gene-ral are an essential part of impacts on environment, society and economy, it seems vital
to act immediately in these sectors. Besides measures to integrate research and direct
application in the professional sector, to act on the future professionals from the
univer-sity is a key objective. With this scope, a review of what sustainability curriculum
me-ans is showed and it is proposed a first approach for its integration into a Polytechnic
School, Universidad Europea (Spain).
ment.
There is a consensus in the literature: higher education institutions are crucial in the global ef-forts for reaching a sustainable development (UNESCO, 2009; Mochizuki and Fadeeva 2008 Calder and Clugston, 2003).
It is proposed in the literature promoting a solidarity education, overcoming the tendency to guide behavior based on short-term interests, or simple habit that contributes to a correct per-ception of the state of the world, building responsible behavior in students and preparing them to make decisions aimed at achieving a culturally pluralistic development and sustainable physi-cally (Delors, 1996). At the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002, in the Ubuntu Declaration on Education and Science and Technology for Sustainable Development, it is also recognized education as a fundamental pillar for the implementation of sustainable development. In December 2002 the General Assembly of the United Nations de-clared the decade of Education for Sustainable Development from January 2005. And then it was stressed that education must play a key role in order to ensure sustainable livelihoods op-portunities, and future for young people (UNESCO 2009). Currently there is being some con-sensus internationally on the role of the university in relation to sustainability, named and claimed worldwide (Calder and Clugston, 2003; Wright, 2004; Brundiers and Wiek, 2010; Mo-chizuki and Fadeeva, 2010).
Thus education in all areas has been marked as the basis of sustainable development. For UNESCO the challenge is how to achieve through education and learning throughout life that changes occur in lifestyles and behaviors of individuals that enable a more just and sustainable for all (UNESCO, Bonn Declaration, 2009). However, for some authors, which will lead to sus-tainability is a complete change in the global paradigm of education and involvement of society as they feel that education is often part of the problem encourages individualism, the unsustain-able lifestyles and consumption patterns, directly or by default (Wade, 2008).
In some countries like Spain, the CRUE (Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities) has prepared and issued the appropriate educational guidelines for the implementation of sustainable development competencies. These guidelines are described in the document "Guidelines for the Introduction of Sustainability in the Curriculum CRUE 2005", and include the following capaci-ties to be able to develop the different professionals:
- Be able to achieve understanding, understand and consider in their professional interaction they have with society and the environment
- Understand the contribution of their work in different cultural, social and political - Be able to work in multidisciplinary teams and transdisciplinary
- Participate in the discussion, definition, design, implementation and evaluation of policies and actions to redirect society towards a more sustainable development.
- Apply professional knowledge according to universal ethical values - Collect the demands and proposals of citizens.
Engineering and architecture within their professional activity is a key actor, of the economic, social and environmental transformations. "This society needs scientists, engineers, and busi-ness people who design technological and economic activities that sustain rather than degrade the natural environment; activities that enhance human health and well-being" (Ségalas, 2009:
1).
Engineers and architects are actors of the present and future builders. To do this they need to be immersed in the problems and challenges that arise in today's society, so they can collaborate with other professionals to solve it. To do this it must create a technology education with the po-tential to help students to think, process, design and build in a more sustainable way (Elshof, 2005).
2.2 How to develop sustainability into the university: skills and competences
In the Bonn Declaration in 2009 it was determined that sustainable development should be ap-plied with different approaches depending on the context, and through education it should inte-grate sustainability through teacher training, with better plans and study programs, materials, etc., incorporating sustainability among its key elements.
Sustainability into the curriculum is set as a strategy that tends to facilitate the achievement of
training objectives relating to the development of basic skills for sustainability in university graduates (Aznar and Ull, 2009). Also, sustainability implies a wide range of expertise, know-ledge and skills for action, integrating ethics education in the future (Geli de Ciurana, 2004), and those skills must be an integrated and complex set of knowledge, procedures, attitudes and values that individuals bring into play in different contexts when interacting to resolve situa-tions (Geli de Ciurana, 2004).
For United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE, 2011), education for sustai-nability is based on an ethic of solidarity, equality and mutual respect between people, coun-tries, cultures and generations, and its horizon has three fundamental characteristics: a holistic vision, a vision of change that learns from the past and the transformation of the meaning of be-ing an educator and ways of learnbe-ing and teachbe-ing.
Sustainable Education is about learning skills, perspectives and values that guide and moti-vate people to seek more sustainable ways of living, to participate in a democratic society and to live in a sustainable way. This involves studying local and global problems. Therefore, there are five components (knowledge, skills, perspectives, values and problems) to be included in a for-mal academic program that has been reoriented to address sustainability (Mckeown, 2002). The concept of "Gestaltungskompetenz" -conformation of competition- (Haan, 2006) as a result of the German experience, identifies the following core competencies: forecasting, intercisciplinar job skills, cross-cultural thinking, participatory skills, planning and implementation, empathy and motivation. This concept is characterized in particular by the key competencies required for the future participation and autonomously in setting sustainable development. (Adomßent and Hoffmann, 2013)
Core competencies emphasize the mobilization of knowledge: knowledge is not enough to acquire, retain and memorize to repeat, we must know how to use knowledge of different types (linguistic, technological, relational, concepts, strategies, attitudes) in a consistent manner and appropriate circumstances in changing contexts (Arizaleta, 2010). It is not to add one more ele-ment in the academic level, but to integrate it into the educational process in a holistic manner (Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities, "Guidelines for Curriculum Sustainabilization"
April 18, 2005, Valladolid).
Flexible curriculum models should be developed to facilitate the holistic perspective of hu-man development environmentally and socially sustainable and it is needed to work in teams and networks to foster greater diversity of research contexts, action and interaction. It is for this reason that education for sustainability emphasizes creative and critical approaches; it encou-rages critical reflection that allows becoming aware of actions and questioning them; and the in-novation and empowerment for dealing with uncertainty and solve complex problems enter in the learning process (Ull et al, 2010). This challenge commit professors to manage processes based on action research, defined as a collaborative process in which managers and researchers would combine research, learning, reflection and action (Ull et al, 2010).
Also noteworthy is that the implementation and assessment of competences for sustainable development vary, because each country has a unique combination of issues to be addressed through technology and education for sustainable development (Pavlova, 2012), although all within a common framework that has been determining internationally through various declara-tions, conferences and publications.
In the learning outcomes and competencies of graduates in engineering, obtained from a re-cent study (Segalas, 2009) shows a consensus (on the sample) of the competencies that are most important in the three domains of learning:
- Knowledge and understanding: State of the World, The causes of unsustainability; Funda-mentals Sustainability, Science, technology and society sustainable technology tools.
- Skills and abilities: Auto-learning and work-disciplinary cooperation, sustainable devel-opment Solve; critical thinking; Social Participation.
- Attitudes: Responsibility, commitment and knowledge; Culture of Respect and ethical val-ues; awareness.
2.3 Integration of Sustainability in Higher Education
The International Commission on Education in its report to UNESCO, "LEARNING: The Trea-sure Within", recommends that all reforms are carried out in the spirit and essence of sustainable
development and calls for reorienting education in this field.
Focusing on the implantation of sustainability in the university field, the Steering Committee of ECE established a Group of Experts on Competencies in Education for Sustainable Devel-opment in 2009. Its mandate, among others, was the develDevel-opment of a series of basic compe-tences in matter of Sustainability in Education to serve as tool in integrating these concepts in all educational programs of all levels (UNECE, 2011). This is a transversal way to integrate sus-tainability, by developing skills all along the graduation.
A complementary way to achieve these goals is the introduction into the curriculum a course whose content is Education for Sustainability or Education for Sustainable Development, a trend that is spreading in European universities (Firth and Winter, 2007). In this case we must take special care that the other subjects do not stop to contemplate the skills for sustainability.
Despite this, overall transverse integration of various courses is considered much more effec-tive than the mere addition of specific courses dedicated to sustainable development. Students can evaluate as less important or whose contents can be perceived as far from their future pro-fession, therefore not integrated with the rest of its competences. For the implementation of sus-tainable development is necessary to emphasize the application of a broad and general approach (Sammalisto and Lindhqvist, 2008). Some universities started with the objective focused on a less complex concept such as the environment, to now moving towards the paradigm of sustai-nability, as the University of Catalonia (Ferrer-Balas et al, 2004).
The priority is to motivate educators to understand, accept and introduce sustainable devel-opment concepts and strategies into their teaching programs. The concepts introduced so far are loose threads, while the Education for Sustainable Development is a concept more holistic, comprehensive and interdisciplinary (Down, 2006). Also we do not forget that university has to meet the expectations of students: a curriculum must maintain its focus on course objectives so that the demands of sustainability issues not displace the selected course (Down, 2006).
3 PLAN FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION 2012-2016 – UNIVERSIDAD EUROPEA From the information that is being developed and was summarized before, the European Uni-versity has proposed its Sustainability Plan 2012-2016 recently that seeks to integrate sustaina-ble development transversely through the development of key skills. Initially it has been se-lected five but they will be increasing each year by the feedback obtained, according with the research project supported by this university (Esteban et al, 2013). Thus, initial skills are: criti-cal thinking, initiative and entrepreneurship, responsibility, capacity for analysis and synthesis, decision making, and, finally, aware of ethical values.
But education for sustainability is not only the development of skills in a curriculum, we be-lieve that a good sustainability plan must also develop internal sustainability (to employees, stu-dents, etc., at the institutional level), where raw the example in the daily chores of the universi-ty; and external sustainability in the University's relationship with other stakeholders (suppliers, companies, employers, research labors, etc.) leading by example and taking a leadership role in this social field. This should be further beyond corporate social responsibility and environmen-tal and quality management that currently many institutions develop and take a step towards education for sustainability.
It is crucial professor training in innovative topics such as sustainability. It has been orga-nized the First Meeting of Curriculum Sustainabilization nationwide in Spain (January 2013), specific workshops with internal and external experts in the field, and some workshops on inno-vative teaching conferences. Currently at the European University a total of 329 courses devel-oped curricular sustainability issues in 2012-2013 of all degrees given. Note that in this first pi-lot year, we just try to have the first feedback from students, professors and rest of stakeholders to develop a good strategy to reach in a medium term an integrate education for a sustainable development. In this sense, the project have many problems to face: changing competitive learn-ing (such as normal works of students) by cooperation learnlearn-ing; identification of numerous ac-tivities and forms of teaching assignments that are flawed precisely in those aspects we want to avoid, without encouraging the spirit critic; in definitive: it is being identified a major effort to this new challenge.
Figure 2. Methodical framework proposed for the education for a sustainable development in European University
The steps proposed as a methodological framework in our Sustainability are (as shown in Figure 2): the identification of all key competencies to be made (by the comparison with other universities, declarations, and consensus); to develop acquisition levels in each competence and teaching activities to develop each one; the qualified profile of the future graduate linked with the skills we want to develop; and to develop tools to test the acquisition of different sustaina-bility skills of graduates and their level of acceptance by employers with the added value that this training may result.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The paradigm shift involved in education for sustainable development makes professionals and teachers to change our course of action. Professionals influence now. Teachers influence on to-morrow's professionals. In a self-critical first revision teachers can become aware of the amount of information and activities that we do in the classroom that tend to repeat anti-sustainable models for our students. It is necessary, therefore, a reflection of how we want tomorrow's pro-fessionals and act accordingly in the classroom. Not an easy task, but the challenge is well worth it.
It has been explained in this paper a review of the approaches on the concept of sustainable development and, mainly its relation to education at university level. It is shown that education-al level is focusing on competencies and professioneducation-al sector materieducation-alizes sustainability through indicators. These skills are developed differently in different contexts, but it seems that there starts to be consensus in relation to a number of key skills considered in the literature and IFAs.
Based on the literature and on the needs of the Spanish case and the context of the European University it has proposed a Curriculum Sustainability Plan, with a methodological framework to be developed during next three years, until 2016, beginning to grow. The main objective in a medium term is to obtain graduates with a high professional profile plus great people.
REFERENCES
Adomßent, M. and Hoffmann, T. 2013. The concept of competences in the context of education for sus-tainable development (ESD). ESD Expert, March 2013.
Identification of key competences
Set of skill acquisition level
Learning and teaching activities
Teacher training plan
Coordination and integration in Degree Plans
Checking of students outcomes in sustainability issues