Civil engineering curricula and sustainability education: an international cross-case analysis of alignments and gaps

Engineering is essential to progress towards a sustainable future. Achieving this goal is supported in part by the profession's fundamental mission: to address basic human needs and improve quality of life. However, analysis shows that when the preparation of engineers at universities focuses on traditional and technical skills, such a curriculum is insufficient for preparing graduates to tackle current global challenges, such as climate change, poverty, and the humanitarian crisis. As with the Washington Accord, engineering accreditation bodies increasingly recognise that these challenges demand a new kind of engineer equipped with a new set of competencies and capacities. In some cases, this has led to evolution, if not revolution, in engineering curricula as the social compact comes to the fore. This study examines what is happening and which initiatives are promoted to embed sustainability considerations in two civil engineering curriculums: one aligned with the Washington Accord (in Australia) and one not (from Colombia). The study proceeds from the understanding that while the volume and breadth of research about ensuring engineering education addresses sustainability well have increased rapidly during this century, there have been few empirical studies beyond a single institution's case. Furthermore, many case studies have also been limited to documenting changes in course maps or the explicit curriculum, i.e., what is overt in the documentation. In light of this, this research presents findings from a doctoral thesis that analyses educators' and students' experiences of the explicit and implicit-which is learnt from the organisation, intentions, attitudes and behaviours of the educators, for example, and what is not taught respectively-to provide a richer picture of what is understood and experienced as the intended and enacted curriculum. In general, findings suggest that accreditation systems (such as the Washington Accord) highly influence the adoption of educational responses towards sustainability in the civil engineering curriculum. The accreditation requirements ensure that sustainability is addressed in specific discipline-based units, and to a greater extent, in the capstone unit. Barriers, however, occur in both cases because sustainability considerations are not scaffolded. The cross-case analysis also shows that while project-based environments were the most common type of educational responses implemented to strengthen students' sustainability-based knowledge and skills, findings suggested projects do not always encourage the same complexity of problems and, consequently, do not generate the same level of learning outcomes. Results also reveal that hidden-curriculum responses were decisive for students to embrace new sustainability perspectives. Finally, the research also provides insight into future curriculum strategies for developing engineering education for sustainability.