Abstract
Due to increasing ecological, social, and economic challenges, sustainability has transitioned from being a peripheral concern to a central tenet of international frameworks and policies, which underscore the need to equip the workforce with competences, necessary to integrate sustainable practices into the organisational operations, products, and services. At the heart of these efforts lies a pressing need to reconsider educational practices and reimagine how students can acquire sustainability competences, which can better prepare them for evolving labour markets. Despite an abundance of research on the topic, there is no consensus regarding what these competences are. Moreover, the majority of the conducted studies are literature-based, and there is a lack of empirical evidence, which demonstrates how the sustainability competences enable successful real-world sustainability research and problem solving. On these premises, and by asking how graduates from a sustainability-focused master’s program at Kolding School of Design in Denmark define and operationalise their sustainability competences in a professional context and how employers perceive these competences, the present study explores graduates’ transitions from educational to professional practices by specifically focusing on sustainability competences acquired within both contexts. Among the results of this study are, firstly, the spectrum of organisations, institutions, or entrepreneurial ventures across different sectors (i.e. from private to public) where graduates from the program found their employment and secondly, an array of sustainability competences utilised within each professional context. These findings allow us to illustrate competences, which did not emerge within the previous studies, and which not only can integrate the most commonly referenced sustainability competences framework proposed by Redman and Wiek but also shape education of design for sustainability.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.111
Citation
Kucher, I., Hasling, K.M.,and Ræbild, U.(2025) Sustainable Design Competences in Action: Bridging Educational and Professional Practices, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.111
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Full Paper
Sustainable Design Competences in Action: Bridging Educational and Professional Practices
Due to increasing ecological, social, and economic challenges, sustainability has transitioned from being a peripheral concern to a central tenet of international frameworks and policies, which underscore the need to equip the workforce with competences, necessary to integrate sustainable practices into the organisational operations, products, and services. At the heart of these efforts lies a pressing need to reconsider educational practices and reimagine how students can acquire sustainability competences, which can better prepare them for evolving labour markets. Despite an abundance of research on the topic, there is no consensus regarding what these competences are. Moreover, the majority of the conducted studies are literature-based, and there is a lack of empirical evidence, which demonstrates how the sustainability competences enable successful real-world sustainability research and problem solving. On these premises, and by asking how graduates from a sustainability-focused master’s program at Kolding School of Design in Denmark define and operationalise their sustainability competences in a professional context and how employers perceive these competences, the present study explores graduates’ transitions from educational to professional practices by specifically focusing on sustainability competences acquired within both contexts. Among the results of this study are, firstly, the spectrum of organisations, institutions, or entrepreneurial ventures across different sectors (i.e. from private to public) where graduates from the program found their employment and secondly, an array of sustainability competences utilised within each professional context. These findings allow us to illustrate competences, which did not emerge within the previous studies, and which not only can integrate the most commonly referenced sustainability competences framework proposed by Redman and Wiek but also shape education of design for sustainability.