How Does Sustainability Become Professionally Relevant? Exploring the Role of Sustainability Conceptions in First Year Students

Abstract

One of the main objectives of higher education for sustainable development is to nurture holistic conceptions of sustainability in students, so that they can use sustainability as an approach to analyze and solve complex problems in their future professional fields. Existing studies have shown that students differ substantially in how relevant they consider the concept of sustainable development to their future careers. Previous studies have identified socio-demographic characteristics, disciplinary background and past experiences with sustainability education as potential influencing factors. To date, the relationships between one's own “understanding” of sustainability (sustainability conception) and the importance students attach to sustainability has hardly been investigated. This case study offers a first systematic examination of how the perceived professional relevance of sustainability is influenced by different individual characteristics and sustainability conceptions. Based on data from a recent survey of n = 1,364 first year undergraduate students from 14 different major subjects, our findings indicate that in addition to the previously reported individual characteristics like sex and academic affiliation, sociocultural sustainability conceptions are an important influential factor for the perceived importance of sustainability for their professional contexts. However, the regression analysis shows that the model based on predictors found in the literature lacks incremental power. This paper unveils that further research is needed on the underlying factors that explain the strength of perceived relevance of sustainability in students and that these influences need to be taken more into account in curriculum development.

Methodology to Analyze the Effectiveness of ESD in a Higher Degree in Education. A Case Study

“…The research by Sundermann & Fischer [7] shows that the pedagogical approaches that transfer the subject learning guides to the teaching practices in the classroom do not take into account or adapt to the conceptions and previous experiences of the students. Previous studies show that when the design of learning environments does not adequately consider students' prior knowledge, an accumulation of inert knowledge may occur that does not affect their previous knowledge and conceptions.…”

“…However, consideration of students' conceptions and their previous experiences when designing learning environments seems to influence their thinking directly [35]. What students bring to the classroom, and what they perceive as useful and important at the beginning of the course, should be reflected in the design of the subject programs [7].…”

“…Although sustainability is increasingly recognized as an important principle for the design of higher education, the actual large-scale implementation of Higher Education for Sustainable Development is still very scarce [7]. The effective integration of ESD is complicated, especially since there are very different ideas about how ESD could and should be implemented.…”

“I Wanted a Profession That Makes a Difference”—An Online Survey of First-Year Students’ Study Choice Motives and Sustainability-Related Attributes

“…A recent study conducted by Sundermann and Fischer [18] is highly relevant to the present study. In a literature review, they first examine 17 studies, published from 2008 to 2019, in which sustainability concepts are surveyed among university students from various disciplinary backgrounds.…”

“…They reveal that students often start their student career with naive and unstructured concepts and-independent of the field of study-primarily associate ecological or environmental aspects with sustainability, while economical and sociocultural aspects hardly play a role. The correlation between students' conceptions of sustainability and their perceived relevance of sustainability for their current studies and their later professional future highlights the importance of taking students' sustainability conceptions into account when stimulating learning processes that support the development of an elaborated understanding [18].…”