Currently reading Hallgarth (2025) on “Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering”

I was recently sent Clara Hallgarth’s Master’s thesis on “Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering” (thanks, Clara!) and really enjoyed reading it; it’s a  treasure trove of great references and even better ideas! I am summarizing my main takeaways below, but keep in mind that this is not a summary of the thesis itself, but rather of the points that I want to remember for the purpose of my own work.

The thesis starts out with a thorough literature review where many parts were familiar, but definitely not all (always so interesting to discover new literature, see how others put it in context, and wonder what else you’ve been missing out on!). One of those is the reference to the Sandri (2022) iceberg model where pedagogy is the invisible underwater part of the iceberg that carries the approach and methods (which I summarize here since it fits so nicely with our “Teaching through Sustainability“).

Later, Clara writes that “[t]he way in which instructors frame sustainability shapes the perspectives students develop; a course that presents only one facet of sustainability may limit the way students conceptualize potential solutions to sustainability-related problems“. And specifically, “[f]raming sustainability in a way that connects to a student’s pre-existing frame of reference, such as explicitly stating the relevance of sustainability to a student’s educational field, allows them to connect the idea of sustainability to something they already value while internalizing the value of sustainability as a concept“. This is what we are trying to do with “Teaching in Sustainability“, so I looked into two of the references Clara brings to support that statement:

• Sandri (2021) find that “the way sustainability is framed may assist in addressing barriers in the uptake of sustainability by teachers and students in Higher Education“. This should be obvious, but it is good to remember that, as they write, “if sustainability is framed narrowly with only an environmental association or an economic association (with a ‘siloed’ or ‘singular’ view), its relevance also becomes narrowed to only those with interests in these fields. A more complex and broader view (such as the triple bottom line view) frames sustainability as systemic and of interest and importance to all disciplines. Framing of sustainability also influences its positioning within curriculum; for example, as a single ‘environmental’ study or an ‘add-on’ course as discussed previously, or an integrated multidisciplinary study and practice.” They investigated four different cases (all in the wider engineering field) and look at how sustainability is framed in them, and it is quite striking how students perceive sustainability differently depending on the framing (but of course this is also influenced by the pedagogy etc in those courses). One easy task in one of the cases to highlight that sustainability is a contested concept was to “define sustainability and to identify the differences between [their] definition and those of others’“, which I think is a nice one to keep in mind for future use.
• Barth and Rieckmann (2012) investigate a pedagogical training in South America and find that since “academic staff development not only influences the learning and teaching competencies of the staff involved, but also triggers social learning in the organisation“, “the competence development of academic staff is an essential prerequisite for a sustainability paradigm shift in higher education” (which I am mainly quoting here so I can find the quote again next time I want to make that point ;-))

Clara writes later that “[a]n analysis of 2023 sustainability literacy survey results at Cal Poly identified three sustainability-related courses as the minimum number for students to display a statistically-significant increase in sustainability knowledge“, which while that of course depends on the type and duration of the courses and many other factors, I think stresses the point that just tagging on one sustainability course somewhere is not nearly good enough.

On the point that socialisation into what it means to be an engineer happens during higher education and that therefore sustainability needs to be a guiding concept there, Clara refers to Cech and Finelli (2024), who use survey responses from 508 employed engineering professionals living in the US on a representative knowledge panel. They summarise their results in their abstract as “Consistent with expectations, engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in engineering classes are more likely than other engineers to understand their responsibilities to protect public health and safety and problem-solve collectively, to recognize the importance of social consequences and ethical responsibilities in their own jobs, to have noticed ethical issues in their workplace, and to have taken action about an issue that concerned them. Training through other parts of college, workplaces, or professional societies has comparatively little impact. Concerningly, nearly a third of engineers reported never being trained in public welfare responsibilities“. Another really good study to remember…

But now on to the main part of the thesis: the tool kit development!

Clara suggests a six-step iterative process for embedding sustainability into existing engineering courses (with helpful suggested discussion questions in the toolkit!):

1. Support: In order to embed sustainability in engineering culture (and to not get/stay stuck in disciplinary silos or other weird bubbles), seek out an interdisciplinary community of people working for sustainability, and build on existing experiences and resources
2. Reflect: “Examine your own assumptions regarding sustainability and sustainable education, including how your education has shaped these” and how your disciplinary and work-place culture is still shaping it… What is your own role in sustainable education?
3. Assess: Understand what your students actually know and think and feel about sustainability: what is their prior experience, what is required in their programs, etc. But also: maybe just ask them?
4. Identify: “Where is sustainability in engineering?” Figure out what sustainability concepts or examples fit with the already existing course content and plan. What are the local issues relating to sustainability?
5. Plan: Now use all the previous thoughts and integrate it in your course! One question in the planning template I found super useful is “how are students engaging with the content, rather than receiving it?” (and thinking about that, also another, related one: “how are instructors facilitating learning, rather than transmitting content?“
6. Evaluate: What’s the effect of the intervention? This could be answered by measures of student knowledge, skills and attitudes, but also by peer review or observation of teaching, and based on that decide what to keep and what to change.

And I love that the toolkit contains an annotated bibliography!!

Clara then applies the toolkit on three civil engineering courses, which is super interesting. One idea I am definitely going to try is a jigsaw-type way to structure presentations and peer feedback: groups record their presentation through zoom (or a similar software that records both slides and speakers) and those recordings then get assigned to other groups for review based on a rubric and prompts. It is always so interesting to see these kinds of examples!

Seeing the toolkit applied in that way also really helps to understand that the ambition does not necessarily have to be to revolutionize a course all at once, but rather to incrementally improve facets over time, which makes the toolkit even more valuable for teachers that are likely pressed for time. It might even be an idea to add the examples to the toolkit, or link to them (and possibly other ones, when more people start using it over time)?

I think the toolkit is a super valuable resource and I would love to see people working with it — especially if they also share their thought processes when changing their instruction and the resulting changes! And I kinda want to do it myself now, but I was just reminded that we should at least have dinner first, and that it is also the weekend. Oh well…

Barth, M., & Rieckmann, M. (2012). Academic staff development as a catalyst for curriculum change towards education for sustainable development: an output perspective. Journal of Cleaner production, 26, 28-36.

Cech, E. A., & Finelli, C. J. (2024). Learning to prioritize the public good: Does training in classes, workplaces, and professional societies shape engineers’ understanding of their public welfare responsibilities?. Journal of Engineering Education, 113(2), 407-438. doi: 10.1002/jee.20590

Hallgarth, C. (2025). Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering. Master’s thesis in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Available at https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/3203

Sandri, O. (2021). Providing a ‘point of entry’: Approaches to framing sustainability in curriculum design in Higher Education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 37(1), 56–68. doi:10.1017/aee.2020.19

Pictures from the walk we did before I started reading the part about the toolkit development