Assessing sustainability knowledge of a student population

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to present a tool for assessing the sustainability knowledge of an undergraduate population. Design/methodology/approach – Multiple-choice questions were developed through soliciting expert input, focus groups, pilot testing, distribution via a large-scale online survey and analysis using item response theory. Findings – The final assessment consists of 16 questions from the environmental, economic and social domains, covering foundational concepts within the topic of sustainability. Research limitations/implications – This assessment represents an initial effort to quantify knowledge of the broad and abstract concept of sustainability. The authors plan to continue refining these questions to better differentiate between students with higher levels of knowledge and to replace those with answers that may change over time. Practical implications – With knowledge of sustainability concepts becoming increasingly included in institution-wide learning objectives, there is a growing demand for a way to measure progress in this area. Our assessment tool can easily be used (via a campus-wide survey or distributed at the classroom level) by institutions to gauge current levels of knowledge and track changes over time, as well as assess the effectiveness of courses and curricula at meeting sustainability knowledge goals. Originality/value – This assessment of sustainability knowledge is the first of its kind to include all three separate domains of sustainability, and we expect it to be useful across a variety of college and university contexts.

Investigating Students’ Environmental Knowledge, Attitude, Practice and Communication

“…Third, as stated above, youth's engagement in everyday sustainability practices in general is found to be low and unsatisfactory (Ahmad et al, 2012). Since many earlier studies of this nature have been conducted in other settings, particularly in the first world countries (Chaplin & Wyton, 2014;Too & Bajracharya, 2015;Zwickle, Koontz, Slagle, & Bruskotter, 2014), this study is expected to add to the literature and contribute to the body of knowledge based on the Malaysian unique experience as a developing nation committed to rapid, yet sustainable development.…”

Analysis of the Consciousness of University Undergraduates for Sustainable Consumption

“…Kagawa [17] detects differences between students in the social and business sciences and those in health and social assistance in relation to feeling familiar with sustainability. Zwickle et al [19] likewise shows that there are differences among students by degree: aerospace engineering students give greater importance to economic sustainability, even more so than students of economics-related specialties. Furthermore, Chiong [20] concludes that civil engineering students show greater knowledge and interest in sustainability than other engineering students.…”

“…Regarding the sustainability dimensions, the threefold approach already has an institutional statement [54,55], which recognizes that regardless of the multiple meanings of the term, the three domains-social, environmental, and economic-are basic. Nonetheless, the concept of sustainability has placed greater emphasis on its environmental aspect than on its economic and social approaches and students tend to understand sustainability only from its environmental perspective [19,48,[56][57][58][59][60][61]. The only behavior classified as normative is that of recycling, while no social or economic behavior has been classified as sustainable [45].…”

“…There is no unanimity regarding the degree of development of the dimensions of sustainability throughout the studies. Many studies conclude that environmental attitudes and behaviors are progressively higher as students advance in their studies [17,19,30,61,63,[69][70][71][72]. To contrast, other authors, such as Kollmuss and Agyeman [73], conclude that a higher level of education does not translate into an increase of behavior in favor of the environment.…”

Measuring Teacher Dispositions Toward Teaching Sustainable Systems: A Mixed Methods Approach for Instrument Development and Psychometric Testing

“…As participants begun the course they associated having experience with sustainability with varying degrees from hearing about it and recycling, to having a course on the topic. As suggested by the expert judge differentiating sustainability knowledge using assessment scores such as the Ohio Assessment of Sustainability Knowledge (ASK) survey may serve as a better indicator of discriminating between experience and non-experience (Zwickle, Koontz, Slagle, & Bruskotter, 2014).…”