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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1306522

Environmental Education for Sustainable Development in Engineering Education in Colombia

Provisionally accepted
Pedro M. Acosta-Castellanos Pedro M. Acosta-Castellanos 1*Araceli Queiruga-Dios Araceli Queiruga-Dios 2Julian A. Camargo-Mariño Julian A. Camargo-Mariño 1
  • 1 Santo Tomás University, Bogotá, Colombia
  • 2 University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Environmental education (EE) is well known and extensively studied in Latin America, particularly in Colombia. Its application has been promoted and encouraged by governments through educational policies and regulations at all educational stages. On the other hand, thanks to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is gaining increasing importance globally. This research aims to support theoretical findings that demonstrate the lack of knowledge, application, and research of ESD in engineering programs in higher education. Simultaneously, our study intends to measure the degree of acceptance of ESD compared to EE among engineering students in Colombia.Based on our results, a proposal was designed to address sustainable development (SD) within engineering degrees while providing a smoother transition between EE and ESD. A survey was conducted among 406 students from 8 universities in Colombia that offer engineering at the undergraduate level. The survey included Likert scale questions and openended questions. It was possible to identify the roots of EE in the engineering programs at Colombian universities and the progressive integration of ESD within engineering curricula and teaching. On the other hand, the converging areas within EE and ESD should be identified according to the information provided by students, which is unusual for a conservationist field such as EE compared to a developmental one like ESD. This research highlights several problems faced by engineering education in Colombia. The first is the limited knowledge students have about ESD and, consequently, SD. Secondly, there is a lack of academic areas or subjects that promote the knowledge and application of ESD. Finally, considering the unique findings in this study, a transition strategy between EE and ESD is proposed for Colombian higher education.

    Keywords: Environmental Education, Education for Sustainable Development, higher education, critical reflection, Engineering Education

    Received: 10 Apr 2024; Accepted: 05 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Acosta-Castellanos, Queiruga-Dios and Camargo-Mariño. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Pedro M. Acosta-Castellanos, Santo Tomás University, Bogotá, Colombia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.