Teaching Sustainability Reporting as Practice: Reflections from the Classroom

by Thorsten Sellhorn, LMU Munich School of Management

At the recent EAA EFRAG ISSB Sustainability Reporting Standards Education Workshop, I shared some reflections on how I have tried to bring sustainability reporting into the classroom—not through a grand pedagogical innovation, but through concrete teaching practices anchored in regulatory developments and real-world data.

My perspective is shaped by more than 25 years of teaching, mostly in financial reporting, and more recently by our work on the Sustainability Reporting Navigator (SRN). The SRN is a digital platform that supports research, regulation, and education by collecting, benchmarking, and analyzing sustainability disclosures—initially under the CSRD/ESRS, but we are gearing up to increasingly cover ISSB standards and ISSB-compliant reports as well.

Over time, I’ve come to believe that three core assumptions guide my thinking:

1. Sustainability reporting is not an end in itself—sustainability is: ecological, surely, but also environmental and social. BUT:

2. Sustainability reporting (including sustainability-related financial disclosure)
   provides critical information to providers of capital (the “financial materiality
   perspective”).

3. Well-calibrated and enforced sustainability reporting requirements that bring out
   corporate impacts on people and the planet (including “externalities”) can ‘nudge’
   companies towards more ecologically and socially sustainable business conduct—
   often, I suspect, to these companies’ own long-term benefit (the “impact
   materiality perspective”).

These beliefs inform my teaching. Let me briefly highlight three key messages that I think may resonate beyond our own experience at LMU Munich.

1. Sustainability reporting education needs integration—not silos.

At LMU Munich School of Management, rather than treat sustainability reporting as a standalone topic, we embed it across our accounting curriculum. Whether in introductory courses, IFRS-based financial reporting, or valuation and analysis, students encounter sustainability topics in ways that reflect their practical and regulatory relevance. For example, we use the SRN’s report archive and AI assistant in introductory courses to demonstrate real corporate disclosures. In more advanced courses, students use the SRN to analyze ESG-related risk disclosures, or trace connectivity between financial and sustainability reporting.

2. Students engage more deeply when working with real data and real standards.

We’ve involved over 150 students from four universities in collecting ESG transparency data for academic projects—together producing over 750,000 data points on indicators such as emissions and workforce composition. Many students use this data for their BSc, MSc, or PhD theses, often in combination with internships at preparers or audit firms.

More recently, students helped prepare our School’s own voluntary sustainability report (under EFRAG’s VSME standard). They analyzed academic travel data to calculate carbon footprints and assess related risks. This work doesn’t just create engagement—it builds technical and interpretive skills grounded in current regulatory requirements.

3. Sustainability reporting remains a vital professional competence—despite the backlash.

Involving students in our ongoing research—e.g., on ESRS adoption or climate disclosure in financial statements—has shown us just how motivated they are to understand the evolving sustainability reporting landscape. From experimental studies on materiality assessments to field-level analyses of ESRS implementation, we invite students to contribute as research assistants and co-creators.

That said, many students today express unease. They perceive the political headwinds—especially in the U.S., but also in Europe’s regulatory debates—and wonder whether sustainability reporting has a real future. I believe it does, and that it’s our job as educators and researchers to show that the work remains essential, rigorous, and value-relevant.

Looking Ahead

We continue to build out the SRN as an open-science platform for transparency and performance—supporting educators, students, and researchers alike. But more broadly, I see value in teaching sustainability reporting not as a separate craft, but as an integrated part of accounting education. It’s about connecting students with the standards, the data, and the purpose of reporting—while keeping the focus where it ultimately belongs: on sustainability itself.

If you’re interested in joining the SRN initiative—whether as an educator, researcher, or contributor—please feel free to reach out: sellhorn@lmu.de.