Educational Strategies for Sustainable Futures: Revealing the Priorities and Perspectives of Engineering Students

In 2015, the UN adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the “Agenda 2030”. These are interconnected goals that address the main development challenges facing the world. Engineers play an important role in the achievement of the UN’s SDGs by developing innovative and sustainable solutions. Therefore, the knowledge, skills, and competencies engineers are equipped with upon graduation are fundamental to be able to actively participate and perform in tackling present and future sustainable problems. Existing studies report the development of self-perceived skills by students after a pedagogical intervention; however, they do not examine why certain skills are prioritized over others. Additionally, most research approaches are quantitative and do not deepen the understanding of why students position themselves concerning sustainability competencies. This study reports on students’ perspectives and needs regarding their competence’s development for sustainability by examining what they consider as the most important skills to act for sustainability and why. It takes a qualitative approach, where open-ended questions were thematically analyzed. The study involved 18 students from an international master's program in Sustainable Design at Aalborg University, Denmark, and 26 students from the Production Engineering course at the University of Brasília, Brazil. Our results demonstrate a multidimensional vision, prioritizing collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and systemic and problem-oriented thinking. They see the importance of education for sustainability as a motivator for future generations, in addition to the need to know how to look at reality to identify problems and seek a fair and sustainable society. These results point to a holistic and conscious view of students concerning sustainability, and these conclusions can guide educational strategies and initiatives that aim to develop these skills and values among students.