Sustainability: A Public Policy, a Concept, or a Competence? Efforts on the Implementation of Sustainability as a Transversal Competence throughout Higher Education Programs

Jorge Membrillo-Hernández, Vianney Lara-Prieto and Patricia Caratozzolo
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Jorge Membrillo-Hernández: Institute for the Future of Education, School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey 64849, Mexico
Vianney Lara-Prieto: Institute for the Future of Education, School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey 64849, Mexico
Patricia Caratozzolo: Institute for the Future of Education, School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey 64849, Mexico

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 24, 1-14

Abstract: The concept of sustainability emerged globally in the 1987 Brundtland Report. Initially, it comprised three dimensions: environmental, social, and economic. Over time, sustainability became a global necessity that led to the establishment in 2015 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), so that sustainability became a public policy of extreme urgency. Thirty-four years later, there is an imperative need to expand the original concept not in a public policy but in a competence that graduates of higher education develop, regardless of their studied academic program. We propose sustainability as a transversal competence. Our work describes the path that a higher education institution in Mexico, Tecnologico de Monterrey, has followed to accomplish this task. The new educational model Tec21 based on challenge-based learning experiences has a focus on the development of sustainability competences and actions ownership towards solving the problems described in the 17 SDGs. Our proposed definition for the sustainability transversal competence is: “ The student possesses the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for the successful performance of the task and the resolution of problems related to the challenges and opportunities for sustainability in today’s world ”. Thus, education is both an objective and a means to achieve all the other SDGs.

Keywords: higher education; educational innovation; competences; socially oriented education; sustainability; challenge-based learning; education 4.0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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