The discipline of structural engineering has experienced few disruptive breakthroughs in recent decades, so we have become quite comfortable teaching what we learned ourselves when we were students. Meanwhile, the construction sector is trying to navigate through a green transition, and we don’t know exactly what the construction sector will look in 10-20 years. One thing is for sure, the sector must become more sustainable. So, while structural engineering as a subject remains unchanged, the boundary conditions for structural engineers are changing in real time. Is it our duty to equip students for this uncertain future, or should we focus on the core of the discipline? And if so, how can we effectively teach sustainability when we ourselves have not been formally educated in this area?
Teaching for sustainability can be a tricky subject and we’ve found there are some obstacles along the way which must be contended with. To start, we are always used to having definitions for things – this seems to be a bit of a rabbit hole when it comes to sustainability but can be avoided with one simple strategy: we want to focus on doing it – rather than having an abstract discussion on what it is. When we adopted this approach, we found it a lot easier – we started to think about how we could do “teaching for sustainability”. On the other hand – we will not completely abandon a definition – here is a simple one: let’s not mess this up for our children and children’s children, etc.
Another issues which we’ll briefly mention concerns a common comment (which admittedly, we’ve used before): …but my course is not about sustainability. Well, given that the premiss is about teaching for sustainability rather than about sustainability, this point is less significant in our opinion. We of course realize that this may not help those stuck with trying to figure out how to adjust a previously well though and structured course. We also struggle with this, without a definitive answer – however, we still think the struggle is worth it and that there may be some way to connect most topics to sustainability without it necessarily taking over a course.
Although we have solved our definition dilemma, and conveniently side-stepped the issue of relevance, we are still stuck on with the question how can we do it well? An obvious starting point is to see what others have done! As part of this, we talked with teaching colleagues who have their own experiences with teaching about (and sometimes for) sustainability. Their input was inspiring, and we got some concrete examples to help us, such as connecting each learning activity with some sustainable development goal (SDGs) or providing real life examples (our courses relate to structural engineering, so we usually show buildings and bridge and other stuff). A second source is the published literature – of which there seems to be A LOT!!
During our initial article search online we mostly found articles that were either (1) too theoretical and abstract (making them difficult to understand), or (2) very specific case studies (where the results may not be generalized). We also quickly realized our limited grasp of the theoretical concepts, varied method and models use, and abstract themes often included in the articles. We could find no sustainability teaching for dummies of sustainability Rosetta stone to help us translate. Nonetheless, we marched on and (somewhat arbitrarily) chose two relatively recent articles published in the Journal of Cleaner production:
- Holdsworth & Sandri (2021). Investigating undergraduate student learning experiences using the good practice learning and teaching for sustainability education (GPLTSE) framework. Journal of Cleaner Production, 311, 127532.
- Gutierrez-Bucheli, Kidman & Reid (2022). Sustainability in Engineering Education: A Review of Learning Outcomes. Journal of Cleaner Production, 330, 129734.
These articles were loosely chosen as they included a review and the first also contained a concrete case study. We then carried out an epistemically-challenged review (made-up term, but sounds super scientific), and came to some interesting insights of which we’ll share here:
- Education for sustainability is essentially good teaching, i.e., not something ad-hoc or external to our courses. This makes it quite relevant for all our courses.
- Some general frameworks or guidelines for implementation seem to exist, which can highlight some useful practices, teaching approaches and learning outcomes. However, it is not always clear for us (the teaching laymen) what this means specifically for our courses.
- There are many people out there doing this kind of teaching with some good results. However, it is often difficult to grasp the specifics as the articles may be on a higher level and when cases are presented, we may not easily see how our specific courses could benefit from what was described.
- When concrete cases are provided, these can be very revealing (peeling away the abstract to reveal something tangible and concrete). It can provide inspiration for what to do with some added confidence that comes with seeing the results it provided. Now, we should be careful to generalize, but our own experience is that we as teachers need to braver in applying new things in our courses 😉
- As teachers our focus is often on our own courses, but the issue also needs to be addressed at higher levels (e.g., integration into program curricula). Perhaps this is a calling for us to try and influence the administration in these questions. In any case, we think a bottom-up and top-down approach should occur simultaneously (and ideally somewhere in there are the wishes of the students).
- Although we struggled with some of the theoretical aspects of the papers, we still came away with something useful.
- At the face of it, sustainability as a concept appears complex with multiple components (pillars, etc). On the other hand, it is perhaps not necessary to try and incorporate all of these into all our courses. Choose those aspects which you find most relevant or exciting.
Finally, we want to urge others to be brave enough to try something new with the knowledge that you might fail. This failure will not have been in vain, you will have learned something valuable and adjust for next time. For those who would like to share in future failures and glories, or simply want to talk about these issues more, feel free to contact us 😉
A final tip is to take Mirjam’s course on Teaching for Sustainability – it helped push us towards thinking more about these issues and actually doing something about it 😊
/Ivar & Jonas
