Critical Thinking Using Project-Based Learning: The Case of The Agroecological Market at the “Universitat Politècnica de València”

Pablo Aránguiz, Guillermo Palau-Salvador, Ana Belda and Jordi Peris
Additional contact information
Pablo Aránguiz: INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Guillermo Palau-Salvador: INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Ana Belda: Rural and Agrifood Engineering Department, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Jordi Peris: INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-23

Abstract: Higher education institutions play an important role in the transition processes to sustainable development through developing critical thinking (CT) in their students. The case of the Research Methodology course of the International Cooperation Master’s degree at the Universitat Politècnica de València is a paradigmatic case of experiential learning, where students face their own realities related to sustainable topics through an action research project with the Agroecological Market (AM). The learning methodology is project-based learning and helps the participants to deeply analyze problems related to the transition of socio-technical systems, such as sustainable food. The objective of this research was to analyze the contribution of project-based learning to students’ critical thinking through a qualitative analysis of the pedagogical outputs obtained during the course. The analysis and results are structured in three dimensions of critical thinking: (i) students’ critical attitude towards reality; (ii) students’ ability to reason and analyze in order to form their own rigorous judgments; and (iii) students’ capacity to construct and deconstruct their own experiences and meanings. The results show that project-based learning using a real-life scenario helped students reflect on their critical thinking and the challenges that our societies face for a transition to sustainability.

Keywords: sustainability education; agroecology; sustainable food; higher education; experiential education; active learning; critical thinking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/9/3553/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/9/3553/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:9:p:3553-:d:350890

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().