Emergent Approaches to Prospective Thinking for Sustainable Development in Engineering Education
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Education and Approaches".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 4733
Special Issue Editors
Interests: education for sustainable development; innovation in engineering education; ethics and sustainability in engineering education; ICT4D; ICT4S; ICT cooperation projects
Interests: forward thinking methodologies for sustainable development; education for sustainable development; technologies for sustainability; philosophical practice; behavior and forward outlook in societal and institutional development
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The primary focus of this Special Issue is on education in engineering for sustainable development using a forward outlook-based approach.
When it comes to forward thinking and foresight related to engineering, the focus is usually on the design of new technologies and the governance of emergent business models. A complementary proposal would seek prospective work that goes beyond the mainstream technology push trends, to consider local and global opportunities as well as local and global societal risks associated with technological and economic development. This implies the consideration of both opportunities and disruptive and catastrophic risks beyond the environmental arena, to then include broader social impacts of technological development on the basis of critical long-term forward thinking.
Within the context of higher education in engineering, educational proposals that allow the development of competencies that include cognitive, affective, volitional and motivational elements are still scarce. In fact, one of the fundamental competency approaches today in engineering, within the rapid changing social and technological context, is the integration of skills in long-term prospective thinking for sustainable development.
This position fundamentally allows the integration of a critical and reflective outlook of a personal and professional future in a way that considers emerging community and societal structures. It will integrate reflections of the past, what happened individually and socially, and connect it with a critical analysis of the current economic and technological trends in development models.
We expect proposals in the area of engineering education that integrate a prospective view based on personal, professional and social visions of the future. This proposition would identify the potential for the integration of an outlook for the future that can guide and shape the meaning of professional work as well as the impact of professional action in the development of future sustainable societies.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- backcasting as the key word in education
- responsible education in engineering
- integration of “Friday for Future” in classes: students’ hopes and concerns
- climate and social emergencies discussed in the classroom
- how to engage students and professors in prospective thinking
- proposals to develop socio-emotional and behavioral learning outcomes in engineering education
- conceive-design-implement-operate (CDIO) techniques applied to Education for Sustainability in engineering education
- practical philosophical approaches in engineering studies
- professional and social visions of the future
- cross-cutting competencies for sustainable development.
Dr. Eva María Vidal
Dr. Manuel Fernández López
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- future vision
- anticipation
- backcasting
- self-awareness competency
- critical thinking competency
- strategic competency
