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PhD Defence: Identifying and fostering sustainable development competencies
We are happy to announce that on December 7 at 11:00 am, at the Aula of Wageningen University & Research, Yared Demssie will defend his thesis with the title: Identifying and fostering sustainable development competencies: Combining lessons from non-Western and Western contexts. Yared is supervised by em. Prof. dr. Martin Mulder, dr. Harm Biemans and dr. Renate Wesselink.
Whereas literature on sustainable competence development has a predominantly Western approach, Yared Demssie studied which competencies are relevant in a bottom of the pyramid country like Ethiopia and how these competencies could be developed best given the conditions in these countries. Yareds study revealed that seven sustainable development competencies are universal, such as ‘system thinking’ and ‘action competence’. Next, he identified eight competencies that are specific for the Ethiopian situation. Examples are transdisciplinairy competence and the competence to balance sustainable development dimension (i.e. people, planet, and profit). Furthermore, Yared unravelled the important role of indigenous knowledge and worldviews as key ingredients for education for sustainable development. Finally, he discovered that authentic learning environments contribute to the meaningfulness of the learning process and help students in higher education develop the competence ‘system thinking’.
Do you want to learn more about Yareds work? You are cordially invited to join the (online) ceremony. The link will be provided on our website in a later stage.