Empathy and Education for Sustainable Development

The engineering skills required for the 21st century and the green transition go beyond technical knowledge. Sustainability problems are multidimensional and require consideration of multiple perspectives. Empathy plays a fundamental role in enabling the development of more humanistic and socially constructed skills required to act for sustainability. It is an essential element of human-centred design and ethical behaviour, as well as engineering teamwork, engagement with diverse stakeholders, and ability to work in intercultural settings. Engineers must relate to the needs of the primary user and empathise with those (in)directly affected by their decisions. This highlights the importance of helping engineering students cultivate and apply empathy. However, little research has explored the influence of students’ empathy on education outcomes for sustainable development. The paper presents an overview of key publications in education for sustainable development (ESD) - the first step of a state-of-the-art review which is part of a larger study on empathic engineering education for sustainable development. The overview is guided by the research question “How is empathy described and framed in current sustainable education policies and frameworks?”. The paper provides a time-framed overview of the current policies and educational frameworks and identifies directions for future work on embedding empathy in engineering education for sustainable development.