Sustainability Competences and Pedagogical Approaches at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla

Universidad de las Americas Puebla (UDLAP) was founded in 1940 and is one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in Mexico. UDLAP has 9,700 full time equivalent students enrolled at UDLAP and 317 full time equivalent faculty staff are employed. This chapter presents the results from 73 survey respondents. The main focus of the university is on cross-cutting themes, followed by social issues, environmental issues, and economic ones. The contribution is high and the strength is medium. The ranking of the competences shows that Inter-disciplinary work is the highest, followed by Critical thinking and analysis. The ranking of the pedagogical approaches resulted in Case studies and Project- or Problem-based learning were the highest, followed by Lecturing. The correlation analysis showed that Eco-justice and community developed the most competences, followed by Inter-disciplinary team teaching, Place-based environmental education, and Participatory Action Research. The competences most developed were Personal involvement, Anticipatory thinking, Assessment and evaluation, and Interpersonal relations and collaboration. The analyses can help UDLAP on its next sustainability efforts, such as at facilitating its educators to create or update their courses to provide a more complete, holistic, and systemic sustainability education to help students in becoming future leaders, decision makers, educators, and change agents.