natural environments,and they are more concerned about the human-environmentconflicts than other types of institutions. Conversely, due to thefocus on literature and skill training, institutions specialized inlanguage, arts and sports are the least successful in addressingenvironmental issues among all of the 267 universities.

For the aspect of funding agency, the curricula developed byinstitutions funded directly byMOE are significantly “greener” thanthose funded by local governments. It may reflect a higher capacity

Table 4The index of Green curriculum construction in different region.

Region Sum ofschool

Sampled schoolnumber

GSR(%) PGI SGI NECI AGI

The region Ⅰ 400 136 80.15 4.81 27.10 1.65 11.19The region Ⅱ 294 87 80.46 4.17 20.64 1.47 8.76The region Ⅲ 116 44 81.82 3.70 13.20 1.20 6.03

of realization, understanding and implementing of “green educa-tion” of the institutions funded directly by MOE and that they haveserved as role models for “green education”. Similarly, the “Project985” universities also performed better in providing “green edu-cation” than other universities. It has been proved that those uni-versities with higher comprehensive strength in teaching andresearch often play a more powerful exemplary role in developing“green education” (Li et al., 2008).

As to different regions, region I with more developed educationand economy may be more capable to devote more resources andattention to develop “green education”. As a matter of fact, theuniversities operated directly under the MOE and are located inregion I would be able to obtain more financial support from thegovernments (the Central Government or local governments) (Liet al., 2008), allowing them to develop “green curricula” andother kinds of “greening” activities and promotions. For example,from a research report for 123 excellent universities and colleges inChina in year 2004, education funding for the “Project 985” uni-versities has an average of 1000 million yuan (CNY) per university,while others only has less 300 million (Li et al., 2008). On the otherhand, the proportion of educational expenditure in GDP is morethan 6% in America public education in 2005, but in China theproportion is less than 4% (Ma, 2011). It reflects that governmentalpolicy as well as financial support may be the main factors of therelatively slow development of “green education”. Therefore,formulating supportive policies and an increase of educationalfunding are key to improve both the quality of education and thelevel of environmental education in the rapidly expanding aca-demic system.

Generally speaking, the development of “green curriculum” isunevenly spread over the academic system in China, especiallyunderdeveloped in regions Ⅲ where natural resources are rich andoverexploitation is common (Xu and Wilkes, 2004). If these issuesare not properly addressed now, the environmental problems arelikely to escalate and spread to other parts of the country as well asneighboring countries (Zunckela et al., 2004; Mukerjee et al., 2001).Therefore it is suggested that green education should be

Fig. 1. The number of published green textbooks in 2005e2010 years. (A refers to thetop 100 excellent publishers; B refers to the other publishers that are except A; C refersto total publishers.)

Fig. 2. The greening of textbooks in various disciplines.

H. Xiong et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 61 (2013) 100e105104

strengthened by taking appropriate measures. Firstly, financialinput in education in underdeveloped areas should be increasedand the development of “green curriculum” should be furtherencouraged; secondly, some non-science-based universities couldprovide compulsory courses that integrate environmental educa-tion into the programs for different disciplines.

After years of efforts, China has made some progress in devel-oping “green curriculum”, and has published an increasing quantityand quality of “green textbooks. Yet these progresses are notcomparable to other developed countries. For instance, at CataloniaEngineering College, the ratio of “green curriculum” reached 16.5%in 2004, while it is just 7.4% in China nowadays.

There are nearly 20% of all the 267 sampled universities andcolleges still failed to offer any courses related to “green education”.The Education Department should pay attention to these in-stitutions that have not offered any “green curriculum”, it shouldprovide more guidance and support to encourage the adoption of“green education”, and to create a “greener campus” throughenhancing environmental awareness and “green technology”(Capdevila et al., 2002).

Our findings suggest:

(1) Green education should be integrated into every academicdiscipline (Lozano et al., 2013), including art, philosopher,language, sport, law etc, to promote the concept of sustain-ability (Collett and Karakashian, 1997).

(2) The number of green curriculum must be increased by somesuitable methods (Tinker and Burt, 2004; Saadatian et al., 2010;de Castro and Jabbour, 2013), such as the open curriculum(Lansu et al., 2013) and internal drives (Müller-Christ et al.,2013), to close the gaps between China and other developedand developing countries (Ferrer-Balas et al., 2004; Saadatian,2009).

(3) The publishing of “green textbooks” and relative journalsshould be encouraged in every discipline (Karatzoglou, 2013).

(4) In the western part of China, the environment is relatively richin natural resources and is relatively fragile from human ac-tivity (Yeh, 2005), thus “green education” should be improvedin this region to cope with the increasing demand in environ-mental protection.

(5) “Green education” and “green curriculum” should be com-plemented by “green atmosphere”, only by increasing students’environmental awareness and incorporate the concept of sus-tainability into every aspect of their life can “green education”be truly successful (Abdul-Wahab et al., 2003).

(6) The level of “green education” should become an importantindex in assessing institutional performances (Tonn, 2013).

On the whole, much work needed to be done to improve thelevel of “green education” in higher education of China (Yuan et al.,2013), and more efforts are required to develop “green curriculum”

for different academic disciplines. There is a pressing need toenhance “green education” and promote “green university” (Yuanand Zuo, 2012) to help the society and the economy of China toachieve sustainable development in the future.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Wang Yutao and two anonymous reviewers fortheir comment. We would also like to thank Dr. Wong Hang Gi forhelp in improving the English manuscript. This research wassponsored by National Key Sciences and Technology Program forWater Solutions (2012ZX07102-003), Natural Science Foundationof China (U1133604, 30760049), the Scientific Research and Tech-nological Development Project of Yunnan (2012T001).

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