Sustainability education researchers have argued for a pedagogy aiming at fostering students' action competence. Teaching action-oriented knowledge brings about didactical challenges as it involves the ability to shape students’ experiences through designing student learning processes and the environment as transformative learning.

This paper addresses the didactical work and student responses based on a pedagogical experiment, and it analyses the pedagogical and educational challenges that arise from putting such principles into work. The research is based on a recent experiment in a humanistic master program at a Danish PBL University.

The educational intentions were - among others - to create a framework for students to recognize themselves as value-conscious actors, as designers for learning and changing processes. The experiment involved interdisciplinary collaboration with students and faculty from Applied Philosophy and the department of Student Entrepreneurship.

The paper evaluates and analyses how students’ outcome and engagement is related to their conceptualization of sustainability, assessment of the course, and professional significance in the subject. In short, how they create meaning of their experiences based on empirical data from papers written by the students; student evaluations; questionnaires and focus group interviews.

The research indicates that students and lectures found sustainability to be a complex issue to address as it involves habits, power relations, cultural as well as ethical issues, etc. Actions to support sustainable development can be both contradictory and have unintended consequences and the interconnected nature of the challenges and issues calls for external collaboration to accomplish sustainable solutions. To address this complexity, the experiment included student’s practice /internship experiences to support their development of action competence. It was compulsory for the students to create a design, which explicitly addressed sustainability issues based on their internship. Students design served as an assessment criterion for their examination.

The students investigated and reflected on the difference they experienced between the “exposed theories” about sustainability and “theory in use” at the workplace. They selected this gap as a starting point and chose primarily to incorporate design strategies aimed to motivate employees and/or managers to develop their interest and engagement in change processes. Student designs often mirrored theories and experiments they had experienced in class.

The research is informed by critical-constructivist didactics (Klafki) and by pragmatism (Dewey and Mezirow). They emphasize, from different perspectives, the educational and didactical impact of content selection, students' experiential actions and reflections, which together may contribute to the fostering of sustainability education ideals. Klafki’s educational philosophy has a clear democratic and critical approach: For Bildung to take place, the acquisition of knowledge and subsequent problem solving concerning the object must involve student engagement and active opening and its being opened for a content in the Klakian sense. ( Klafki, W. (2002).

Action Competence Approach´ frames an ideal approach to students Bildung because students must be able, willing, and qualified to act. ( Mogensen, F., & Schnack, K. (2010)( Breiting, S. & Schnack, K. (2009) Especially willingness to act is a challenge to address within higher education, as students are primarily expected to focus on gaining skills and measurable qualifications.

The development of action competence cannot be reduced to a cognitive dimension of knowledge as emotions are involved in creating a desire to change conditions (Katrien Van Poeck et.other 2023) (Lund, B. 2017) (Lund, B. 2021). Thus, from an ethical and didactical point of view, developing sustainable action competence is open to criticism, as will act implies transformative learning processes with the risk of ruining student’s self-determination.

This study is inspired by Wolfgang Klafki's critical-constructivist pedagogy, which is concerned with the "current educational reality and context of meaning" (Klafki, 2002, p. 29). In this understanding, didactics is closely linked to action research, as the goal of any pedagogical experiment is to change/improve a given pedagogical/didactic practice. Methodologically, I am inspired by pragmatics and its problem-oriented approach and integrate several methodological approaches. As a researcher in my own practice, I have a special position. This implies a research advantage in terms of familiarity with the subject, but it may also cause a blindness. The basic assumption in this study is that students must experience learning as meaningful and therefore didactics must be concerned with students' meaning-making - both contextually and normatively, as a condition for the development of action competence. Content analysis addresses the following questions: Which concepts do students choose to incorporate into their design and how does it influence their understanding? What does the concrete interaction with their environment mean for the development of their competence to act and how does it influence their reflections on their own possibilities to act and to learn? To understand how students create meaning of their experiences in this context, mixed methods are used. The empirical data The empirical material in this study consists of both questionnaires and written material, including student assignment answers and group interviews. The number of students in the study amount to 46 (first cohort) and 48 (second cohort). A survey conducted in 2021 (first cohort) and 2023 (second cohort) and the course's semester evaluations (Semester Evaluation 2021 and Semester Evaluation 2023) constitute the quantitative part, while 18 exam papers in anonymized form constitute the qualitative part (2021) as well as a number of focus group interviews (2023). The response rate was 42%. In addition to assessments of questions in categories, the survey also contains responses in the form of text. The semester evaluation of the study is a standard evaluation of modules in the semester. It has a response rate of 52%. Based on the distributions, I judge that the data from both survey is representative of the first cohort. The tasks consist of an individual written assignment of between 8 and 10 standard pages. Here students must describe how sustainability is addressed in their design practice, and based on a problem formulation, come up with a theoretically well-argued design for addressing the problem.

The requirement to thematize sustainability in their practice as a basis for a design requires students to concretize the concept and form their own ideas about how the sustainability requirements could be met. The aim of this teaching activity was to substantiate, anchor and make sense of an abstract concept such as sustainability. Some students were not able transfer experience from internship into their design and missed the learning associated with reflecting in depth on authentic sustainability challenges. This is problematic in relation to the development of action competences, as they further miss an evaluative response to their own initiatives and thus also a possible re-examination and transformation of their own understanding. The students address and discuss value issues particularly related to ethical and moral action based on the forward-looking premise of the Brundtland Report. They also highlighted a process-oriented approach leading to changes in behavior, attitudes and values, for the benefit of both the climate and one's own life. Critical reflection on possible asymmetrical power relations between actors is rarely thematized. They aim to develop and support democratic and co-creative processes in which all stakeholders are equally involved in a common problem identification and problem definition. This approach can be justified by a professional and academic socialization at a PBL-based university with the ideal of a participant-led and problem-defined project work. Participating in this mandatory course gave some students the opportunity to broaden their understanding of further reflection on the concept of sustainability, including what impact it has or can have on their professional practice and on their future. Thus, most respondents considered sustainability as a relevant topic for their future practice and indicated that they gained new knowledge about sustainability.

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