Lydia Carling is a student in Environmental Engineering at LTH, and worked as a student with us at the Center for Engineering Education. She presented a study on student perceptions of sustainability courses at LTH’s Pedagogical Inspiration Conference 2023 (Link to the full text in Swedish here).
In her study, Lydia investigates the perspective of engineering students at LTH on their sustainability education. She explores the connection between students’ envisioned, future professional roles and their perception of sustainability work, focusing on the impact of a mandatory sustainability course on students’ views of their future careers.
Her pilot study employs an interactive interview method where students visualise their future professional roles and sort sustainability concepts they encountered in the class according to their perceived relevance to their future work. The results suggest that several factors influence students’ reasoning, including the impact of the sustainability course, knowledge from more profession-specific courses, and students’ perceptions of the industry’s approach to sustainability.
The method used in the study seemed to inspire students to explore new perspectives and connections between sustainability work and their future careers, so it might even be something to include future teaching of sustainability topics. Lydia highlights the importance of integrating sustainability education into various contexts throughout students’ academic journey to enhance their ability to address sustainability questions in their professional practices. This was topic of a lively debate at LTH’s Pedagogical Inspiration Conference, with many teachers showing great interests in her method, results, and interpretations, and agreeing with Lydia’s suggestions for new approaches to integrating sustainability in the curricula.
Steven
Oh, I watched her presentation at the LTH Pedagogical Inspiration Conference. She was great! 🎉 Her insights inspired me to consider much more the similar and different competencies students require in their various professions, including critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and resilience. Moreover, I think her findings suggest it is important to consider how sustainability is integrated across an entire programme curriculum.