Teaching Social Sustainability in Sustainable Construction and Infrastructure Courses: A Collaborative Approach

摘要

This paper addresses the implementation of a teaching module related to social sustainability, focusing on the planning and design phases of construction projects. The target population for this study included 74 seniors and 40 graduate students in Sustainable Construction and Infrastructure courses offered by three first-tier academic institutions during the Fall of 2011. The module proposed here provides the foundation for discussing four social sustainability conceptual areas: community involvement, corporate social responsibility, social sustainability, and safety through design. The implementation requires four steps. The first step uses a survey to assess the students' previous knowledge of social sustainability. The second step focuses on learning about social sustainability through a mini-lecture and a class discussion, emphasizing that this construct involves multiple perspectives. During the lecture, the students then provide specific social sustainability examples for each of these four conceptual areas. The third step involves students learning how to create concept maps based on Novak's technique. Finally, the students create individual concept maps that are subsequently used as post-assessment tools, identifying the knowledge they have gained. The preliminary results indicate that the module provides a platform for increasing student awareness that sustainability involves more than the green features of a facility.