First‐Year Students' Environmental Awareness and Understanding of Environmental Sustainability Through a Life Cycle Assessment Module

Abstract

Background Incorporating environmental sustainability (ES) into engineering education is vital to both individual engineering students' success and to the profession as a whole. This study explores attitudes, conceptions, and misconceptions about ES that students bring to the classroom. A promising framework of design-based research is applied to gauge how instructional innovation can impact student attitudes, conceptions, and misconceptions.Purpose Two questions guided this research: What knowledge and attitudes about ES, particularly those pertaining to engineering, do first-year engineering students have? How can an engineering module focused on life cycle assessment in a first-year engineering course affect students' conceptual understanding to prepare them to develop a robust appreciation of environmental issues and ES in engineering?Design/Method A quantitative research design in the context of a comparative designbased research study was utilized to examine first-year engineering students' environmental awareness coming into the program and changes in their conceptions of ES following their participation in a module that focused on life cycle assessment (LCA). Results/ConclusionFollowing the participation in the LCA module, the intervention was able to address certain misconceptions and support students' shift to deeper understanding about ES. Students' perceptions regarding the complexity of LCA did not change. Including multifaceted issues such as LCA in the teaching of engineering students seems beneficial.

Community perceptions of local enterprises in environmentally degraded areas

“…Furthermore, younger people are expected to have a greater level of environmental awareness (Stragham and Robberts, 1999), as age is an key factor affecting the tendency to be environmentally responsible and influencing environmental attitudes (Liobikiene and Juknys, 2016). Finally, although some studies exploring the impact of gender are inconclusive (Dietz et al, 1998;Han et al, 2011), there is evidence that women, with high levels of environmental awareness, have greater pro-environmental behavior compared to men (Weber et al, 2014).…”

Relevance of Life-Cycle Assessment in Context-Based Science Education: A Case Study in Lower Secondary School

“…Despite the lack of research, existing studies have shown many benefits of using LCA in education. For instance, LCA can support scientific development [31], increase students understanding and awareness of environmental issues [32], motivate students [33], and increase interest toward science [34]. Several of the studies have also shown that LCA can help increase awareness and interest towards new career options [32,34].…”

“…One reason for low vocational relevance (c.f. [32,34]) in this study could be that the students only familiarized themselves with one career in detail. Though they were able to decide which career to familiarize themselves with, they may not have been able to relate to the chosen career because of many reasons, including outside factors, such as the personality of the expert they interviewed.…”

Introduction of life cycle assessment and sustainability concepts in chemical engineering curricula

“…This is in line with results obtained by Byrne et al (2013), who remarked that although there is a consensus about the importance of integrating sustainability and sustainable development into engineering curricula, little progress has been seen regarding an effective integration of these concepts (Allen et al, 2009). In turn, this delays the development of sustainable engineering skills (Desha et al, 2009 (Mulder, 2017;Weber et al,2014).…”