Students' Perspective on the relevance of sustainability literacy in a postgraduate built environment programme

Achieving Sustainable Development in the built environment requires the human resource with the right sustainability knowledge and skills to respond to the challenge facing the construction industry. It is argued that Educational Institutions have a key role to play in educating future generations with the right sustainability knowledge and skills. This research aims at exploring the relevance of sustainability literacy to postgraduate students on Quantity Surveying (QS) course at the London South Bank University. The study adopts a mixed method approach that examines students’ perspective on the important of sustainability literacy and how it has been integrated in the programme through interview with 15 students followed by a survey with 98 part-time and full-time students on the course. The results revealed that students value sustainability knowledge and skills. Most students believe that they need sustainability literate to be competitive in the job market. More than half of the students; 53 percent argue that sustainability literacy was delivered sometimes with a satisfaction rate of 45%, which shows that students are not really happy with how sustainability literacy has been embedded in the course and argues that more needs to be done to fully integrate sustainability literacy in the programme. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in International Journal of Construction Education and Research on 23/05/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15578771.2017.1286417