ABSTRACT
Against a background of accelerating worldwide problems of sustainability and ‘planetary boundaries’ (Rockström et al. 2009), it is becoming increasingly important to identify the competencies that university graduates will need if they are to solve the ‘wicked sustainability problems’ (see Fadeeva and Mochizuki 2010).Recent years have seen the development of various ways of modelling sustainability competencies (e.g. de Haan 2006; Barth et al. 2007, de Kraker et al. 2009, Segales et al. 2009, UNECE 2012). Wiek et al. synthesised the various competency models in a reference framework focussed primarily on applying the required competencies operationally in real-life problem-solving processes in the context of sustainable development (Wiek et al. 2011). However, the debate on higher education for sustainable development (HESD) should not
foreground competency systematisation alone but also address the issue of how these sustainability competencies are to be developed in university study courses. While some existing case studies (e.g. Barth et al. 2007) describe sustainability students’ learning, there is still a lack of systematic analyses concerned with the conditions for and processes of competency development in sustainability courses and environmental learning in general (Rickinson 2001; Rickinson 2006; Lundholm et al. 2013). The present chapter addresses this desideratum and introduces a qualitative approach to capturing competency at the interface between selfdescription and action.
