Teaching Sustainability in a Multicultural Environment

• Autor(a) principal: Caetano, Nídia Sá
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Rocha, João, Quadrado, José Carlos, Cardoso, José Marílio, Felgueiras, Carlos
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/10128
• topic: Multiculturality; Problem based learning; Sustainability

Nowadays sustainability is becoming extremely important and although the concept is perfectly established, there are different approaches to teach the fundamental aspects to be considered. Aiming at a higher level of internationalization and having in mind that students could gain from an intensive and multicultural experience ISEP organized its first Engineering for Sustainable Development (E4SD) Summer Course, in July 2014. With a set of modules taught by experienced teachers in different topics of sustainability, the course had a problem based learning (PBL) approach and was organized in a very informal model. A total of 8 Korean and 8 Portuguese students from different areas of scientific knowledge attended this course and could interact and develop ties with each other and the teachers involved in the course, while learning and applying the fundamental skills on sustainability. In what concerns the approach used by students from different countries to solve the sustainability problem that was launched for discussion (The Rehabilitation of Historic Cities - The Case of Porto UNESCO World Heritage Site: A Sustainable Development Challenge) it was noticed a clear difference between the two cultures. Whereas the young Korean students did not seem to care with the heritage behind a building or an historic city, the Portuguese students, used to live in a historic city, proposed a much more conservative approach. However, both the students could interact and understand the other side of the problem, reaching a consensual proposal. Finally the Korean students came to the conclusion that it was of interest to preserve Porto history. The fact that Korea is a very different country and that Korean culture is significantly different from the European one, could have triggered cultural issues. Nevertheless, the young generations are prone to change and adaptation to new situations, what allows for the resolution of any possible conflict. The PBL approach allowed for a more dynamic and informal learning environment. This revealed attractive for the young Korean students who were gaining different skills in this Summer Course as a prize for their good results in their formal learning courses. On the other hand, for the Portuguese teachers the E4SD Summer Course represented an opportunity to interact with a larger group of students with the same different culture, which is different from interacting with only one or two students coming from Europe under Erasmus mobility, in a very short and intensive contact period.