ASSESSING COMPETENCIES FOR SUSTAINABILITY IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION – PROPOSAL OF METHOD THROUGH A PILOT STUDY
Year: 2024
Editor: Grierson, Hilary; Bohemia, Erik; Buck, Lyndon
Author: Grimal, Lou; Schäfer, Fabian
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Research Centre for Sustainable Processes and Procedures, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Germany; Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Germany; Klimabildung e.V., Bochum, Germany
Page(s): 312 - 317
DOI number: 10.35199/EPDE.2024.53
ISBN: 978-1-912254-200
ISSN: 3005-4753
Abstract
Since 2010, the literature on Education for Sustainable Development has converged on a framework of key competencies that enable students to become relevant professional actors in the sustainability transition. We believe that the E&PDE community should build on this framework to improve the quality of pedagogical activities in design for sustainability. Our aim, through this paper, is to propose an assessment method to systematically evaluate students' competencies in relation to sustainability. We believe that this proposal will help researchers of our community in three ways. First, it will enable teachers to have a better understanding of the level of their students in each competence. Second, it will enable teachers to reflect on their pedagogical practices to better relate their pedagogical activities with competencies for sustainability. Third, it will provide to researchers a stronger validation process to evaluate the efficiency of pedagogical activities regarding competencies for sustainability. The self-assessment questionnaire we propose has been tested on 48 students, from 6 different classes. This Pilot-study enabled us to propose a ready-to-use questionnaire for colleagues of E&PDE community.
Keywords: key competencies, sustainability, survey, engineering for sustainability