Rethinking sustainability: Workshop opens dialog on SDG “Quality Education”

11 June 2025, by Dorothea Blumenberg

On June 4, 2025, the Faculty of Humanities hosted a workshop on sustainability. The event focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goal “Quality Education” (SDG 4), which was the most frequently mentioned goal in a faculty-wide survey of sustainability initiatives. Lecturers, students, and external participants discussed key aspects of future-oriented teaching for sustainable education.

Prof. Dr. Ruzana Liburkina opened the event with an inspiring lecture, focusing among other things on the concept of resilience as a system property: the ability of systems to demonstrate resistance despite shocks and to reinvent and transform themselves through learning processes. An important question discussed was how we can design teaching to foster awareness of ambivalence tolerance, diversity, and reflexivity.

Professor Liburkina emphasized the importance of a positive error culture in education, viewing failure not solely as negative but as an opportunity for learning. She also explained that an outward-open science does not serve anti-academism as a goal. To secure academic freedom, open science, digitalization, and new forms of collaboration offer opportunities to make science more understandable and accessible.

Following her presentation, an open and productive discussion with the audience from various status groups took place, during which many questions were addressed. Topics included the definition of “quality teaching,” the need to empower students to reflect on their skills, and the importance of networking and exchange among educators as well as with learners.

The Faculty of Humanities looks back on an inspiring workshop that significantly contributed to deepening the understanding of high-quality education as a sustainable goal and to promoting dialogue on sustainable teaching culture within the faculty. The event demonstrated the faculty’s interest and commitment to actively implementing sustainable educational goals.