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Sustainability Literacy: Home

A guide to help UL students and researchers develop critical thinking skills and identify scholarly resources in specific areas of sustainability

About this guide - a work in progress March 2023

Sustainability Literacy is the knowledge and skills to help individuals to become proficient in understanding the information sources cited and usable in relation to subjects to do with sustainability.  

This guide is intended to give students the resources and tools necessary to develop their own critical thinking about issues related to sustainability.

As a researcher or student you need to evaluate the sources you use for your assignments, presentations and papers. You must apply these techniques before using any source in your academic work. This guide will provide links to reliable scholarly resources and will challenge you to think about whether or not what you are viewing online is credible for use in your academic work.

As a student in University, you learn critical thinking within your modules. Your library collections contain scholarly material, but you still have to conduct an amount of evaluation before using a particular journal article in an assignment. For example, the article might be old and unsuitable if you have been asked to comment on contemporary manufacturing processes, or it might be a regulation that applies only in an EU jurisdiction and you've been asked to give a global perspective.

This guide will help you to 

  • Develop an awareness of the range of evaluation strategies to use
  • Learn and apply the CRAAP Test
  • Distinguish between good and bad information sources
  • Become adept at digital information evaluation 
  • Develop lifelong skills in evaluating information.

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