Sustainability integration into engineering curricula within five research universities in Malaysia / Chiong Kai Shing
Sustainability or sustainable development has become a recent focus in industries and education. Tertiary education, especially engineering education plays an irreplaceable role in sustainability education in view of the active roles played by engineers in steering technology development. There i...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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2015
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| Online Access: | http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/6128/ http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/6128/1/PhD_thesis_Chiong_Kai_Shing_SHB100010.pdf |
| Summary: | Sustainability or sustainable development has become a recent focus in industries and
education. Tertiary education, especially engineering education plays an irreplaceable
role in sustainability education in view of the active roles played by engineers in
steering technology development. There is however, limited information on the
relationship between sustainability integration into formal, informal and non-formal
engineering curricula with engineering undergraduates’ knowledge and interest on
sustainability in Malaysia. Therefore, this study aims at identifying the current
integration strategy used by the Malaysian Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) in
integrating sustainability into the formal engineering curricula of four traditional
engineering disciplines, which are Chemical, Civil, Mechanical and Electrical
Engineering and identifying the response of the respective engineering students to such
integration strategies through evaluating students’ knowledge and interest in
sustainability. Besides, this study also aims at proposing a possible sustainability
integration strategy for the respective engineering discipline by combining formal, nonformal
and informal curricular approach with an additional discussion on whether
vertical (stand-alone or specific subjects on sustainability) or horizontal approach
(intertwine of sustainability components into the existing subjects) is more suitable for
an engineering discipline in Malaysia based on the proposed strategy. Curricular
analyses were conducted in this study to identify the current integration strategy while a
questionnaire was the main research instrument for measuring students’ knowledge and
interest in sustainability and collecting data for developing the possible integration
strategy for sustainability integration in each engineering discipline. Statistical Packages
for Social Science (SPSS) were used for analytical purposes. A total of 871
questionnaires were collected from the four engineering disciplines from five researchbased
IHEs in Malaysia which have the most established history in offering the
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respective engineering programmes compared to the other IHEs in Malaysia. The
curricular analyses revealed that 87% and 92% of the sustainability related courses for
Chemical and Civil Engineering, respectively were of the horizontal approach while
100% of the sustainability related courses for Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
were of the horizontal approach. The analyses showed that generally, the engineering
students had moderately high to high knowledge and interest level in sustainability with
the Civil Engineering students having the highest score. For the possible sustainability
integration strategy, further analyses showed that the integration strategy varied with
engineering disciplines and it was found that the vertical approach was preferred for
Chemical and Civil Engineering while the horizontal approach was preferred for
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. The secondary finding from the questionnaire
revealed that peer influence was among the main motivating factors for students’
participation in sustainability activities. In summary, the study showed that the current
strategy used by the IHEs for sustainability integration into engineering education had
yielded some satisfactory results by cultivating certain intellectual or interest level
among the engineering students in Malaysia towards sustainability, but there are rooms
for improvement, as detailed in the thesis. This study successfully developed a possible
sustainability integration strategy for each of the targeted engineering disciplines in this
study to further improve the effectiveness of sustainability education for the Malaysian
engineering students. |
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