Didactic Strategies to Promote Competencies in Sustainability

Sustainability

Education has been traditionally considered as a means to promote and disseminate sustainable development through the reorientation of the curriculum towards sustainability at all levels of the educational system. Higher Education Institutions take a leading role in this process. However, they face several limitations, including their lack of training in the topic, which is complex and difficult to fit into disciplines to begin with. This paper presents the experience of the Working Group on Curricular Sustainability of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Murcia (Spain), carried out within the framework of a pilot project of teaching innovation whose objective was the incorporation of sustainability in the Degree in Economics. In doing so, a Sustainability Competency Map was drawn up and open educational resources that enable students to acquire these competencies were developed.

2020

This article describes an intrinsic case study of project-based learning (PBL) experience involving an NGO as an external client to promote sustainability competencies. Two research questions are posed: (1) How did this experiential PBL approach impact students learning to develop sustainability competencies by incorporating a responsible engineering perspective? (2) How did college students become engaged with social and sustainable PBL projects when external clients of developing economies were involved? The project-based design involved two subjects in the second year of an Industrial engineering degree. The client was an NGO with an existing project to improve the supply chain logistics of three refugee camps managed by women. Students had to cooperatively develop a sustainable proposal for the NGO with a global mindset. Findings obtained from the analysis of the reflections of students and teachers indicate that this methodology helps students to acquire comprehensively learnin...

Sustainability

Universities play a crucial role in the short-term implementation of education for sustainable development goals (SDGs). The fourth SDG aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Indeed, SDG4 is not intended as a goal in itself, but rather, a tool to achieve different goals and explore the best practices, via deductive-theoretical or inductive-experiential methods. Still, current literature on education for SDGs does not always consider the infrastructural and practical factors affecting the success or the failure of the practices mentioned above. The main purpose of this paper is to organize and describe a set of ongoing education for sustainability strategies that took place from 2016 to 2019 in Italian universities. Eighteen best practices have been collected after a national call by the Italian Network of Sustainable Universities (RUS), that aimed to map the current landscape of SDGs-related actions. Data ha...

Sustainability

Project-based sustainability courses require and facilitate diverse interactions among students, instructors, stakeholders, and mentors. Most project-based courses take an instrumental approach to these interactions, so that they support the overall project deliverables. However, as courses primarily intend to build students’ key competencies in sustainability, including the competence to collaborate in teams and with stakeholders, there are opportunities to utilize these interactions more directly to build students’ interpersonal competence. This study offers insights from project-based sustainability courses at universities in Germany, the U.S., Switzerland, and Spain to empirically explore such opportunities. We investigate how students develop interpersonal competence by learning from (rather than through) their interactions with peers, instructors, stakeholders, and mentors. The findings can be used by course instructors, curriculum designers, and program administrators to more...

Sustainability

This paper focusses on university pre-service teachers developing cooperative physical challenges within reflective and cooperative learning frameworks. The pre-service teachers were involved in reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action and contemplated their professional identity in both reflective narratives and focus group discussions. The students’ reflections were scored using two rubrics. The first elements scored from the pre-service teacher’s reflective narratives included the focus of the reflection, awareness of previous beliefs, knowledge, and experiences, inquiring and focusing on possible actions through questions and hypotheses, and arguing for concrete learning objectives. The second rubric scored elements of the pre-service teachers’ professional identity, including self-esteem, task perception, job motivation, and expectations about future jobs. The results from the instructional cooperative approaches based on the reflections on the in-practice at a primary sch...

Sustainability

In the face of today’s global challenges, the practice and theory of contemporary education inevitably focuses on developing the competences that help individuals to find meaningfulness in their societal and professional life, to understand the impact of local actions on global processes and to enable them to solve real-life problems [...]

Education Sciences

Social evolution, globalization, and advances in technology are making it increasingly necessary to offer complete and comprehensive teacher training. This training should produce citizens who are concerned about the planet and its future. These values are embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the breadth of which allows them to be integrated into the secondary school curriculum for most subjects. To construct a complete teacher training model, the following have been considered: previous studies based on qualitative and quantitative methodologies (the Delphi method and questionnaires for ‘expert’ teachers), the teaching experience of the authors, the action research methodology, and validation by other teachers who use technologies and are concerned about sustainability issues. The result is a teacher training model that is in line with UNESCO’s sustainability competencies and based not only on technology, the scientific content of the subject to be taught, and dida...

2021

The application of a constructivist approach to competence-based frameworks for sustainable development (SD) in higher education can empower students to become change agents. Acknowledging this development, this paper examines the extent to which an SD-directed master's programme at an Italian university effectively developed students' SD competences before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is based on a mixed method approach that includes a survey and interviews in order to (a) discuss students' experiences with pedagogies that emphasize SD competences as learning outcomes and (b) analyze students' perceptions of acquiring SD competences with reference to their experience of internships, project work, and job positions (in the case of graduates). The results show that, among the analyzed SD pedagogies, case studies were perceived to enrich students' understanding of the complexity of SD issues through collective learning. However, to develop critical t...

Sustainability, 2020

The aim of this study is to determine the contribution of student interventions to urban greening processes. In two Dutch cities action research was conducted, including reflexive interviews a year after the first intervention, to assess factors causing change in the socio-ecological system. Results show that students and network actors were mutually learning, causing the empowerment of actors in that network by adding contextualized knowledge, enlarging the social network, expanding the amount of interactions in the socio-ecological system and speeding up the process. Students brought unique qualities to the process: time, access to stakeholders who tend to distrust the municipality and a certain open-mindedness. Their mere presence made a difference and started a process of change. However, university staff needed to keep the focus on long-term effects and empowerment, because students did not oversee that. After a year, many new green elements had been developed or were in the pl...

Sustainability, 2019

This paper presents a methodology to analyze the sustainability presence level in the curriculum of an engineering degree. The methodology is applied to ten engineering degrees of the Spanish university system, taught in three different universities. The design used for the research is quantitative and correlational. The analytical instrument used is the engineering sustainability map, which contains the learning outcomes related to sustainability that are expected of engineering students upon completion of their studies. The methodology is used to analyze the curricula of the ten engineering degrees in order to identify what learning outcomes of the engineering sustainability map are developed in each degree. The results indicate that the sustainability competency least present in all the degrees is the “participation in community processes that promotes sustainability,” with an average presence of 23.3%, while the most present is the “application of ethical principles related to t...

Higher Education Policy

Universities are rethinking their teaching and research programs and their whole third mission in response to the framework provided by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But how do universities walk the talk? What are the main strategies and activities undertaken by universities to implement the 2030 Agenda? While the higher education literature has documented the growing number of practices and strategies around SDGs, there have been few attempts to synthesize these scholarly resources. Moreover, the knowledge base revolves around an array of activities, which makes the literature seem fragmented. To fill this gap, the present paper conducts a systematic literature review and derives a method of categorizing activities that can support further knowledge growth. We classified 130 selected papers based on the type of university activities considered (research, teaching, third mission, and managing operations) and the level of the implemented action (macro, meso, and micro). Subsequently, we identified the main gaps in the literature and discussed future research avenues for addressing higher education's role in accomplishing SDGs.

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education

In pedagogical practice, gratitude is recognised not as an emotion, but as an approach to learning. This study introduced gratitude messages into the academic online communication of university students and specifically examined the community in which students shared their messages with gratitude. This study examined the tendency of message connections and how gratitude messages prompted replies. To elucidate their connections, exponential random graph models (ERGMs) were used. A post-event questionnaire to evaluate gratitude experiences was also administered. Results revealed that 77.3% of the 172 connected messages from 123 students involved gratitude. When the post-event questionnaire results were examined using an ERGM, the score effects on increasing message connections were found not to be significant. The most prominent indication was a higher level of significant propensities to make mutual connections. The homophily of the message content was found to have a significant pro...

Trends in Higher Education

Teachers play a key role in the construction of a more equal, fairer and sustainable world. Incorporating education for sustainable consumption into teacher training should therefore be a priority. This education should aim to develop students’ awareness of environmental issues, to encourage lifestyle changes, and to promote reducing their personal ecological footprint (EF). Training processes will hence lead to active learning approaches promoting critical thinking about production and consumption patterns, linking the curriculum content to real life, and involving students in activities that reduce their EF. This paper presents research carried out at three Spanish faculties of education. The main goal is to analyse the relationship between active teaching and learning strategies, and the reduction of the students’ individual EF. Pre- and post-test questionnaires were used to collect data. A total of 93 primary education degree students took part in this study. The results show th...

Sustainability

Nowadays, electric vehicles attract significant attention because of the increasingly stringent exhaust emission policies all over the world. Moreover, with the fast expansion of the sustainable economy, the demand for electric vehicles is expanding. In the recent age, maintenance has seriously hampered the marketing and use of electric automobiles. As a result, the technique for maintaining electric vehicles is regarded as vital since it directly affects the security and availability for the end user and the passengers. Another key aspect of electric mobility is the integration of artificial intelligence in control, diagnostics, and prognostics. Meanwhile, a lot of research efforts are still devoted to developing and innovating electric traction systems, especially for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. Furthermore, topics covering important, current, and sustainability challenges should contain more than theoretical knowledge in high-quality education, particularly in engineering...

Sustainability

Despite the work done to date, project sustainability management (PSM) is still at an embryonic stage. The existing literature considers sustainability as a transversal aspect to be incorporated into the traditional management functions (scope, time, cost, quality, etc.). This article proposes sustainability as a key aspect of project management, with three essential components: principles, processes and competences. Regarding principles, the principle of sustainable development should be added to those generally suggested. As for processes, seven are proposed for (1) planning sustainability management; (2) establishing a sustainability breakdown structure; (3) defining the sustainability objective; (4) identifying project alternatives to achieve it; (5) planning and (6) implementing the sustainability strategy; and (7) monitoring and control. The main interrelationships between these processes and those of project initiation, planning, implementation, control, and closure are also ...

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 2030 Agenda represent global development programs. Education can widen the acknowledgement of their relevance and their applications. This survey aims to assess awareness, knowledge and attitudes towards SDGs and sustainability among first-year students in nine Italian Universities. A Likert scale-based online questionnaire of 70 items was compiled by students from March to July 2019. It examined knowledge and expectations referred to sustainable development concepts, indicators and documents/models accounting for sociodemographic variables. Statistical analyses performed were Chi-square test, Fisher’s Exact test, Kendall’s W correlation coefficient, univariate and multivariate analysis. The questionnaire was completed by 1676 students. A low percentage referred a good knowledge of SDGs and 2030 Agenda, most of them had never attended related educational activities previously. Better knowledge of SDGs and 2030 Agenda was observed in case of p...

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education

Purpose Higher education institutions (HEIs) have a great responsibility to put education for sustainable development at the centre of their work. Curricula should therefore start to incorporate the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and key competencies in sustainability, and research should be carried out to determine effective learning methods for this. This study aims to explore the usefulness of problem-based learning (PBL) approaches to train biomedical students in sustainability and to provide some recommendations for the design and implementation of new PBL-SDG scenarios. Design/methodology/approach Two PBL-SDG scenarios were designed, implemented and evaluated for 110 students of human biology degree. Learning outcomes and student perceptions of this approach were analysed through questionnaires, student productions, non-participant observation and focus groups. Findings The results show that the PBL-SDG scenarios effectively addressed several SDGs and sustainability comp...

Revista de Filosofia y Cotidianidad, 2019

This article has as a main objective to: Identify how multiple intelligences and didactic strategies intervene in learning strategies. The data obtained is organized in a concentration matrix and is given statistical treatment to explore results where a 90 Alpha Cronbach is obtained. Besides, information is processed in the statistical analysis: Percentages and frequencies, comparative with T student test and integrational with factorial analysis. As main results it stands out that: Starting from the use, handling and development of multiple intelligences such as naturalistic, bodily-kinesthetic, logical mathematical along with didactic strategies such as team building, individual work, exchange of ideas, participation, visual aids, study of chaos, and to arouse curiosity impacts in students and motivates them to do analysis, comprehensive lecture and work collaboratively, all of this combined encourages students to be more autodidactic.

Sustainability

Climate change forces higher educational institutions (HEI) to reconsider their traditional ways of teaching and organising education. This implies that they should reduce their impact on the environment and provide sustainability-oriented education. Blended learning (fusion of on-campus and online learning) may provide an appealing solution to achieve both objectives. It may reduce HEI’s climate impact by reducing student travel to and from campus and support the development of students’ sustainability competencies. In this paper, pedagogical design principles and recommendations are developed to design such a sustainability-oriented blended learning configuration. A realist review methodology is used to distil and develop pedagogical principles for blended learning. These principles were mirrored against pedagogical approaches that have been identified as suitable for developing sustainability competencies. This mirroring revealed some overlap but also some notable differences. Co...

IJORER : International Journal of Recent Educational Research

Objective: Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an educational agenda that focuses on the quality of learning outcomes and the emphasis on learning content and its contribution to future environmental sustainability, one of which is tackling climate change. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) can be integrated into curriculum and learning. This study aims to describe and conduct a literature review of the implementation of ESD in climate change learning. Methods: This research is a literature study by screening 370 Scopus-indexed papers in the 2017-2022 time frame into 20 papers for analysis. The analysis results show that journal publications on implementing ESD in climate change learning still need to be made available despite increased research trends. The implementation that has been carried out can be through formal / school and non-formal education with learning innovations and developing curricula and policies. There is a tendency for developing learning inn...

Jurnal Imiah Pendidikan dan Pembelajaran

Schools principals as leaders have the task of realizing the vision and also developing innovation in the implementation process. Quality educational institutions can be realized if they are supported by leaders who understand leadership and quality management. Tahfidzul Qur'an Jus 30 is a very important component in determining the competence of graduates. This study aims to analysis the principal's leadership innovation in developing the tahfidzul Qur'an Jus 30 program and the factors that support and hinder it. This study uses a qualitative approach. Methods of data collection is done through observation, interviews, and documentation. While the data validity technique uses triangulation and source methods. Data analysis techniques using interactive models consist of data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and leveraging. The results of this study indicate that the principal works as an innovator and also a very good supervisor. This can be seen from how t...

International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education (IJCRSEE), 2021

The educational process is by its nature and essence very dialectical, so it necessarily requires teachers to have a developed whole set of various competencies. The aim of the research was to examine teachers on self-assessment of competencies that were crucial for innovating the teaching process. The sample of respondents included 1300 elementary and secondary school teachers in the territory of Southern Serbia. The instrument used was a five-point TCS scale of attitudes, with a total of 48 items (individual competencies). The results of the analysis showed that teachers, based on their self-assessments, highly value all diverse groups of competencies, which fully confirms the general hypothesis. The results also showed the existence of statistically significant differences in the degree of expression of attitudes about competency groups with regard to independent research variables, within special hypotheses, based on which the first was rejected, the second partially and the thi...

Management Systems in Production Engineering

Changes in the environment of industry may affect the expectations related to the competencies of the employees. Changes to the education system and curricula may be required. The main purpose of this research paper was to analyze the expectations of the industries related to competencies of graduates of engineering programs. The paper presents preliminary research. The survey was conducted at twenty-eight companies within the area of technical university in Poland. Based on the survey, data was collected related to the level of preparation of engineering graduates as well as the industry expectations related to the preparation of engineering graduates. This was done for the purpose of determining the gap between industry expectations and the level of preparation of the engineering graduates. Enterprises expect a wide range of competences from engineering graduates. The most important areas of competence included soft competences and practical knowledge and skills. The biggest gap b...

Sustainability, 2021

Enhancing the emotional dimension of prospective teachers in science subjects—which has become increasingly important in recent decades—is a responsibility of higher education institutions. The implementation of active methodologies has the potential to modify the traditional student-teacher roles that are encouraged by the educational policies implemented in the Bologna Process. Simultaneously, it is possible to promote knowledge of sustainability, as well as the attitudes and behaviors required by UNESCO. The main aim of this work is to describe a project-based learning methodology with a transversal sustainability approach (low-cost and eco-friendly) and to introduce this as a potential resource for the emotional and cognitive improvement of 19 prospective primary teachers enrolled in scientific subjects. This is a qualitative study in the context of a research line focused on higher education for sustainable development. A questionnaire was designed and filled in by students at ...

Jurnal Penelitian dan Pengembangan Pendidikan

The role of the Computer Network Engineering MGMP forum could have been more optimal in developing professional competence. If one pays attention to the usefulness of this forum, it is essential to support the improvement and development of the professional competence of SMK Computer Network Engineering teachers. This research aims to develop a Knowledge Management System-Based Training Model to improve the professional competence of vocational teachers. This research is research and development. This study uses the ADDIE development procedure. The subjects of this study were 35 teachers at SMK Computer Network Engineering Skills. The methods used to collect data are interviews and questionnaires. The data collection instrument uses a questionnaire sheet. The data analysis technique for this research is descriptive statistics. The results of this study, namely the needs analysis, show the level of need for this training model is 83.65%. The syntax of this model is an introduction, d...

Jurnal Penelitian dan Pengembangan Pendidikan

Kurangnya lembar kegiatan untuk proses pembelajaran daring mengakibatkan LKPD yang diberikan kepada peserta didik kurang maksimal sehingga mengalami kesulitan dalam mengingat materi ekosistem. Selain itu, umpan balik yang dirasakan peserta didik terhadap LKPD yang diberikan oleh guru kurang cepat. Tujuan dilaksanakannya penelitian ini untuk menciptakan LKPD interaktif berbasis pendekatan saintifik materi ekosistem pada siswa kelas V SD. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah model pengembangan ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation). Subjek penelitian terdiri dari ahli isi materi, ahli desain pembelajaran, ahli media pembelajaran, uji coba perorangan dan uji coba kelompok kecil. Metode pengumpulan data menggunakan kuesioner, observasi dan wawancara. Teknis analisis data menggunakan metode deskriptif kuantitatif. Hasil penelitian menemukan hasil review ahli isi pembelajaran memperoleh 96,42% (sangat baik), review ahli desain pembelajaran memperoleh 90,90% (sa...

British Journal of Educational Technology, 2024

The number of scientific publications about serious games has exponentially increased, often surpassing human limitations in processing such a large volume of information. Consequently, the importance of frameworks for summarising such fast-expanding literature has also grown. This paper draws a panorama of serious game research streams, focusing on higher education in engineering and management. The research design involves a systematic review using PRISMA guidelines, along with bibliometric and content analyses. The sample comprises 701 documents collected from both Scopus and Web of Science databases. For supporting bibliometric analyses, Bibliometrix and Biblioshiny tools are employed. In addition, a coding schema is developed for in-depth analysis of 701 documents selected according to the inclusion criteria. In short, the literature on serious games for engineering and management education grows more rapidly than modern science, following a globalised, collaborative and context-based trajectory. The results reveal five main research streams: game design guidelines, game design cases, game experiment guidelines, game experiment cases and generalists. These streams are summarised in a proposed framework. Cross-tabulation and statistical analyses conducted in SPSS Statistics identify the key relationships amongst the research streams. Finally, opportunities to investigate serious games for sustainable development education arise, and there is a need for future efforts to formalise the framework classification algorithm. Dallaqua, M.F., Nunes, B., Carvalho, M.M. Serious games research streams for social change: Critical review and framing. British Journal of Educational Technology First published: 20 October 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13404

Sustainability, 2020

The purpose of this study is to explore the change in the perceptions of pre-service teachers after participating in a training process on Education for Sustainability. The research was conducted during academic year 2019–2020 in the context of the Master’s Degree in Educational Research for Teachers’ Professional Development. The changes related to Education for Sustainability, the knowledge of the Sustainable Development Goals, and methodological strategies to integrate both were analysed. An initial and a final questionnaire as well as the activities developed by the students during the course were used to gather information. An analysis was performed of three dimensions (Education for Sustainability, the Sustainable Development Goals, and methodological strategies) with the help of the NVivo 12 Plus software programme. The results show progress was made in all three dimensions. The most significant changes were detected with regard to the knowledge of the Sustainable Development...

Valahian Journal of Economic Studies, 2023

Today's environmental challenges are catching the attention of many companies to seek innovative solutions to solve the roots of these problems through strong partnerships with governmental entities and other organizations. Social innovation is a topic that can leverage new ideas and practices to overcome current societal and environmental issues fostering sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of social innovation by presenting a pragmatic and comparative study case analysis of two companies that successfully implemented social innovation in their business model. Social innovation combined with open innovation are great catalysts in solving societal and environmental problems and creating shared value and having an impact on business strategy. These two organizations strive to create change and develop a learning environment to surpass all risks and challenges to solve environmental problems. The paper will provide evidence on the importance of closing partnerships in the social innovation process and how collaboration helps in generating shared value.

Sustainability, 2023

Teachers' actions in sustainable development are guided by a way of conceiving the environment. This study sought to account for the ideas and experiences of teachers in education for sustainable development in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Based on a qualitative study with an interpretive approach through an open questionnaire, the aim was to investigate educational proposals developed in institutions on urban environmental sustainability that allow the articulation of SDGs 4 and 11. The results intersect with the proposal of sustainability typologies from the epistemological, axiological, and ontological components. The findings showed that environmental training involves both the understanding of relationships and problems and the proposal of alternatives that allow us to offer new horizons as a possibility to build and promote other ways of being and developing, individually and collectively, in the places we inhabit and that we contribute to the world. This requires rethinking education, strengthening pedagogical proposals, and developing other alternatives to educate ourselves socio-environmentally, to train responsible citizens, and to achieve sustainable societies. Understanding the perceptions and practices of teachers in regard to sustainability can contribute to defining priority lines of research, proposing educational guidelines for teacher training, and guiding the development of public policies for curricular greening from a critical perspective. This makes it possible to promote educational actions to consolidate citizen training.

Sustainability, 2021

In the last decades, logistics has become an important industry sector, with significant impacts on the environment generated through several internal and external logistic processes. We analysed and elaborated on integrating sustainability topics within logistics-oriented programmes at universities across Europe, based on a framework of systemising and classifying sustainability terms. We also analysed pedagogical approaches within the identified courses. In our study, we perceived a moderate diversity of courses from the system and horizontal sustainability perspectives. Courses mostly focus on "principle" and "approach" levels, denoting specialised courses, with less environmental and social topics. Such coverage and distribution might imply a limitation to develop complex, multi-dimensional, and inter-disciplinary understanding, thinking, and problem-solving required for real-world challenges, comprehending all the dimensions. We also perceived a scarcity by using pedagogical approaches, where the majority of the courses emphasise traditional ones. This paper's novelty lies in providing the first empirical evaluation and elaboration of logisticsoriented programmes at European universities from a sustainability perspective. Thus, our study enriches current knowledge and research on sustainability integration into curricula at the university level, enabling new insights and better correlations between various study fields and pedagogical approaches used.