KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:
1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.
- The presentation language is English.
- If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.
Event Details
Abstract
Learning outcomes in higher education for sustainable development (HESD) have become a major focus in recent years. One of the key learning outcomes are students’ sustainability conceptions which enable individuals to assess a problem from multiple sustainability perspectives in order to deal with complex sustainability issues in their future professional fields. Universities, however, seem to fall short in sufficiently equipping students with more elaborated sustainability conceptions. One reason is probably that none of the existing frameworks links sustainability conceptions to the influencing factors on all levels of higher education over the course of the studies. If universities want to monitor learning processes in their students’ sustainability conceptions, they should consider all internal and external conditions influencing the learning process in the higher education system. Thus, further research efforts need to be pursued regarding the operationalization of learning outcomes. Therefore, this qualitative research synthesis study proposes a process-oriented framework of internal and external factors that influence students’ sustainability conceptions. Hence, this paper contributes to the literature in HESD by moving away from a focus on individual students or cross-sectional course evaluations towards an understanding of what shapes students’ sustainability conceptions over time. Although exploratory, the framework is intended to be used as a general scheme of how to operationalize learning processes for the design of curricula, courses or monitoring in HESD.
