Students’ Perspectives on the Relevance of Sustainability Literacy in a Postgraduate Built Environment Program

ABSTRACT

Achieving sustainable development in the built environment requires the human resource with the right sustainability knowledge and skills to respond to the challenge facing the construction industry. It is argued that educational institutions have a key role to play in educating future generations with the right sustainability knowledge and skills. This research explores the relevance of sustainability literacy to postgraduate students enrolled in a quantity surveying (QS) course at the London South Bank University. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach that examines students’ perspective on the importance of sustainability literacy and how it has been integrated in the program through interview with 15 students followed by a survey with 98 part-time and full-time students enrolled on the course. The results revealed that students value sustainability knowledge and skills. Most students believe that they need to be sustainability literate to be competitive in the job market. More than half of the students (53%) argued that sustainability literacy was delivered sometimes with a satisfaction rate of 45%, which shows that students are not really happy with how sustainability literacy has been embedded in the course and argues that more needs to be done to fully integrate sustainability literacy in the program.

KEYWORDS:

• Built environment
• education for sustainable development
• higher education
• literacy
• quantity surveying
• sustainability