Browsing by study line "Ämneslärare i biologi"

Education for sustainability has come to be seen as an important part of achieving the sustainability goals, also in universities. However, the challenge for sustainability education is that sustainability is an ever-changing and highly complex concept. One theoretical approach for studying the learning of such complex concepts and phenomena is the conceptual change research tradition. The theory of conceptual change stems from the constructivist approach to learning, according to which learning takes place by modifying and completing existing knowledge structures. Sometimes these prior knowledge structures of the learner conflict with scientific knowledge, and in order to reach a new understanding, the learner has to change and reorganize their existing conceptions. With a new conception comes a whole new way of understanding a phenomenon, as related concepts take on new meanings. The process described above is called conceptual change. This thesis studied what kind of conceptions university students had about sustainability before the University of Helsinki's Sustainability Course (SUST-001, 3 cr) in autumn 2021, and how these conceptions had changed after the course. In addition, we investigated whether there were differences between students in human and natural science-oriented disciplines in the above-mentioned aspects. Conceptions were investigated using a baseline and endline measurement design. The study sample was students enrolled in a sustainability course at the University of Helsinki (N = 109). The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on the results, the students' perceptions were quite narrow at the beginning of the course, although the responses showed that most students came to the course with some prior knowledge of sustainability. In addition, three narrow conceptions similar to misconceptions of the conceptual change were identified from the initial survey: ecology-limited, anthropocentric and weak sustainability conceptions. In the final measurement, students' perceptions of sustainability improved and, in particular, students' understanding of the different dimensions of sustainability, the interlinkages between them and the complex nature of sustainability in general increased. About half of the narrow conceptions also changed, although the anthropocentric conception was slightly more persistent. In the cross-disciplinary analysis, attention was drawn to the tendency of students in natural science-oriented disciplines to change their narrow view in comparison to students in human science-oriented disciplines. Based on the results, the Sustainability course can be seen as successful in teaching many of the key contents of the concept of sustainability. There were also indications of conceptual change. However, there is a need to further develop the course and to integrate sustainability more broadly into the different educational programs. Furthermore, it is very important to continue to study the success of this integration and of sustainability education also in the future.