Leadership, curriculum and pedagogy for sustainability: a systematic review

Purpose The purpose of this study is to assess existing knowledge on leadership paradigms that foster sustainable development, identify innovative pedagogical approaches that incorporate sustainability into curricula, compare the roles of academic leaders in driving educational transformation and examine obstacles and facilitators to comprehensive integration. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of 50 studies (published between 1996 and 2025) using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods was undertaken, focusing on leadership models, curriculum development, pedagogical innovation, institutional support and stakeholder engagement. This systematic review synthesized insights from these studies that investigated the ways in which these elements could coalesce to promote sustainability education within higher education institutions (HEIs). Findings The review suggests that while transformational and participatory leadership styles have consistently emerged as key enabling conditions, they cannot be effective without mediating institutional conditions. Ultimately, successful integration is not simply a by-product of leadership style. Rather, successful integration is the result of a set of causally linked events in which leadership positions the institution to develop supportive policy, resource support and faculty development opportunities for the innovative use of pedagogy. The most successful initiatives in this review demonstrated a high degree of connectivity between the leader’s vision, the formal supports and structures provided by institutional formal supports and faculty agency to enact experiential and interdisciplinary pedagogies. The review examined critical institution factors identified in previous research, which influence success related to a supportive policy environment and cultural resistance. The synthesis of these studies indicates a need for stronger empirical evidence to identify and understand the sorts of leadership that best enable HEIs to transform curriculum and systematically scale pedagogical innovations. Importantly, the review contributed a degree of groundedness and complexity to how sustainability may be embedded within higher education, and the role that context is likely to play. Practical implications This review provides a guide for university leaders, showing that to be successful in integrating sustainability, they will need to first work on creating a supportive institutional context as the critical prerequisite to embed widespread curricular and pedagogical change. Originality/value This review’s primary contribution is its critical synthesis of the mechanisms by which leadership practices translate into widespread curricular and pedagogical change. Moving beyond a simple inventory of best practices, it dissects the causal pathways and mediating factors, such as institutional policy and faculty incentives, that determine whether leadership vision results in scaled and durable sustainability education. By mapping these interconnected dynamics, the paper offers a more nuanced model for understanding and overcoming the persistent gap between institutional sustainability goals and classroom reality.