CCB. Artículos indexados en Scopus · 2026

Providing a gender perspective on sustainability competences and pedagogical approaches: experiences of students from 17 international case studies

During the last three decades, higher education institutions (HEIs) have integrated sustainability into their curricula. Recentresearch has focused on sustainability competences and pedagogical approaches, and how the latter foster the development of theformer. Previous studies have examined the connections between pedagogical approaches and sustainability competences froman educators’ perspective. However, there has been limited research addressing a students’ perspective, particularly in relation togender. This paper aims to provide insights into developing students’ sustainability competences through pedagogical approachesfrom a gender perspective. A survey was applied to students at 17 universities from 13 countries. The responses were analyzedusing: (1) Descriptive statistics and Friedman tests; (2) t-tests comparing perceptions of male and female students; and (3) corre-lations between competences and pedagogical approaches comparing both perspectives. The results showed differences in howmale and female students’ competences ranked, with female students having a more concentrated range of competences. The ped-agogical approaches results showed little to no differences and concurred with the published literature. The results also indicateddifferences between genders regarding how the pedagogical approaches develop the competences, where female students tendto develop more sustainability competences than males. HEIs must recognise gender-based perceptual differences and developstrategies that build upon the strength of both perspectives and, thus, better implement sustainability competence education