The potential for planning competence development and transformative learning in the Life–Cycle Assessment learning process

Abstract

Frameworks on sustainability competencies suggest students should be equipped with abilities allowing them to craft sustainability action plans, and the call for transformative sustainability learning expects these abilities to be acquired in a manner that transforms the way they make sense of the world. Ensuring these in engineering education is both an opportunity and a challenge. Engineers are historically seen as problem solvers, so the responsibility to master tools, such as Life–Cycle Assessment (LCA), for assessing sustainability performance and recognising improvement potential falls naturally on them. We investigated the LCA learning process to find out if the potential for transformative learning and the development of systems–thinking, futures–thinking, values–thinking and strategies–thinking is already present in engineering education. Our results indicate the potential for both sustainability competence development and transformative learning, offering a perspective of how sustainability learning could be brought into the praxis of engineering education.