Fostering sustainability and critical thinking through debate: a case study

Transversal competences such as sustainability or critical thinking have become more important in the last decades in University teaching. The objective of this article is to assess the effectiveness of debate as a teaching method capable of fostering such competences in engineering students. To do...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Rodríguez Dono, Alfonso|||0000-0002-2296-4826, Hernández Fernández, Antonio|||0000-0002-9466-2704
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/347391
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/347391
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su13116397
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Sustainable development -- Study and teaching (Higher)
Sustainable development goals
Sustainability
Critical thinking
Debating
Higher education
Flipped classroom
Jigsaw
Teaching methods
Desenvolupament sostenible -- Ensenyament universitari
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Ensenyament i aprenentatge::Ensenyament universitari
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Desenvolupament humà i sostenible::Desenvolupament sostenible
Descripción
Sumario:Transversal competences such as sustainability or critical thinking have become more important in the last decades in University teaching. The objective of this article is to assess the effectiveness of debate as a teaching method capable of fostering such competences in engineering students. To do this, a debate activity has been held facing two reasonable positions: Sustainable Development versus Degrowth. The research methodology consisted of performing this activity in the classroom (with 13 students in this particular case study), and conducting some tests before and after the debate that served as feedback to assess the effectiveness of the debate on the learning process. This feedback is composed of different documents, including a pre-post test, a specific survey about the debate, a pre-post knowledge survey and the Student Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ) survey. A methodology for the organization of the debate is proposed and the answers of the students to these feedback documents are analyzed. As it can be inferred from the different surveys, the debate has been an efficient learning tool to acquire knowledge and to develop sustainability and critical thinking competences.