The International Journal of Management Education 17 (2019) 100322

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The International Journal of

Management Education
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijme

Education for advancing the implementation of the Sustainable

T
Development Goals: A systematic approach
Aline Bento Ambrosio Avelar∗, Keilla Dayane da Silva-Oliveira,
Raquel da Silva Pereira
USCS - Municipal University of Sao Caetano do Sul, R. Santo Antonio, 50 - Centro, São Caetano do Sul, São Paulo, Brazil

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: The research presented systematically reviewed the literature on education for advancing im-
Sustainable development goals plementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to identify important bibliometric
Education patterns and evidence in this relatively new, but evolving, field. To conceptualize the phenom-
Principles for responsible management enon, accumulated ideas from a total of 193 articles were extracted through a secondary data
education
source, the Web of Science™. The analysis proceeds in two sequential steps. First, the bibliometric
Systematic approach
analysis identified the networks of co-authorship, periodicals, higher education institutions
VOSviewer
Iramuteq (HEI), and more influential countries. The second stage involved the analysis of the thematic
content, generated by the Iramuteq software, which identified four dominant and comprehensive
lenses that represent the source for the body of the literature, namely: i) indicators; ii) educa-
tional environment; iii) policies for the implementation of the SDGs or for sustainable education;
and iv) Principles for Responsible Management Education. These lenses are supported by a set of
perspectives and cover education; the notion that this should be the strategy for promoting
sustainable development through the implementation of the SDGs; and that HEIs should develop
responsible managers via the integration of sustainability, ethics, and responsible management
education.

1. Introduction

The beginning of the twenty-first century brought important advances at the international level to increase the viability of a more
sustainable form of development. In the year 2000, the United Nations (UN) launched the Global Compact, which was an ambitious
attempt to engage the international business community in sustainable development via the implementation and dissemination of
policies and practices with an inclusive and multiparticipatory orientation (Buono, 2014; Kell, 2012; Parkes, Buono, & Howaidy,
2017).
In the same year, eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were defined by the UN, establishing another challenge for all
nations to address. The adoption of Agenda 2030 for sustainable development marked an important change in priorities in the area of
education. Although the MDGs focused solely on achieving universal primary education, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
emphasize the importance of education before and after primary school (Milovantseva, Earle, & Heymann, 2018).
Strengthening this international movement towards sustainable development, in coordination with the Global Compact the
Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) were defined in 2007 (Borges, Ferreira, de Oliveira, Macini, & Caldana,

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: alinebento@hotmail.com (A.B.A. Avelar), keilladsoliveira@gmail.com (K.D.d. Silva-Oliveira),
raquel.pereira@prof.uscs.edu.br (R.d.S. Pereira).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2019.100322
Received 15 January 2019; Received in revised form 19 July 2019; Accepted 25 September 2019
1472-8117/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A.B.A. Avelar, et al. The International Journal of Management Education 17 (2019) 100322

2017; Starik, Rands, Marcus, & Clark, 2010). These principles were established with the aim of guiding managers of higher education
institutions (HEIs) and educators in advancing solutions to complex and challenging environments for future responsible manage-
ment. They also seek to ensure that all students acquire, through education, the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable
development and sustainable lifestyles (Borges et al., 2017)
In 2015, the UN proposed a new coordinated global agenda between governments, businesses, academia and civil society, which
comprised the 169 SDGs. These goals refer to a collective journey to meet one of the main global challenges for sustainable de-
velopment; that is, the eradication of poverty in all forms and dimensions (United Nations, 2018).
In 2016, being signatory of PRME reinforced its commitment to responsible management education by aligning its priorities with
the SDGs through a review of its strategic plan. Signatory HEIs can converge to responsible management education through SDGs. In
order to bring propositions, values and guidelines to business schools, the PRME initiative aims to help HEIs play an important role in
empowering managers as citizens with a responsible vision (PRME Secretariat, 2016).
The UN positioned education at the heart of the strategy to promote sustainable development. Educators and business leaders are
in a position to influence the mentality and actions of future leaders; thus, the development of leaders through education can be
characterized as a journey that should be based on the SDGs (Hourneaux & Caldana, 2017; Waltner, Rieß, & Brock, 2018).
Managerial education highlights the need to acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit the business environment, especially when
it comes to how leadership is and will be formed. Thus, management education in HEIs plays a prominent role in forming responsible
leaders who promote sustainable development (Starik et al., 2010; Storey, Killian, & O'Regan, 2017; Cicmil, Gough, & Hills, 2017).
There is a need for higher education to address sustainability in its teaching, research and extension based on pedagogical
proposals centered on the criticality of the subjects, with a view to changing behavior and attitudes. However, such an approach
should be interdisciplinary in order to stimulate interaction and interdependence between disciplines and, consequently, among
people for the development of interactive methodologies (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017; Kolb, Fröhlich, & Schmidpeter, 2017).
This article explores and maps the field of education for advancing the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals,
contributing to the identification of researchers on this subject and their contributions to the area of study.
Thus, through a systematic review, this article fills a research gap by identifying the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary
approach to education for sustainable development and recognizing different perspectives and sustainability approaches. It examines
the broad agenda of the SDGs considering the PRME, and reviews the literature on interdisciplinarity and its application in education.
Recent advances in information have made indexing and searching for scientific research more systematic and replicable, and
scholars are increasingly using bibliometric analysis as a technique to identify trends and groupings in the literature (Sparrowe,
Liden, & Kraimer, 2001; Van Eck & Waltman, 2014). Bibliometric analyses differ from the approaches of traditional research that uses
software to assist in the classification of research into different categories and/or clusters using information available from biblio-
graphical records (Schneider, 2006; Van Eck & Waltman, 2014).
Using a combination of bibliometric analysis and systematic review, this work proposes to answer the following research ques-
tions: (1) How are publications on education for advancing implementation of the SDGs sorted? (2) Which journals, authors, uni-
versities and countries are the most influential in the field? (3) Which networks of research co-authorship, and which themes, are
prioritized by authors in the field?
This study advances, in an interdisciplinary way, research in the area of education that promotes implementation of the SDGs.
First, using a bibliometric analysis of citations, the study contributes to defining the interdisciplinary field of research by enhancing
understanding of its current state, and identifying the main publications, magazines, universities and countries that have contributed
to the field, and the interrelations between these. Second, this study uses content analysis to identify the various intellectual per-
spectives underlying research on education and the SDGs via a qualitative interpretation. Third, based on the co-authorship networks,
this article develops a conceptual structure that integrates the findings and provides guidelines on the theme in order to generate new
discoveries.
This paper aims to characterize the scientific output on education for advancing implementation of the SDGs via collaborative
networks between authors, universities, countries and periodicals that have developed research during the period from 2015 to 2018.
The article was motivated by an identified need to understand how education can disseminate the best practices of implementing
SDGs, given that higher education has been gaining prominence in managerial education and the formation of leaders, and that
students need to be made aware of the long-term implications of the actions they will take throughout their careers.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows: The next section presents a brief overview of the SDGs, education and PRME;
the subsequent section outlines the methodological procedures performed and maps the field by presenting the results of our ana-
lyses; and the last section concludes the study, presenting final observations and suggesting paths for future research.

2. Sustainable Development Goals and education

The educational standards of a society will dictate its degree of success in dealing with complex issues to promote sustainable
development; the educational level of its leaders directly influences the reach of the SDGs (Kolb et al., 2017).
The SDGs are an agenda for sustainable development that must be implemented by all countries by 2030 (United Nations, 2018).
Quality education (Goal 4) aims not only to provide inclusive and equitable education, but also to promote learning opportunities.
It is understood as a priority, considering that sustainable development occurs in environments where there is education (United
Nations, 2018).
Fig. 1 shows that Goal 4 has direct impacts on the others: sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full employment
and productive and decent work for all (8); responsible consumption and production (12); partnerships and means of implementation

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Fig. 1. Impact of business schools on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Source: Kolb et al. (2017).

(17); and mainly on building resilient infrastructures, promoting inclusive industrialization and sustainable development, and fos-
tering innovation (9), by promoting innovation at a greater intensity.
Achieving Goal 4 is a challenge for primary education, secondary education, and higher education. Importantly, Agenda 2030 for
sustainable development – that is, the SDGs – marks an important change in the UN's priorities in the educational area. This ob-
servation is necessary because the MDGs focused solely on achieving universal primary education, while the SDGs emphasize the
relevance of education before and after primary school (Milovantseva et al., 2018).
Elementary and secondary education that is free, equitable, and high quality for both boys and girls is SDG 4.1 and the UN
understands that, if this objective is achieved, it will have a relevant effect on learning (United Nations, 2018). Higher education has
until 2020 to reach SDG 4(B), which consists in increasing the number of scholarships globally for higher education, including
vocational training programs, information and communication technology, and technical and engineering programs (United Nations,
2018).
However, higher education requires responsible management education, not only in planning, curriculum pedagogy, and re-
search, but also in institutional practices. In this way, leadership development and responsible management education in the HEI to
reach the SDGs are relevant in terms of the development of society (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017; Fleacă, Fleacă, & Maiduc, 2018;
McCowan, 2016; Parkes et al., 2017; Waltner et al., 2018).
The business community recognizes the importance of responsible management education for the training of leaders who perform
sustainable management, and the academic community has advocated the offer of curricula that teach students to make decisions
based on social and environmental responsibilities, as well as economic concerns (Wade & Parker, 2008).
There is a need for a new way to acquire, assimilate, transform, and exploit the business environment, especially in terms of how
leaders are and will be formed. The SDGs aim to increase its participation in higher education, provide information and knowledge,
and, mainly, disseminate the best practices of HEI and companies (Crespo, Míguez-Álvarez, Arce, Cuevas, & Míguez, 2017;
Hourneaux & Caldana, 2017).
The PRME secretariat, in 2016, revised its strategic plan to reach the UN's SDGs by means of education that develops responsible
management. Thus, signatory HEIs should adopt strategies to foster discussions and actions to disseminate the agenda of the SDGs
(PRME Secretariat, 2016). The principles listed in Table 1 constitute a voluntary platform for the involvement of HEIs, based on
values represented by the tripod of ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability (Soares, Oliva, & Zucco, 2014).
In December 2018, there were 730 HEI signatories to the PRME globally, classified as to the level of engagement into Champions
(5%), Advanced (26%), Basic (54%), and Non-communicanting signatory (15%). Champions are understood as the most engaged and
are recognized as leaders of thought and/or action in the responsible management network formed by signatories (UN PRME, 2018).
The PRME network collaborates in a systemic review of HEIs’ pedagogical model, based on continuous improvement of actions to
disseminate the SDGs. HEIs are part of a learning network and report progress through Sharing Information on Progress (SIP).
Governments, HEIs, and companies are essential to promote the SDGs, contributing effectively to leadership development. Annan-
Diab and Molinari (2017) demonstrate that there is a need to approach responsible management education for sustainable devel-
opment in an interdisciplinary way. The authors explain that the broad agenda of the SDGs will only be institutionalized by the

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Table 1
The six Principles for Responsible Management Education.
Source: UN PRME (2018).
Purpose We will develop the capabilities of students to be future generators of sustainable value for business and society at large and to work for an
inclusive and sustainable global economy.

Values We will incorporate into our academic activities, curricula, and organizational practices the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in
international initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact.
Method We will create educational frameworks, materials, processes and environments that enable effective learning experiences for responsible
leadership.
Research We will engage in conceptual and empirical research that advances our understanding about the role, dynamics, and impact of corporations in
the creation of sustainable social, environmental and economic value.
Partnership We will interact with managers of business corporations to extend our knowledge of their challenges in meeting social and environmental
responsibilities and to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting these challenges.
Dialogue We will facilitate and support dialogue and debate among educators, students, business, government, consumers, media, civil society
organizations and other interested groups and stakeholders on critical issues related to global social responsibility and sustainability.

participation of multiple disciplines. Through a case study, they demonstrate how much the PRME encourage students to understand
and act in favor of sustainable development.
Students who are currently in training in HEIs will have to deal with issues such as corruption, corporate scandals, the economic
recession, global warming, and collaborative actions to achieve the SDGs. Borges, Ferreira, de Oliveira, Macini, and Caldana (2017)
and Weybrecht (2017) understand that management education is a “key to success” in order for responsible leaders to collaborate to
ensure sustainable development.
Parkes et al. (2017) emphasize that not only students, but also the educators who will train the next business leaders, are in a
privileged position to influence organizations’ mindset and actions.
The PRME collaborate so that the SDGs are achieved as part of their commitment to responsible management education, as a
result of the integration between ethics and responsible management education in drawing up the HEI curriculum (Parkes et al.,
2017; Storey et al., 2017). In this way, it will be possible for leadership development in higher education to acquire and assimilate the
knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable, responsible, and ethical development (Crespo et al., 2017; Hourneaux &
Caldana, 2017; Weybrecht, 2017).
The theoretical framework demonstrates the relevance of education for advancing the implementation of the SDGs through the
PRME initiative for sustainable, responsible, and ethical development.

3. Methodological procedures

Based on a systematic review of 193 articles, a bibliometric analysis was performed during the period from 2015 to 2018, in order
to identify and visualize the intellectual structure or knowledge base of research on education for advancing the implementation of
the SDGs. This bibliometric analysis was based on three different methods of analysis, namely citation, co-citation, and co-authorship.
The period 2015–2018 was justified by the fact that the SDGs were proposed by the UN in 2015.
Bibliometric analyses are relevant because they allow the identification of influential authors and their interrelationships, pro-
viding researchers with a solid basis for positioning current contributions and detecting new lines and trends for future studies. These
analyses involve the statistical treatment of scientific publications, besides providing information and data about the level of activity
in a particular field of research, allowing the results to be used to evaluate the development of research and the performance of
researchers, periodicals, countries, and institutions (Merigó, Mas-Tur, Roig-Tierno, & Ribeiro-Soriano, 2015).
The data sample studied was obtained through the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Emerging Sources Citation Index
(ESCI), available online at Web of Science (WoS), a database that provides information for identifying the most cited articles, besides
giving access to the references cited in each article. Checking the number of citations in the research works is usual practice for this
type of study, in order to increase the reliability of the results (García-Lillo, Claver-Cortés, Marco-Lajara, & Úbeda-García, 2017).
WoS is a digital platform recognized internationally among researchers for offering high quality standards (Merigo, Gil-Lafuente,
& Yager, 2015) and has become one of the main tools for researching and evaluating different types of publications and periodicals
(Merigo, Pedrycz, Weber, & de la Sotta, 2018).
To achieve the objective of this research, the articles were first filtered by the keyword “education” located in the title or in the
abstract, or even in the keywords of the scientific texts. In this phase 186,929 articles were found. The second filtration used the
expression “Sustainable Development Goals,” being found in 1925 articles, and then research was conducted with the association
between these two terms. In this stage, only the articles that contained the two related themes were selected, totaling 193 documents
(Fig. 2).
The development of this article is based on the bibliometric analysis used by Merigo et al. (2015). The use of keywords to select
the articles is justified by being an effective way to obtain an overview of the research that is conducted with different focuses, such as
specific topics or journals (Merigo & Yang, 2017).
The words used are justified according to Kolb et al. (2017), since the educational models will lead society to the debate on and
practice of educating leaders by promoting the reach of the SDGs. Thus, this work bases the research on these concepts, which have
aroused increasing interest in the academic environment and are applied in the daily life of companies.

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Fig. 2. Filtering process.

To achieve the research objectives two bibliometric techniques were combined: performance analysis and scientific mapping. The
bibliometric performance analysis uses a wide range of techniques, including analysis of word frequency, citations, and counting of
publications by country, university, research group, or authors (Thelwall, 2008).
The scientific mapping of bibliometrics is a spatial representation of how the different scientific actors are related to each other
(Cobo, López-Herrera, Herrera-Viedma, & Herrera, 2012; Small, 1999). In this sense, the objective of this methodology is to show the
structural and dynamic aspects of the research.
Therefore, it makes sense to understand the structure of academic production in terms of authors who are quoted jointly, via the
technique of analysis of co-citation, with the structure of citations in terms of common patterns (Merigo et al., 2018; Tur-Porcar, Mas-
Tur, Merigo, Roig-Tierno, & Watt, 2018).
The analysis of the data and the elaboration of the networks and maps were generated with the help of VOSviewer software (Van
Eck & Waltman, 2010), version 1.6.7, which allows for the original sample of papers from the ISI WoS to be imported. The following
analyses were generated (of which the networks were elaborated in the software): i) co-authorship networks (Glänzel, 2001); ii)
citation networks (Meho & Yang, 2006); and iii) co-citation networks (Small, 1999).
To understand in greater depth how the publications were divided and which themes were studied, we used the technique of
content analysis (Bardin, 2011), and thus all titles, abstracts, and keywords were analyzed. After separating the texts, they were
imported into the software Iramuteq 0.7 Alpha 2 (Interface of R pour les Analyses multidimensionnelles de textes et de Ques-
tionnaires), used for the treatment of qualitative data. With the support of this software, we performed textual content analysis using
descending hierarchical classification.
Descending hierarchical classification aims to divide groups of words, allowing an understanding of the hierarchical relationship
between them, as well as to observe the relationships between words, with segments of the text defined by the software. This analysis
generates different statistics and the groupings require observations regarding the theoretical meaning that is interpreted by the
researchers (Reinert, 1990).

4. Analysis of results

This section presents the search results and discusses them.

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Fig. 3. Number of publications from 2015 to 2018.

4.1. Publication numbers per year

The study identified 193 articles on education for advancing the implementation of the SDG terms in the title, abstract, author
keywords, and Keywords Plus® between 2015 and 2018. We found 515 authors affiliated with 337 institutions in 66 countries and
118 journals (Fig. 3).
It was noted that 12 publications involving concomitantly education and SDGs in 2015 can be considered an important number,
since the SDGs were launched that same year.
There were 193 articles published in four years, an average of 48 articles per year. In 2018, the increase in the number of
publications within the scope of this research was 5.5 times greater than that identified in 2015. These figures show that academia
recognizes the importance of educational approaches as a means of implementing the SDGs.

4.2. Co-authorship networks

Co-authorship networks are employed to investigate existing standards of collaboration among researchers at various levels, such
as individual, institutional, national, and international. Using the data available in the WoS from 2015 to 2018, some researchers
were shown to develop their studies in an individual way, but 18 collaboration networks stand out, as shown in Fig. 4.
Based on the analysis of the selected articles, it is important to detail the most significant collaborative networks, distinguishing
those that have seven members or above (Fig. 5). The brown, green, blue, red, light blue, orange, and light green networks contain
one item each. The lilac and pink networks contain two articles each.
The brown network contains an article with seven authors. Hannah Kupera, Matthew Walshama, Islay Mactaggarta, Morgon
Banksa, and Karl Blancheta are linked to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK, while Flora Myamba and
Simeon Mesaki are linked to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
This article demonstrates the need for more comprehensive social programs for people with disabilities in three districts surveyed
in Tanzania, given that the target audience was aware of programs in the areas of health and education, but these were not tailored to
their needs.
The authors in the brown network understand that the SDGs will hardly reach “ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere”
without the proper inclusion of people with disabilities, and an understanding of their needs.
The green network has an article with 12 authors. Pamela Y. Collins and Beverly Pringle are linked to the US National Institute of
Mental Health; Charlee Alexander and Mariana Zindel are linked to the US National Academies of Science; Lorraine Sherr is linked to
University College London and Dragana Sretenov is linked to the Early Childhood Program, both in the UK. Gary L. Darmstadt is
affiliated with the Stanford University School of Medicine, Jody Heymann is linked to the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health,
Gillian Huebner is linked to Maestral International, Vesna Kutlesic is linked to the Institute of Child Health and Human Development,
Cheryl Polk is linked to the HighScope Educational Research Foundation, and Andy Shih is linked to Autism Speaks, all institutions
located in the United States.
This article reinforces the importance of the SDGs and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) so that it is possible to
live in a society where there is education and health for children with disabilities, and for them to have access to health care and
education. Therefore, parents of these children should participate in educational programs aimed at children with developmental
delays and disabilities.
The green network highlights the challenge of achieving inclusive and equitable education highlighted in Goal 4 of the SDGs,
which permeated the educational level of leadership, as mentioned by United Nations (2015) and Kolb et al. (2017), which reinforces
the importance of higher education to leadership development and responsible management education for advancing the im-
plementation of the SDGs.
The blue network represents an article with 11 authors: Mark Jessell, David Baratoux, Luc Siebenaller, and Lenka Baratoux are
linked to the University of Toulouse, France; Kim Hein is linked to the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; Anthony

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Fig. 4. Co-authorship networks.

Maduekwe is linked to UNESCO in Senegal; François Morou Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso, Mababa Diagne, and El Hajdi Sow are linked
to University Cheik in Senegal; and Joe Cucuzza and Adele Seymon are linked to AMIRA International in Australia.
The blue network article demonstrates the success of new higher education models in geosciences in West Africa and how these
new models contribute to the improvement of local higher education and to meeting the demands of industry and organizations for
qualified personnel in geosciences. The research corroborates the studies already undertaken by Crespo et al. (2017) into new models
of teaching and reinforcing sustainable development from responsible management education in order to provide access to in-
formation, knowledge, and the dissemination of best practices in higher education and enterprises.
The red network represents an article with 13 authors. Eight of them are linked to HEIs in Uruguay: José E. Bervejillo, Mario
Mondelli, and María Eugenia Silva, who are linked to the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries; Miguel Carriquiry, who is
linked to the Universidad de la República; Bruno Ferraro, Bruno Lanfranco, Rodrigo Saldias, and Juan Manuel Soares de Lima, who
are linked to the Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria. David R. Kanter is linked to New York University in the United
States; Walter E. Baethgen and Cecilia Penengo are linked to Columbia University in the United States; Achim Dobermann is linked to
Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom; and Marie-Hélène Schwoob is linked to the Institute for Sustainable Development and
International Relations in France.
The authors report that Uruguay is working to implement the SDGs as a roadmap for policy development in the agricultural
sector, considering the interactions of the sector with various aspects of sustainable development, from education and poverty
reduction to human health and the environment. McCowan (2016) points out that among the functions of the HEI, is to be a place for
critical reflection and discussion of society and policies aimed at achieving the SDGs.
The lilac network consists of Brazilian authors and contains two articles. Julio Cesar Borges, Tamiris Capellaro Ferreira, Otavia
Travençolo Muniz Sala, Delton Lehr Unglaub, Marcelo Silveira Borges de Oliveira, Nayele Macini, and Adriana Cristina Ferreira
Caldana are linked to the University of São Paulo, while Luciana Oranges Cezarino is linked to Uberlândia Federal University.
The two articles in the lilac network were published in 2017 in the International Journal of Management Education, and relate the
SDGs to the PRME. The authors demonstrate that student organizations (Communities of Practice, CoPs) are able to promote the
SDGs, from the content analysis of the responses of students from nine CoPs in an HEI, which is a signatory to the PRME. Respondents
explained that CoPs connect people via their shared beliefs and values to achieve various goals, including the SDGs.
There is, in the contemporary context, a demand for responsible leadership, given that society is shrouded in financial scandals,
crises, environmental degradation, and social inequalities. Therefore, responsible education from the implementation of the PRME
plays a central role in the conquest of the SDGs.
The second article in the lilac network notes that learning does not only occur in the formal education program, but also through

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Fig. 5. Main co-authorship networks.

CoPs. This assertion was made by virtue of the students from the HEI researched demonstrating a predisposition to actions with social
impact, guaranteeing their responsibility, ethics, interest in sustainability, and awareness of society, which sometimes may not be
adequately expressed in the formal curriculum. This way, the conclusions of the article strengthen those of Crespo et al. (2017) and
Hourneaux and Caldana (2017), who understand that being a signatory to the PRME enables a broad discussion of the SDGs in higher
education, in order to promote sustainable, responsible, and ethical development.
The pink network contains two articles: one written by Carole Parkes, linked to the University of Winchester Business School, and
Victoria Hands, linked to Kingston University, both in the United Kingdom; and another under the authorship of Aurélien Décamps,
Guillaume Barbat, and Jean-Christophe Carteron, linked to KEDGE Business School, France; Anthony Buono, linked to Bentley
University in the United States; and Ghada Howaidy, linked to the American University in Cairo, Egypt.
The core of this collaborative network, which addresses SDGs in higher education, focuses on the researcher Carole Parkes. The
first article highlights the possibility of students of HEI – of everyone – performing training and evaluation on the ability to increase
awareness on the subject. The platform called Sulitest (Sustainability Literacy test) was developed in the context of the PRME and
collaborates so that the SDGs are achieved in management education.
The second article from the pink network demonstrates how the PRME was aligned with the MDGs and how it is aligned with the
SDGs for eradicating poverty “in all forms, everywhere.” The article emphasizes that the challenge is to institutionalize responsible
management education in order to foster leadership development in higher education for the next generation of business

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professionals.
The light blue network contains an article with eight authors: Rochelle Holm, Mavuto Tembo, Dalo Njera, Victor Kasulo, Mphatso
Malota, Willy Chipeta, Wales Singini, and Joshua Mchengada, linked to Mzuzu University in Malawi.
The authors demonstrate the importance of higher education in reaching the SDGs and mention the rural sanitation program
conducted in partnership with Mzuzu University and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Malawi. According to the
authors, most interviewees reported that education was the best intervention to promote sanitation and hygiene practices in the
region surveyed.
The orange network contains an article with eight authors: James R. Mihelcic, Colleen C. Naughton, Matthew E. Verbyla, Qiong
Zhang, Christian Wells, and Linda M. Whiteford linked to the University of South Florida in the United States; Ryan W. Schweitzer,
linked to Aguaconsult in the United Kingdom; and Stewart M. Oakley, linked to California State University in the United States.
The article has a theme similar to that of the light blue network and highlights the importance of higher education to achieve the
SDGs, but with a focus on environmental engineering. The authors outline 10 major challenges of environmental engineering to the
developing world, and mention that the research conducted enables discussion that can result in innovations and opportunities in
research, education, practice, and services that support achieving the SDGs.
The last network is light green and has an article with nine authors. Tom Baum is linked to Strathclyde Business School in the
United Kingdom; Catherine Cheung is linked to Hong Kong Polytechnic University in China; Haiyan Kong is linked to Shandong
University in China; Anna Kralj is linked to Griffith University in Australia; Shelagh Mooney is linked to Auckland University of
Technology in New Zealand; Hải Nguyễn Thị Thanh is linked to the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences; Sridar Ramachandram is
linked to Universiti Putra Malays in Malaysia; Marinela Dropulić Ružić is linked to the Institute of Agriculture and Tourism in Croatia;
and May Ling Siow is linked to Heriot Watt University in Malaysia.
The authors discuss the position of workforce and employment considerations within the sustainable tourism narrative. They
highlight the contribution of the SDGs to responsible management in higher education, and specifically in tourism education, as being
fundamental to the formation of future leaders who can promote sustainability, as these will be prepared to deal with the com-
plexities of sustainability within the hospitality and tourism industry. The article emphasizes that HEIs have to institutionalize the
concepts and practices of sustainability so that they are part of teaching and research in hospitality higher education.
With the authors network analysis concluded, the journals in which these papers were published will be analyzed.

4.3. Most cited magazines

The number of articles published by each journal studied and the number of citations that each journal has describe the impact of
the most productive journals on education for advancing the implementation of the SDGs. A total of 118 journals were identified
among 193 articles. The International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology and Journal of Environmental Policy &
Planning, although each has only one article in the sample studied, received the most citations per article (Table 2).
The article published in the International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology was identified as the most cited. It
contains a critique of the status quo of an invocation of an ethical duty toward the environment and its elements. To this end, the
author demonstrates that environmental unsustainability is the result of industrial capitalism and the increase of the population, and
that the SDGs stimulate equitable economic growth.
The journals in third and fourth place are Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America and Higher
Education. However, it is noted that the journals that produced most articles were Sustainability, which has the highest concentration

Table 2
Top cited authors in the Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on education.
n Journal Quantity of Articles % of Total of Total of Citations Average No. Of
Articles Citations

1 International Journal of Sustainable Development and World 1 0.51 17 17

Ecology
2 Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 1 0.51 15 15
3 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United 2 1.01 20 10
States of America
4 Higher Education 2 1.01 18 9
5 Government Information Quarterly 1 0.51 8 8
5 Social Science Journal 1 0.51 8 8
6 International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 1 0.51 7 7
7 Environmental Engineering Science 1 0.51 5 5
8 Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 3 1.52 14 4.67
9 Journal of Cleaner Production 8 4.06 34 4.25
10 World Development 5 2.54 15 3
11 Sustainability 19 10.60 39 2.05
12 International Journal of Management Education 12 6.09 23 1.92
13 PLOS One 6 3.05 9 1.50
14 Policy Practice: A Development Education Review 7 3.55 6 0.86
15 International Review of Education 6 3.05 5 0.83

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Table 3
Top institutions regarding education for advancing the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
n Institution Quantity of Articles Country Citations

1 University of London 10 England 24

2 International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) 5 Austria 32
3 University College London 5 England 17
4 University of Tokyo 5 Japan 10
5 University of Oxford 4 England 4
6 Columbia University 3 USA 5
7 Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE) 3 USA 3
8 Stellenbosch University 3 South Africa 16
9 Technical University of Berlin 3 Germany 5
10 University of São Paulo 3 Brazil 5
11 UIC International University of Catalonia 3 Spain 1
12 Universitat Politecnica de Valencia 3 Spain 2
13 University of Ghana 3 Ghana 2
14 University of Kwazulu Natal 3 South Africa 0
15 University of Manchester 3 England 4

with 19 published papers (9.8%); International Journal of Management Education, with 12 papers (6.2%); and in third place Journal of
Cleaner Production, with 8 published papers (4%).
Among the articles published in Sustainability, three emphasize the importance of higher education in reaching the SDGs. Fleacă
et al. (2018) emphasize the importance of education for sustainable development and the difficulties that HEIs may have in being
entrepreneurial. In order to help them reach the SDGs and be more entrepreneurial, the authors conceptually conceived an educa-
tional model for collaborating in the process of change in their daily operations.
Waltner et al. (2018) evaluated the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Germany. The paper
identifies that the monitoring of ESD in teacher training shows the needs and challenges in the field of continuing education for
professors. Crespo et al. (2017) evaluated the ability of students on the Master's course to incorporate the SDGs in their work, and
concluded that the students consider the environmental dimension more relevant than the economic one.
With the most cited journals analysis concluded, the institutions in which these papers were published will be analyzed.

4.4. Most cited institutions

The articles analyzed in this study present authors linked to 337 institutions belonging to 66 countries. The number of pub-
lications by each institution of the sample and the number of citations each institution has describe the impact of the most productive
institutions on education for advancing the implementation of the SDGs (Table 3).
The HEI that published most articles in the period analyzed was University of London, with 10 articles. Second were the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and University College London, both with 5 articles each. There was no
concentration of publications in journals, as each article was published in a different journal. It is important to emphasize that two
articles are by Tristan McCowan (2016, 2018). The University of London has been a signatory to the PRME since 2009. Its attendee
status is Advanced.
The two articles by Tristan McCowan are about SDGs in higher education. The author highlights the importance of higher
education to boost sustainable development and how much this has played a central role in the post-2015 development agenda and
the achievement of the SDGs. He demonstrates the changes in HEI over time, regarding localization in relation to knowledge and
relations with society.
With the most cited institutions analysis concluded, the country co-authorship clusters in which these papers were published will
be analyzed.

4.5. Country co-authorship analysis

The co-authorship analysis of countries is highly relevant to the co-authorship analysis, since it can help in shaping the degree of
spread among the countries, as well as showing what are the influential countries in the studied area.
The co-authorship network of countries related to the sample of education and sustainable development (Fig. 6) formed 10
clusters. Each cluster is identified with a color and through the map it is noted that there are many colors, demonstrating a di-
versification in research directions. The big nodes represent the most influential countries. The connections between the nodes
represent collaborative relations.
The distance between the nodes and the thickness of the links represent the level of cooperation between the countries. It is noted
that England and the United States are the most prominent countries during the reporting period. England has links with 24 countries
and the power of the links is 38. The second country with the highest number of links is the United States, with 22 links and strength
of 36. In third place is Australia, with links with 18 countries and a force of 22.
With the country co-authorship analysis concluded, the content of these papers will be analyzed.

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Fig. 6. Country co-authorship.

4.6. Key themes

To understand the approaches/lenses that involve research on education for advancing the implementation of the SDGs, Iramuteq
software was used, which allowed content analysis to be performed to identify different themes and approaches.
A combination of the title, the keywords, and the summary of the articles was used for this analysis. A thorough inspection of the
results allowed us to group the various themes into four dominant lenses (classes), namely: i) indicators; ii) educational environment;
iii) policies for the implementation of the SDGs or for sustainable education; and iv) PRME (Fig. 7). These lenses provide a framework
that helps in evaluating and understanding the literature on education and SDGs.
The first lens identified in Class 1 (35.5%) represents approaches to implementation of the SDGs and articles that used the
educational environment to measure students’ knowledge of sustainable development and the SDGs.
McCowan (2016) emphasizes that higher education has been increasingly demanded for achieving the goals and proposals for
sustainable development, and these are recognized by regional and national governments, as well as by international agencies.
Some researchers used the educational environment to measure and identify students' knowledge about SDGs, sustainable de-
velopment, and sustainability. Albareda-Tiana, Vidal-Raméntol, Pujol-Valls, and Fernández-Morilla (2018) identified the challenges
and opportunities for teaching and learning practices in sustainability for higher education in order to exploit the principles of the
SDGs, at an HEI in Spain. Crespo et al. (2017) measured the knowledge of students on sustainable development in the Master's degree
in thermal engineering at the University of Vigo, Spain.
This study identified nine co-authorship networks employed to investigate existing standards of collaboration among researchers
at various levels, such as individual, institutional, national, and international. Four of the nine co-authorship networks approached
the contribution of the educational environment to implementing the SDGs.
The blue network demonstrates the importance of higher education to meeting the need for qualified professionals for local
industry (Jessell et al., 2018). Meanwhile, the red network stresses that the SDGs can be used as support for local programs (Kanter
et al., 2016).
The orange and light green networks focus on specific segments, which contribute research and suggestions of good practice on
sustainability to achieve the SDGs, such as in environmental engineering (Mihelcic et al., 2017) and tourism (Baum et al., 2016).
The second lens found in Class 2 (28.5%) represents approaches to implementation of the SDGs and sustainable development by
means of policies.
Danquah and Ohemeng (2017) identify domestic and community factors to explain inequality in the north and south of Ghana,
and point out that understanding the factors that lead to inequality patterns allows the formulation of policy for sustainable de-
velopment.
Janowski (2016) points out that the member states of the UN and their governments should increase the capability for the
implementation of the SDGs through digital government, but there is a conflict between aspiration (SDGs) and capacity (digital
government). The author identified that this conflict affects 69% of the member states and that research and education can help.

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Fig. 7. Representation of themes and lenses.

The brown and green co-authorship networks reinforce the importance of the SDGs for formulating programs and policies so that
children with disabilities have access to equitable education and health (Kuper et al., 2016). This requires that the parents of these
children have knowledge about the program and that they can work effectively on it (Collins et al., 2017).
The third lens found in Class 3 (16.4%) discusses the collaboration of management education to achieve the SDGs. The articles
demonstrate the contribution of the PRME and used HEI signatories to verify and clarify students’ knowledge of sustainable de-
velopment and the SDGs.
Different approaches were adopted by the authors in order to demonstrate how HEI signatories can promote the SDGs from the
disciplines studied in the HEIs (Annan-Diab & Molinari, 2017) and inside student organizations (Borges, Cezarino, Ferreira, Sala,
Unglaub, & Caldana, 2017; Borges, Ferreira, et al., 2017). The articles that used student organizations belong to the lilac network.
Décamps, Barbat, Carteron, Hands, and Parkes (2017) reported on the Sulitest tool to measure and increase student engagement
on the sustainability theme. This article is part of the pink network.
Annan-Diab and Molinari (2017) evaluated the curricula of HEIs in order to identify how to implement and delineate the practice
of sustainable management education. In turn, Kolb et al. (2017), in addition to evaluating the curricula co-curricular activities of
HEIs, propose a conceptual model.
Three articles used theories and approaches to demonstrate the relevance of management education to achieving the SDGs in
HEIs. Cicmil et al. (2017) used Holman's five axioms of management education (epistemic, pedagogical, management-as-practice,
social, and organizational). Gentile’s (2017) work was based on Giving Voice to Values (GVV) understood with an innovative ap-
proach, oriented by values for the development of leadership. Storey et al. (2017) demonstrate in Bourdieusian terms that the SDGs
are the “tactical rules of the game” for the development of management education as the direction to follow Agenda 2030 in HEI
signatories to the PRME.
Annan-Diab and Molinari (2017) and Parkes et al. (2017) emphasize the challenges that HEIs have in institutionalizing re-
sponsible management education in order to provide leadership development in higher education for the next generation of business
professionals.
The fourth lens belongs to Class 4 (19.4%) and mostly presents the use and/or formulation of indicators, indexes, and models to
measure the implementation of the SDGs and the level of sustainable development. The brown network is within this class.
Some articles use data from public agencies or international organizations as a basis for research. Waltner et al. (2018) address
indicators for ESD at the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), which has a national monitoring program for
the implementation of ESD. The authors emphasize the fragilities of monitoring and do not only indicate the possibility of im-
provement for Germany, but also offer suggestions at the international level.

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Asongu and Nwachukwu (2016) emphasize that the SDGs displace the political debate on growth to the “quality of growth.” Thus,
their article used data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the quality of growth of 93 developing countries and among
the results verified that the impact of education for quality of growth is higher than that of health.
The authors measure the increase in spending on education as benefiting mainly the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, as it would
improve its performance in terms of quality of growth. The light blue network shows a rural sanitation program conducted in
partnership between Mzuzu University and UNICEF in Malawi (Holm et al., 2016).
The authors have formulated indicators, indices, and models from specific SDGs that meet the research objectives. Ramos, de
Paula Silva, Bolela, and de Andrade (2018) elaborated a linear multivariate model capable of predicting the Human Development
Index, in order to measure sustainable development from social, economic, and environmental dimensions, in SDGs 3 (health), 4
(education), 8 (sustainable economic growth and decent work), and 15 (to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial
ecosystems). The authors obtained a tool capable of measuring good health and well-being, quality education, drinking water and
sanitation, decent work and economic growth, sustainable cities and communities, and the SDGs.
Chang, Lehmann, and Finkbeiner (2017) elaborate the Sustainable Child Development Index (SCDI) from the social, economic,
and environmental dimensions, focusing on issues relevant to child development. The authors demonstrate 66 indicators with data
from approximately 100 countries that comprise the indicator defined for the SCDI, and emphasize the need for data availability for
indicators describing health and education issues.
Among all the themes and approaches listed within these lenses, scholars in the area showed particular emphasis on exalting the
SDGs for sustainable development, as well as demonstrating the contribution of HEIs to implementation of the SDGs. Therefore, the
importance of the application of education and its investigations for advancing the implementation of the SDGs was perceived.

5. Final considerations

The systematic review shows how much the literature about education for advancing the implementation of the SDGs evolved in
the period researched, from 2015 to 2018. The focus of this review was to provide a profound understanding of the main trends,
themes, and patterns that characterize this evolving field of study.
Publications on education for advancing the implementation of the SDGs were grouped according to a four-lens content analysis.
This research made it possible to verify that the SDGs are more comprehensive than the MDGs. Such a statement seems to justify the
fact that the MDGs focus on universal primary education, while the SDGs address the relevance of education at all levels as a strategy
to promote sustainable development.
Most of the articles that comprised this systematic review identified, demonstrated, or even measured education as the basis for
sustainable development, and that the implementation of the SDGs takes place in environments where education is used as the center
of the strategy.
The review also verified that the most influential periodical is not the journal with the highest number of articles about the SDGs
focused on education. The most cited HEI was the University of London, with 10 articles published. By highlighting the countries in
which the authors are located, it is possible to identify that there is no endogeny of researchers who published articles on education
for advancing the implementation of the SDGs in the nine networks described.
Among the analyzed studies, it was observed that most authors develop their research individually, because only 18 collaboration
networks were formed and, of these, only 9 had more than seven authors. The research analyzed evidence of the importance of
educators, business leaders, and governments for the dissemination of the SDGs, and that they are in a privileged position to achieve
above all Goal 4, quality education. Thus, HEIs must be committed to training responsible managers from the integration between
sustainability, ethics, and responsible management education.
Among the articles that addressed this theme in HEI, most of them demonstrated the relevance of management education and the
PRME for the formation of responsible leaders who can promote sustainable, responsible, and ethical development. The limitation of
this article is in fact having as a database only the WoS, so the research could be complemented with research in other databases. It is
important to emphasize that the theme is far from being exhausted and that there is room for further research.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2019.100322.

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