Sustainability Competence in Computer Science Education

Abstract

Digitalisation creates opportunities and challenges, both socially and environmentally. Are computer science students interested in addressing these opportunities and challenges and is their education providing them the desired competencies? Theoretically, the paper focuses on the concept of competency and presents the eight sustainability competencies formulated in UNESCO’s Education for the Sustainable Development Goals. Two sets of data are analysed to address the research questions: data from a questionnaire focusing on their aspirations for future work and data from a deductive content analysis of the learning outcomes of six bachelor programmes in informatics. Sustainability-related factors scored important/very important in the aspirations for future work. The analysis of the learning outcomes indicates a very weak connection between learning goals and sustainability competencies. An integrative approach is proposed, which may contribute to the development of sustainability competencies that enable the students to take up normative and critical positions in digitalisation and sustainability discourses.