Toward sustainable educational travel

Abstract

In the past decade, sustainability and global citizenship have emerged as two of the most prominent themes in contemporary higher education. Literature that specifically merges the two themes has, however, lagged behind. This paper integrates the literature from the fields of sustainable tourism and educational travel in order to articulate relevant concepts and to summarize theoretical and empirical approaches for improving the sustainability of educational travel programs. While most of the literature focuses upon carbon-related issues, a more comprehensive assessment and implementation would focus on the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental, and socio-cultural. This paper advocates several practical measures, such as the incorporation of sustainability into program mission statements, the training of travel leaders in all three dimensions of sustainability, and the implementation of sustainability-related assessment measures for educational travel programs. Further, we argue that maintaining critical scholarly engagement with broader theoretical frameworks is necessary to contextualize these practical and empirical approaches, and to reassess the potential benefits and negative impacts associated with educational travel.

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