Knowledge of Indonesian University Students on the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources

Abstract

Abstract:Graduates of university programs addressing sustainable resource management are likely to shape strategies for natural resource use in the future. Their academic training needs to foster student knowledge of the multiple dimensions of natural resource management. This paper investigates university student understanding of such challenges. We differentiated situational, conceptual, and procedural types of knowledge, and three domains of knowledge (ecological, socio-economic and institutional knowledge), and sampled beginners (third semester) and seniors (seventh semester) of seven natural resource related programs at the leading Indonesian institution of higher education in the field of natural resource management (IPB Bogor; n = 882). The questionnaire consisted of multiple choice and rating scale items covering ‗locally' relevant open-access resource use issues. With a confirmatory tau-equivalent LISREL model, construct validity was assessed. The ability to extract relevant information from problem descriptions provided (situational knowledge) did not differ between third and seventh semester students. While it was high for ecological and socio-economic items, it was markedly lower for institutional knowledge. Knowledge of relevant scientific concepts (conceptual knowledge) increased in OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2013, 5 1444 the ecological and socio-economic domains but the effect was small. Conceptual knowledge in the socio-economical and institutional domains tended to be lower than ecological knowledge. Although there was certain improvement, student judgments on the efficacy of resource management options (procedural knowledge) differed strongly from expert judgments for beginners as well as for senior students. We conclude that many of the university students in the sampled programs displayed substantial gaps in their capacity to solve complex, real-world natural resource management problems. Specifically, the socio-economic and institutional knowledge domains-and their integration with ecological knowledge-may require attention by educational planners.

Student Teachers’ Knowledge to Enable Problem-Solving for Sustainable Development

“…One repeatedly used approach for measuring teaching and learning prerequisites in education sciences [35][36][37][38] is de Jong and Ferguson-Hessler's model [39]. The model is considered as it explicitly refers to problem-solving and, thus, to knowledge-in-use [39].…”

“…One approach for measuring procedural knowledge is to evaluate the effectiveness of predefined solution strategies in terms of SD challenges and to use expert evaluations of diverse SD-relevant disciplines as a benchmark cf. [36]. Koch et al [36] used this method to determine the procedural knowledge of Indonesian students in land use study programs concerning local and regional resource use problems.…”

“…[36]. Koch et al [36] used this method to determine the procedural knowledge of Indonesian students in land use study programs concerning local and regional resource use problems. They detected that both beginner and senior students strongly differed from experts.…”

“…In this study, measuring procedural knowledge was operationalized according to de Jong and Ferguson-Hessler's model [39]. Following Koch et al [36], solution strategies were evaluated in terms of their effectiveness. The developed measure and corresponding benchmark from previous work [43] formed the base for assessing student teachers' knowledge.…”

“…Weighted average experts' answers on the item level from the second Delphi round [43] served as a benchmark to evaluate the student teachers' procedural knowledge [36,43]. Therefore, the effectiveness estimations of the student teachers were subtracted from the expert benchmark.…”