The dissemination of sustainable knowledge within the domain of higher education has grown exponentially since the implementation of the UN’s SDGs; however, the body of evidence is currently fragmented across various institutional and educational sectors. This research synthesizes review-level evidence on how institutions of higher education provide for the dissemination of sustainable knowledge and develop the competencies necessary to support it, through a narrative literature review with a supporting structured Web of Science search, transparent narrowing, and interpretive thematic synthesis. An evidence set of focused relevance (2015–2025) was established from an initial total of 6604 records and through the subsequent full-text analysis yielded a final corpus of 63 review articles. Two dominant theme categories were identified: (i) Institutional Embedding and Governance Level Integration and (ii) Educational Level Implementation. A third area of investigation mapped the development of the discipline through both bibliometric and narrative reviews. A common cross-cutting constraint is that specific links between mechanisms/outcomes, as well as comparative analyses of student outcome metrics across studies, are not uniformly documented, which limits cumulative inferences about effective practices. Thus, greater clarity is needed regarding linkages between competence objectives, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and measurable outcomes. Additionally, the governance conditions are frequently referenced as enabling factors.
Dániel Fróna (Fri,) studied this question.