Competence in sustainable development – How to assess?

The aim of higher education is to educate change makers who will renew working life and society into more sustainable ones. Thus, all graduating students should have knowledge, skills, and motivation to foster sustainable development. But how to assess such a competence?

Introduction

The assessment of generic competences, or so-called soft skills, is a constant challenge in higher education. The emergence of a newly emphasized competence in sustainable development has further increased the need to develop the assessment methods and criteria. According to several studies and policies, competence in sustainable development is one of the most important future skills, if not the most important (Bianchi et al 2022; Opetushallitus 2019).

In this article it is discussed how the competence of sustainable development was assessed in SINCOE (Supporting Innovation Competence Development in Online Education) Erasmus + project (SINCOE 2024). In this project, it was further developed the FINCODA assessment tool (Fincoda 2017), which was launched in earlier FINCODA project aiming to recognize, develop and assess generic competences.

The aim of the article is to discuss the challenges assessing the generic competence of sustainable development and provide ideas and recommendations on how to develop and assess this competence, which is becoming increasingly important as a learning outcome in higher education.

Students’ experiences and feedback

The generic competences in FINCODA assessment tool covered the competences in creativity, initiative, critical thinking, teamwork, and networking. The assessment tool is an online questionnaire that asks an individual to rate the extent to which they agree with a series of statements, or competence items, about their competences. The FINCODA assessment tool did not contain any items for the assessment of competence in sustainable development.

In SINCOE project, the items of the tool were further developed. New optional items about competence in sustainable development were included under the dimension of critical thinking. These items were adopted from Arene’s definition of sustainable development competence “The graduating student is familiar with the principles of sustainable development, promotes their implementation and acts responsibly as a professional and a member of society” and derived from Arene’s recommendation how to assess this competence (Arene 2022). The new items were:

1. Analyze sustainability challenges, their interdependencies and the various aspects of issues and problems.
2. Use information in finding, implementing, and establishing sustainable solutions and operating models.

This piloting and testing of these new optional competence items in the assessment tool were implemented at Turku University of Applied Sciences in autumn 2023 as students’ self-assessment with an electronic survey and completed with interviews. The sample was 60 students, of which 20 were also interviewed after.

The piloting topic was first briefly discussed with students, after which they answered to the survey including these optional items. Student were asked to consider these topics in their own studies so far, and after answering to the survey there was a discussion on their thoughts how they experienced the items. The respondents were students from engineering, business, and health and social sciences. Majority (64%) were first year students.

The first item Analyze sustainability challenges, their interdependencies and the various aspects of issues and problems was considered especially complicated. This item needs practical examples to be understood correctly. It was also stated that the item is about systems thinking competence, but still, it needs examples. The item was seen as a very important competence.

When discussing with students, several examples of the item were found. For example, climate change is not only an ecological but social challenge too; it causes displacement of communities, food security, water shortages and health-related issues.

Another example concerns a very topical issue in Finland, the restoration of peatlands. It is important to improve the biodiversity, but the impacts of restoration change over time. Restoration of peatlands will increase methane emissions, which may result in increased greenhouse gas emissions over the next 10 to 15 years. In the long term, however, emissions generally begin to decrease, and peatlands can be restored as carbon sinks.

The third example, electric cars, generated a lot of discussion. An electric car is not an unambiguous solution to environmental problems. Although emissions can be reduced, the production of an electric car requires a lot of non-renewable natural resources and causes increasing mining activity and many kinds of problems in mining areas related to water resources and the living conditions of the residents of the area.

Competence is action, not just knowledge!

The second item Use information in finding, implementing, and establishing sustainable solutions and operating models was found difficult too. It was concluded that this is important skill and there should be opportunities to do this in practice during your studies. In was mentioned that in studies, it is often discussed sustainable development in general but there are no opportunity/ enough opportunities to practice this skill, i.e. how to take action to promote sustainable development in practice.

Information gathering was considered important, as not even general beliefs are unambiguous, but it is good to look at things from multiple perspectives. One example is the reduction of emissions, where the focus in the media debate is on traffic emissions. Emissions from food production are not much talked about, although some research findings suggest that emissions from animal-based food production even exceed the combined emissions of all traffic.

Competence in sustainable development is not only knowledge mut skills to put it in practice too. Therefore, it would be important to be able to practice and implement sustainable development during the studies (Unesco 2018; Vare & Scott 2007). One example here is studies in circular economy, where students organize an annual clothing recycling event. Or, in mathematics studies, carbon emissions from different activities are calculated and it is found that the recycling of an individual has a clearly smaller impact than food, after which students brainstorm and implement ways to make the supply of student canteens more vegetarian and vegan oriented.

Self-assessment requires preparation and joint discussion

The items used in the self-assessment, which measure the competences of sustainable development, aim to support the students in the assessment of their own competence. For the assessment to be realistic and reliable, it is essential that the student understands a fairly general competence item correctly. For this reason, the above examples of what the items can mean in practice are important for the success of self-assessment.

All in all, a successful self-assessment always requires prior discussion with the students and should never be carried out without the students being prepared for it. The aim of the discussion is to explain to the participants what it is assessed, why it is assessed, and what the assessment items in practice can mean. Thus, no self-assessment tool is sufficient as such, but the importance of joint discussion and introduction to the assessment aims, methods and criteria used cannot be sufficiently emphasized.

Conclusions

Only by careful preparation, by ensuring common understanding, and by building motivation to assess oneself, the assessment can be development-oriented and increase the student’s understanding of his/her own strengths and development needs. This self-reflection skill, as well as competence in sustainable development, are both key future competences of all fields in all professions, and universities of applied sciences play a significant role in developing and promoting them.

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