Development and Application of the Sustainability Skills and Dispositions Scale to the Wicked Problems in Sustainability Initiative

Hess, Justin L.; Brownell, Sarah; House, Richard; Dale, Alexander T.

doi:10.18260/p.23846

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The competences and skills developed in the sustainability field in engineering students have been assessed by different authors [56][57][58][59][60]. Chandu and Kancharla [61] highlight the process of identifying the skills required for sustainability, problems in curriculum design, implementation and impediments for sustainability in engineering education.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proposed Model of Sustainable Construction Skills for Engineers in Chile

2018

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The training of engineers in sustainable construction (SC) is becoming increasingly studied, since sustainable construction not only improves the quality of life of people, but also provides comprehensive solutions to the environmental problems we face today and thus takes care of the needs of future generations. This research is in line with the National Strategy for Sustainable Construction (NSSC) from the Chilean Government. One of the NSSC challenges is the training of engineers capable of adapting to the SC requirements. Although the competences in sustainability for the training of engineers has been discussed in other researchs, it has not been specifically in sustainable construction and it have not been grouped in a model that considers their degree of importance. The purpose of this article is to present a conceptual model can be used to design and evaluate engineering training programs in SC. The methodology to establish the skills and the proposed training model consists of three stages: Theoretical Phase, Methodological Phase and Validation Phase (surveys and interviews). 113 professionals who performed activities related to SC answered the survey. Interviews were conducted with five experts in training in different SC aspects. Three global skills are identified as: Sustainable Evaluation, Sustainable Construction Certification, and Sustainable Facility Management. In addition, the degree of importance of skills associated with these global skills was identified and assessed. There are five skills necessary for the future engineer, among them, two stand out: teamwork (collaborative) and ethics. Finally, the order of importance of the topics in SC is: energy, environment comfort, water, waste, and construction materials. A future investigation is recommended to apply the proposed conceptual model to current engineering training programs, both national and international.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proposed Model of Sustainable Construction Skills for Engineers in Chile

2018

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“…All students enrolled in ETECH-100: Impacts of Engineering during the Fall 2016, Spring 2017, and Fall 2017 semesters were sent a pre-and a post-survey and given time in class to complete it [14]. The survey combined two existing surveys: The Sustainability Skills and Dispositions Scale (SSDS) [15] and the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) [16]. The SSDS includes 28 items that ask students to rate their level of agreement along a 5-point Likert scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Engineering Justice Curriculum: A Survey of Student Attitudes

Lee¹,

Buchanan²,

Berg³

2019

Preprint

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As part of a larger project examining the role of humanitarian service learning in engineering (NSF project number EEC-1540301), we conducted an investigation of first-year engineering students' perceptions of humanitarian service learning projects, social responsibility in their discipline, and ethics in STEM. Students (n=231) taking a required freshmen level engineering course were surveyed with a pre- and post-instrument, and provided with these working definitions: * Community Service is voluntary work intended to help people in a particular community. * Social Responsibility is an obligation that an individual (or company) has to act with concern and sensitivity, aware of the impacts of their own action on others, particularly the disadvantaged. * Social Justice relates to the distribution of the advantages and disadvantages in society, including the way in which they are allocated. * Pro bono- work done without compensation (pay) for the public good. This course specifically addresses the issues described above with the goal of providing early exposure to topics that will be reinforced in non-major coursework, such as general education elective courses. Results showed that there was little change in student perceptions before and after completion of the course in terms of their perceptions of ethics, social responsibility, and social justice. In the areas in which there were statistically significant changes, students were, on average, slightly less sure the engineering profession can help people or solve social issues and slightly less interested in a job that involves helping people. On the other hand, students were slightly more aware, after the course, of the need to include social aspects in engineering practice and rated technical and professional skills as slightly less important after the class. It was also found that some groups in the class (women, minority students, first-generation students, and student less focused on salary in thinking about their future jobs) entered the class with different attitudes and changed in different ways by the end of the course. Overall, the results of this survey support other findings in engineering ethics which suggests that one course is insufficient to make significant impacts on the ways engineering students think about the societal implications of their work. However, these declines in student confidence, while small, are important to take seriously and this paper will draw out potential implications of this finding. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the differences within the class in terms of effective teaching of these topics and retention of underrepresented students.

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“…The study presented here spans three semesters of the course where we surveyed all of the students completing the course (n=231) at both the beginning and conclusion of each semester. The survey combined two existing surveys: The Sustainability Skills and Dispositions Scale (SSDS) [12] and the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) [13]. These survey instruments allowed us to collect information on the students' confidence, global, social, and environmental awareness, personal awareness, professional development, and professional connectedness.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student Perceptions of First-year Engineering Justice Curriculum

Berg

Lee

Buchanan

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings

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This complete research paper will describe our qualitative analysis of the impacts of a first-year engineering course which includes curricular elements of social justice, social responsibility, and ethics. We present our interpretation of four interesting results that came out of our mixedmethods study (n=231) in which we surveyed students taking a first-year engineering course on their perceptions of the role of engineering in society and the world. We find that while a single course is unlikely to be sufficient to greatly influence student perceptions, for some sub-groups, the influence was greater than for the study sample as a whole. We specifically highlight four notable findings and discuss their implications.

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Development and Application of the Sustainability Skills and Dispositions Scale to the Wicked Problems in Sustainability Initiative

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

Proposed Model of Sustainable Construction Skills for Engineers in Chile

Proposed Model of Sustainable Construction Skills for Engineers in Chile

Impacts of Engineering Justice Curriculum: A Survey of Student Attitudes

Student Perceptions of First-year Engineering Justice Curriculum

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