Sustainability in professional education Gap between strategy and program plans?

Abstract

Education is a key to lasting change in society. In this study, we use theory from sustainability and didactics to shed light on the education of product designers, teachers and engineers at the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design (TKD) in light of OsloMet's overall strategy on welfare and sustainability. The empirical data is based on learning outcome descriptions from the program plans for 2019 and 2020 for these professional educations and is analyzed on the basis of the Goodlad and STAUNCH categories. All the analyzed professional educations have integrated sustainability in their program plans. Sustainability is most clearly articulated in the program plan for Product Design. However, this does not mean that sustainability is unarticulated for teacher and engineering educations. These educations are governed by national framework plans where sustainability is included in an overall and binding manner.