This study aims to explore how engineering curricula can address sustainability considerations. Through a cross-case analysis, a hybrid theoretical-empirical model is developed to identify and analyse a broad range of possible and actual responses to sustainability within engineering education.
The study employs a multiple-case study design to compare the experiences of educators and students engaging with sustainability topics in two contrasting tertiary civil engineering programs. It draws on an original conceptual framework informed by the literature for analysing educational responses to sustainability around the world, which can be applied to a diverse range of educational settings. Conceptual review, fieldwork, case-specific and cross-case analysis have been used to refine the framework, enabling the emergence of a hybrid model.
The hybrid model suggests three levels of response to sustainability in engineering education, which can be characterised as: 1) incorporation, 2) integration and 3) transformation. Each level is analysed in relation to five dimensions: functions, content, relationships, spaces and time, which influence the nature of the response and its capacity to foster learning. Cross-case analysis findings suggest that the shape and focus of a particular response to sustainability are significantly influenced by both the types of engineering problems, and the diversity and extent of relationships that engineering educators and students engage during teaching and learning.
Cross-case analysis reveals that developing and supporting (inter)subjective relationships can play a pivotal role in fostering a transformation level of response. Engagement with Indigenous, more-than-human and interdisciplinary perspectives in engineering education for sustainability can also be critical to deepening students’ reflexivity.
The study helps ground theory-driven frameworks for analysing the nature and purpose of responses to sustainability in engineering education, and higher education more broadly. The study also offers a novel hybrid model for identifying and classifying responses to sustainability in engineering education and other disciplines.
