Integrating ESD Competencies into an Elective Course on Sustainable Consumption Behaviors: A Pedagogical Case Study

Abstract

In recent years, education for sustainable development has assumed an increasingly important role in shaping the key competences needed to understand and adopt responsible consumption behaviors. In such a context, this article proposes an analysis of the way in which an elective course on Sustainable Consumption Behaviors, introduced recently into a university educational program at a higher education institution in Romania, can create opportunities for engaging students with knowledge and values related to sustainability. The article is built around a case study on the curricular design of the course, examined in relation to the conceptual framework of education for sustainable development and to the UNESCO competences. The analysis maps the teaching assessment activities onto the framework of key sustainability competencies proposed by UNESCO. It presents both the content and architecture of the course, as well as the thematic distribution of the choices made by students for the assessment tasks. The results indicate that students’ assessment choices were predominantly oriented toward applied topics closer to their everyday experiences: food waste, recycling, reuse, organizational practices for promoting sustainable consumption, and others. Overall, these results suggest that pedagogical approaches centered on practical relevance, critical reflection, and creativity may create favorable conditions for engaging with values associated with sustainability. Therefore, through this article, we highlight the real potential that such thematic elective courses could have in strengthening education for sustainable development and sustainable consumption in higher education.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, education for sustainable development (ESD) has assumed an increasingly important role in universities, against the backdrop of intensifying ecological, economic, and social challenges faced by societies in the 21st century. In this context, higher education institutions are called upon not only to transmit specialized knowledge but also to develop the competencies needed to prepare future generations of professionals and citizens to respond to such challenges, enabling them to critically understand the relationship between development, the environment, social equity, and social responsibility. This growing importance has emerged alongside UNESCO’s efforts over recent decades to promote ESD, culminating in the definition of a set of eight interconnected, multifunctional, and cross-cutting key competencies for sustainability: systems thinking, anticipatory, normative, strategic, collaboration, critical thinking, self-awareness, and integrated problem-solving (UNESCO, 2017). These efforts were intensified during the 2015 UN Summit on Sustainable Development, at which the need to integrate sustainability principles at all levels of education was explicitly emphasized—not merely as cross-curricular themes, but as objectives aimed at developing the competencies necessary to facilitate the transition toward more equitable, inclusive, and responsible societies (United Nations, 2015).

As the world increasingly faces dynamic and closely interconnected problems, ESD has become not only a process of social learning and a major driver of societal change (Rieckmann, 2012) but also an important educational process for preparing future professionals capable of acting responsibly, ethically, and strategically in relation to new contemporary challenges. From this perspective, the specialized literature shows that the development of sustainability competencies involves more than the accumulation of theoretical information. Thus, classical, traditional, content-centered environmental education proves insufficient in the face of these challenges, as the ecological issue has become a profoundly societal one, while ESD is increasingly proving to be a form of education oriented toward the development of competencies for responsible action—such as systems thinking, anticipatory thinking, and critical thinking, among others (Rieckmann, 2012). As Sterling (2011) highlights, ESD should move toward addressing the values, assumptions, and mental models that underlie unsustainable behaviors, while integrating the three dimensions of sustainable development: the environment, society, and the economy (Mokski et al., 2023). In this context, universities play a key role in educating future professionals, as well as in the long-term shaping of behaviors aligned with current social values. However, the integration of ESD is difficult for multiple reasons, such as curriculum rigidity or the lack of teacher training in this field. Within this framework, as Mokski et al. (2023) point out, the ESD approach should be interdisciplinary, proposing either standalone courses in the field or the integration of ESD into the existing curriculum. Moreover, interdisciplinary as well as transdisciplinary approaches are indispensable given the complexity of the issues involved in sustainability, while the integration of academic knowledge with expertise from outside academia—provided by NGOs, specialists, practitioners, and others—is likewise recommended (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Undoubtedly, ESD is closely linked to the social sciences, as sustainable development is regarded as a social issue. Mokski et al. (2023) emphasize that the social sciences can contribute to ESD through the analysis of individual and collective behaviors, the examination of public policies, the deepening of understanding of social and economic inequalities and their impact on sustainability, and, not least, through the implementation of participatory and reflective pedagogical strategies that foster the development of critical and ethical thinking, both of which are essential for sustainable decision-making (Leal Filho et al., 2018). At the same time, the social sciences provide a conceptual framework and investigative tools necessary to comprehensively explain why sustainability problems arise. Without support from contributions in the field of social sciences, ESD risks remaining limited to the presentation of technical solutions, which would prove insufficient for generating concrete and lasting transformations. Under these circumstances, various authors emphasize that ESD requires a different type of learning, namely transformative learning, which can produce shifts in perspective, a redefinition of modes of thought that lead to new meanings and visions of a sustainable future, and a reconfiguration of the way individuals understand the world and relate to society and nature (Sterling, 2011; Rieckmann, 2012; Leal Filho et al., 2018).

The growing prominence of such concerns has also been supported by the fact that sustainability-related topics hold a high degree of appeal among Generation Z and Millennials. More than any other generation, they attach significant importance to the ecological and social dimensions involved in sustainability (Lopes et al., 2024). Moreover, exposing young people to knowledge that fosters the development of sustainability competencies has proven to be highly successful, having a positive impact on the attitudes that Gen Z displays toward the values associated with sustainability (Cyfert et al., 2025). Young people are no longer merely passive recipients of ESD messages; through their involvement in civic initiatives, they become active agents of social and ecological transformation, transferring the knowledge they acquire to society (Kowasch et al., 2021). As Cyfert et al. (2025) point out, the development of sustainability competencies is not simply equivalent to an increase in competence in this area, but also brings about changes in attitudes and behaviors with positive effects on future generations. Within this context, the knowledge acquired is transferred into everyday life, where it gains real practical applicability.

Starting from the premise that ESD is not strictly limited to the formation of knowledge and attitudes but also aims at transforming everyday behaviors, we consider learning sustainable consumption practices to be an essential subcomponent of ESD, one in which competencies for sustainable development are translated into concrete actions. Consumption habits, which are closely associated with identity, values, and social norms, can be shaped through transformative learning (García-González et al., 2022), encouraging students to engage in deep and critical reflection on their own consumption choices. Learning what sustainable consumption means provides a particularly fertile ground for building ESD competencies, since it fosters systems thinking—through a more accurate understanding of production and consumption chains; critical thinking—through the evaluation of marketing messages and the recognition of greenwashing; normative competence—through understanding how consumption choices can be based on equity and social justice; and strategic competence—through awareness that long-term responsible consumption alternatives can be adopted, among others.

Moreover, recent studies show that young people are increasingly receptive to adopting sustainable consumption practices. Thus, an industry report published by First Insight (2024) states that 62% of Gen Z consumers prefer to purchase products from sustainable brands, while 73% would be willing to pay more for sustainable products, with both Gen Z and Millennials being identified as generations that align their purchasing decisions with personal, social, and environmental values (First Insight, 2024). At the same time, the Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey, an industry survey published in 2025, supports these findings, with approximately two-thirds of respondents stating that they would be willing to allocate a higher budget for the purchase of sustainable products (Deloitte Global, 2025). Therefore, by including topics related to sustainable consumption in university curricula, an effective starting point can be created for the development of transferable competencies that are relevant both to personal life and to future professional roles.

The literature on ESD shows that university curricula need to be explicitly oriented toward the development of a set of key competencies. In this regard, the competencies proposed by UNESCO provide a useful analytical framework for examining the ways in which ESD principles could be operationalized in higher education through teaching and assessment practices built around active, transformative, and reflective learning experiences.

In the context of the shift from a curriculum centered on “inputs” (content, hours, topics) to a logic focused on what graduates are able to demonstrate, the orientation of education toward “learning outcomes” has become an important benchmark in European policies, with the concept being increasingly incorporated into the vocabulary of education and training policies (Prøitz, 2015). Romania’s National Qualifications Authority (NQA) states that learning outcomes refer to what a person understands, knows, and is able to do at the end of a learning process, and they are expressed in terms of knowledge, skills, and competencies (NQA, n.d., p. 75). Within this conceptual framework, knowledge refers to the result of assimilating information through learning (NQA, n.d., p. 65), while skills represent the ability to apply knowledge and use know-how in order to carry out tasks and solve problems. Skills may be cognitive—involving the use of logical, intuitive, and creative thinking—or practical, involving manual dexterity and the use of methods, materials, tools, and instruments (NQA, n.d., p. 60). Competence, in turn, is defined as the “proven ability” to use knowledge and personal, social, and/or methodological aptitudes/skills in work or study situations, for professional and personal development (NQA, n.d., p. 64). At the same time, the guide issued by Romania’s National Qualifications Authority emphasizes that learning outcomes must be formulated as demonstrable statements on the basis of which curricula and assessment standards are constructed (NQA, n.d., p. 46). This orientation toward demonstrable learning outcomes provides the national regulatory background against which the elective course analyzed in this article was designed, and UNESCO sustainability competencies can be read as one way of specifying such outcomes in the field of sustainable consumption.

Against this background, the eight key sustainability competencies proposed by UNESCO may be understood as a framework that extends the discussion beyond the strictly employability-oriented dimension, directing higher education toward the formation of sustainability citizens. This perspective involves preparing individuals who are capable of engaging actively, constructively, and responsibly in a world marked by complexity and uncertainty. Consequently, sustainability competencies may be interpreted not only as declarative objectives of the curriculum, but also as guiding reference points for organizing contexts of transformative learning.

From the perspective of Romania’s National Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 (Government of Romania, 2018), sustainable development represents “a paradigm based on ethics and education.” Within this framework, education for sustainable development aims at “developing competencies that help individuals reflect on their own actions, taking into account their current and future social, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts.” The integration of sustainability into university curricula may therefore be interpreted as a response both to international orientations regarding education for sustainable development and to the transformations expected within Romanian society in the context of the socio-ecological transition.

Within this theoretical framework, sustainability competencies provide a relevant analytical lens for examining how ESD principles may be translated into higher education through concrete teaching practices. The following sections use this framework to discuss the design and implementation of a university course explicitly oriented toward developing competencies related to sustainable consumption.

Through this article, we present a pedagogical case study on the design and implementation of an undergraduate elective course dedicated to sustainable consumption behaviors, introduced within the field of Sociology, with a specialization in Human Resources, at a university in Romania. The aim of the article is to analyze how the principles of education for sustainable development can be operationalized through teaching activities and assessment. Documented course-level case studies focusing specifically on sustainable consumption appear to be relatively limited in the literature. One notable exception is the Human Ecology master’s course described by Gombert-Courvoisier et al. (2014). More broadly, empirical evidence on how different pedagogical approaches may support sustainability competencies also remains limited (Redman et al., 2021). Against this background, the present article contributes a documented course-level case from Romanian higher education, offering evidence from a national and disciplinary context that appears to be less frequently represented in the international ESD literature. Accordingly, the article seeks to answer two questions:

(1)

How are sustainability competencies integrated into curricular design?

(2)

What types of activities are aligned with ESD competencies in relation to sustainable consumption?

2. Materials and Methods

Within this framework, the present contribution may be understood, from a methodological point of view, as a case study aimed at analyzing the integration of ESD competencies into a university elective course entitled Sustainable Consumption Behaviors. The analysis is based on course documents, the structure of teaching and assessment activities, as well as the types of projects completed by students in recent years. The objective is not to provide a causal measurement of competency acquisition through standardized instruments, but rather to examine how the pedagogical design of the course creates concrete opportunities for the development of key sustainability competencies.

The elective course Sustainable Consumption Behaviors was officially introduced into the curriculum of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași (Romania), within the Human Resources specialization of the undergraduate field of Sociology, in the 2024–2025 academic year. The introduction of this course was preceded by a transition period during the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 academic years, in which the elective course appeared under the generic title Consumer Behavior, while gradually integrating sustainability-related themes into the broader field of consumer behavior analysis.

The student cohorts enrolled in the elective course examined in this paper comprised 48 students in the 2022–2023 academic year, 50 students in 2023–2024, and 46 students in 2024–2025, resulting in a total of 144 students across the three academic years. Each student selected one topic from the standardized list for the short individual assignments, so the reported data in correspond to individual students, and the yearly totals reflect the number of students assessed in each cohort. By contrast, the data for the final assessment refer to team projects. The final assessment was carried out in student teams of two to five members, with each team selecting one qualitative research topic from the standardized list. The final project also allowed a small degree of flexibility, as teams wishing to investigate a topic outside the standardized list could propose their own research subject. Because the short individual assignments were introduced together with the current assessments’ architecture in the 2023–2024 academic year, the data for these assignments cover only the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 cohorts, whereas the team project data cover all three cohorts.

Thus, in the 2022–2023 academic year, the final assessment project was centered on students choosing a topic for qualitative sociological research from a list of themes reflecting the connection between consumer behavior and sustainability. In the 2023–2024 academic year, although the course was still listed under the title Consumer Behavior, the learning and assessment architecture that later became the standard for the current course was developed. During this transition period, the curricular design that oriented the course toward the explicit analysis of the dimensions of sustainability in consumption was also progressively defined.

Beginning with the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 academic years, the curriculum explicitly reflected these dimensions, with weekly exploration of theories and concepts related to the psycho-sociological elements involved in consumption, lifestyles and sustainable practices; the role of social marketing and institutional actors in encouraging responsible consumption behaviors; research methods applied to the analysis of sustainable behaviors; the barriers and ethical aspects of responsible consumption; and future directions aimed at achieving Goal 12 of the 2030 Agenda concerning sustainable consumption and production.

In this sense, the curricular design of the course was conceived as a process of gradually integrating the key sustainability competencies as defined by UNESCO. The assessment component was designed to support engagement with these competencies through a standardized list of eight individual topics and twelve broader topics for collaborative team projects, from which students could freely choose the subjects that interested them most. To examine how these competencies are embedded in the pedagogical design of the course, the UNESCO framework of key sustainability competencies was used as the analytical lens of the present study. The unit of analysis was the individual teaching or assessment activity. Each activity was examined in terms of the types of thinking and action it required from students and was assigned to a competency whenever the task explicitly called for its defining cognitive or social operation (for example, evaluating various marketing messages and identifying greenwashing was coded as critical thinking). The result is an activity–competency mapping that documents the alignment between the pedagogical design and the UNESCO framework. However, this does not constitute evidence of competency acquisition by students.

The placement of the course within the Human Resources specialization in the field of Sociology is relevant not only for the development of individual consumption practices but also for the students’ future professional roles. Future Human Resources specialists may influence organizational culture, internal policies, wellbeing practices, training processes, and institutional communication, thus becoming mediators of sustainable values and behaviors within organizations.

To support the development of ESD competencies, the course design included teaching activities structured around both individual tasks and collaborative projects. These activities were designed to encourage critical reflection on consumption practices and to provide students with the opportunity to analyze concrete examples of initiatives and strategies aimed at sustainable consumption. From this perspective, the pedagogical architecture of the course was designed to go beyond the mere transmission of content and to create recurring contexts for critical reflection, applied analysis, and student collaboration. To this end, the assessment design combined short individual tasks, intended for gradual skills development, with a final collaborative project component characterized by a stronger investigative dimension.

3. Results

3.1. Activity–Competency Mapping

To provide a concise overview of how the eight key sustainability competencies provided by UNESCO (2017) are operationalized across the course activities and to offer a direct answer to the research questions guiding the study, an activity–competency mapping was developed by applying the analytical procedure described in Section 2 (

Table 1. Course activities–ESD competencies (UNESCO, 2017) mapping.

Activity (Presentation of…)	ESD Competencies 1
	ST	CT	AC	NC	SC	CC	SA	IPS
T1. Goods, products, or services with significant environmental impact	x 2	x
T2. Press article/media news on sustainable consumption		x		x
T3. Company strategies promoting sustainable consumption	x				x
T4. Community measures encouraging sustainable consumption				x		x
T5. Initiative, campaign, or strategy for responsible consumption					x	x
T6. Public awareness campaigns promoting sustainable consumption		x
T7. Students’ own campaign proposal			x		x			x
T8. Synthesis of research findings on sustainable consumption	x	x
FP. Collaborative qualitative research project	x	x	x	x		x	x	x

¹ The ESD competencies were abbreviated as follows: ST = Systems Thinking; CT = Critical Thinking; AC = Anticipatory Competency; NC = Normative Competency; SC = Strategic Competency; CC = Collaborative Competency; SA = Self-Awareness; IPS = Integrated Problem-Solving. ² An ‘x’ indicates that the competency is targeted by the design of the activity. The mapping reflects the alignment of the pedagogical design with the UNESCO framework and does not constitute evidence of competency acquisition by students.

). The purpose of the mapping was to identify where the pedagogical architecture of the course creates opportunities for students to engage with and practice these competencies.

A general examination of this matrix reveals two main patterns. On the one hand, each individual assignment (T1–T8) is aligned with a narrow cluster of one or two competencies, functioning as a focused activity with an introductory role. On the other hand, the collaborative qualitative research project (FP) is aligned with a broader range of competencies. The matrix also indicates a complementarity between the two components of the assessment design: self-awareness and integrated problem-solving are engaged almost exclusively within the final project, whereas strategic competency is engaged only through individual tasks (T3, T5, T7). Within this framework, Section 3.2 and Section 3.3 that follow substantiate the proposed associations by presenting each activity and explaining the rationale underlying the competency assignments.

3.2. Short Individual Assignments

The first of the eight topics proposed for the short individual presentations required students to present a range of goods, products, or services that could be associated with sustainable consumption, involving the identification and discussion of concrete examples and their relevance from the perspective of responsible consumption practices. Within this activity, students had the opportunity to reflect on how different types of consumption can generate significant effects on the environment and on the use of natural resources, an activity aligned with critical thinking and systems thinking through the evaluation of different consumption patterns and their consequences.

The second topic involved identifying and summarizing a recent press article focused on providing information about sustainable consumption, with emphasis placed both on the critical selection of the source and on the ability to contextualize the issue under discussion. By analyzing the media representation of sustainable consumption, students were encouraged to examine how information is presented in the public sphere and to what extent it may contribute to shaping consumption behaviors, thus engaging particularly normative competencies and critical thinking.

Within the third topic, students were asked to identify and describe the way in which a company, organization, or institution promotes sustainable consumption practices through specific actions and strategies. This exercise involved analyzing the relationship between institutional actors, social responsibility, and public communication, while also offering the opportunity to discuss the connection between the economy, the environment, business strategies, and the sustainable behavior of consumers, thereby targeting strategic competencies and systems thinking.

The fourth topic was dedicated to presenting a community measure or action aimed at encouraging sustainable consumption behavior, drawing attention to local initiatives and to the collective dimension of socio-ecological change. In this context, students highlighted the role of the community and of local actors in shaping consumption behaviors through cooperation and collective action. This activity is aligned with normative and collaborative competencies.

The fifth topic has been designed to engage strategic and collaborative competencies, requiring students to present an initiative, campaign, or strategy capable of encouraging responsible consumption behaviors. The analyses carried out by students highlighted the ways in which organizations or institutions plan and implement interventions aimed at reducing overconsumption and promoting more responsible consumption practices.

Through the sixth topic, students were encouraged to present campaigns promoting sustainable consumption among the general population, which made it possible to observe how public messages, persuasive tools, and civic education can shape consumption behaviors. In this sense, the analysis provided an opportunity for critical reflection on the influence of public communication and social actors in promoting the values of sustainability.

The seventh topic required students to formulate their own idea for a campaign promoting sustainable consumption, thereby encouraging creativity, anticipation of effects, and strategic reflection. Within this activity, students were invited to define objectives, target audiences, and communication messages, while also anticipating the possible effects of such interventions on consumption behaviors. By integrating problem definition, audience analysis, message design, and the anticipation of effects into a single proposal, this task also came closest to the integrated problem-solving competency.

The eighth and final topic invited students to identify research on sustainable consumption behaviors and to synthesize its findings, thus introducing a component aimed at familiarizing them with the specialized literature and with the sociological analysis of the phenomenon. The interpretation of the results of the selected studies provided an opportunity to better understand the connections between individual consumption behaviors, different socio-economic contexts, and global trends associated with sustainability, an activity aligned with critical thinking and systems thinking.

The distribution of choices for the short presentations shows that students tended to opt for topics related to organizational responsibility, creativity-based tasks, and applied themes (

Table 2. Distribution of the topics selected by students for short individual assignments.

Short Individual Presentation Topics (Presentation of…)	Year		Total
	2024	2025
T1. …goods, products, or services whose unsustainable consumption causes significant environmental harm and natural resource depletion, nationally or internationally	7 1	7	14
T2. …last year’s press article or news report, national or international, addressing sustainable consumer behavior	5	2	7
T3. …how a private company, national or multinational, promotes sustainable consumer behavior through specific actions and strategies	23	10	33
T4. …a concrete community measure or action, at national or international level, that encourages sustainable consumer behavior	1	6	7
T5. …an awareness campaign promoting sustainable consumption, conducted by a governmental or non-governmental authority outside Romania	2	4	6
T6. …a campaign promoting sustainable consumption, supported by an influencer	5	5	10
T7. …own campaign proposal, public or private, to promote sustainable consumption among the population	6	11	17
T8. …the main findings of a study conducted in Romania or abroad on sustainable consumer behavior	1	1	2
Total per year	50	46	96

¹ For illustrative purposes, the short presentation topic entitled “Presentation of goods, products, or services whose unsustainable consumption causes significant environmental harm and natural resource depletion, nationally or internationally” was selected by 7 students in 2024, corresponding to the 2023–2024 academic year.

). Thus, the most frequently chosen topic was the one concerning how a private company promotes sustainable consumption behavior (33 selections), followed by the formulation of an original campaign idea to support sustainable consumption (17 selections), and the topic requiring the presentation of a range of goods, products, or services whose unsustainable consumption generates significant environmental problems and waste of natural resources (14 selections).

Taken together, these short tasks functioned as introductory exercises in sustainability reasoning, engaging to varying degrees critical thinking, problem identification, normative analysis, strategic reflection, and the formulation of solutions. In this form, they created a working foundation for the broader assessment component, oriented toward applied sociological research, within which students were invited to connect themes of everyday consumption with sociological research tools and to investigate empirically various forms of sustainable consumption.

3.3. Project-Based Learning Activities

Alongside the short analytical activities, the course design also included a broader assessment component oriented toward applied sociological research. Through the final projects (FPs), carried out in teams of varying sizes, students had the opportunity to deepen the themes discussed during the course weeks and to investigate empirically, in greater depth, various forms of sustainable consumption. For the final assessment, over the past three years, students completed a collaborative project consisting of a qualitative sociological study, conducted in student groups of varying size. The topics were selected from a list of twelve proposals (FP1–FP12) and addressed relevant issues such as food waste, recycling and product reuse, the consumption of environmentally friendly products, the purchase of clothing and electronic goods, the importance attached to information provided on labels, or the consumption of second-hand or refurbished products. Through this project-based learning assessment, the aim was to move beyond the transmission of predominantly descriptive knowledge and to foster the development of competencies associated with education for sustainable development. The specialized literature emphasizes that such pedagogical approaches facilitate students’ engagement in processes of inquiry and critical reflection on sustainability issues, thereby contributing to the development of the competencies needed to address contemporary socio-ecological challenges (Tejedor et al., 2019).

The structure of the project was conceived as a staged process of experiential learning. It included phases such as defining the research problem, conducting the theoretical review, formulating the objectives, developing the interview guide, carrying out the interviews, analyzing and interpreting the empirical material, and formulating conclusions and individual reflections. Such a design made it possible to connect the theoretical knowledge discussed during the course with the critical analysis of concrete consumption practices, thereby facilitating the gradual integration of several dimensions of education for sustainable development. A distinctive element of the requirements for conducting the qualitative research was that each participating student had to carry out two semi-structured interviews: one with a person aged between 18 and 27, and one with a person over 27 years old. This requirement enabled comparative analyses focused on the intergenerational dimension of perceptions, attitudes, and consumption practices, contributing to an understanding of the differences and continuities between generations in relation to sustainability. At the same time, the projects encouraged students to connect everyday consumption practices with broader social structures and relevant socio-economic dynamics.

By linking the projects to the conceptual framework proposed by UNESCO, they were aligned with systems thinking, for example, through the analysis of the relationships between lifestyles, markets, social norms, production and distribution processes, and waste generation. At the same time, by problematizing sustainable versus unsustainable consumption habits, the projects have been designed to engage critical thinking and normative competencies, encouraging students to reflect on the values and ethical dilemmas associated with consumption practices. The comparative dimension of the research and its focus on analyzing short-, medium-, and long-term effects also provided a context for exercising anticipatory competencies. In addition, carrying out the projects in small teams required collaboration competencies through the division of tasks, the negotiation of responsibilities, and the integration of individual results into a shared final report. In this respect, the assessment structure combined common group tasks with clearly defined individual responsibilities: each student being evaluated both for their collective contribution and for their personal involvement in conducting the research. Through such an approach, the aim was also to stimulate the self-awareness competency by encouraging reflection on one’s own role and individual contribution within the group research process. Also, by engaging students in the entire qualitative research phases, from problem definition to drawing conclusions, the team-based project provided a suitable context for developing integrated problem-solving competency through the combination of the other competencies. With due caution, we consider that the structure of the projects does not directly demonstrate the acquisition of competencies, but rather shows that the course design was intended to support their development and to create plausible contexts for their practice.

By analyzing the frequencies of topic choices for the projects, we observe students’ strong interest in studying forms of consumption that have a direct impact on everyday life (

Table 3. Distribution of the topics selected by students for team-based projects (qualitative research).

FP. Qualitative Research Topics for Student Teams	Year			Total
	2023	2024	2025
FP1. General attitudes toward recycling and product reuse	3 1	0	2	5
FP2. General attitudes toward the purchase of environmentally friendly products and patterns of green consumption	0	0	0	0
FP3. General attitudes toward the purchase and use of electronic and household appliances	1	1	0	2
FP4. General attitudes toward the purchase and use of clothing products	3	0	2	5
FP5. The importance people attach to information provided on product labels	1	4	1	6
FP6. The impact of product consumption on the environment and climate change	0	0	2	2
FP7. General attitudes toward the depletion of natural resources (e.g., gas, electricity, water) and its effects on everyday household consumption	0	1	0	1
FP8. General attitudes toward the purchase of second-hand or refurbished products, whether clothing and/or electronics	0	2	1	3
FP9. Solutions proposed by people for reducing excessive consumption, regardless of the type of goods, products, or services consumed	0	0	2	2
FP10. The importance generally attached by individuals and society to sustainable consumer behavior	0	2	2	4
FP11. Attitudes toward food waste	4	2	4	10
FP12. The importance attached to the consumption of local/national products	0	1	0	1
Various titles	1	1	0	2
Total per year	13	14	16	43

¹ For illustrative purposes, the qualitative research topic “General attitudes toward recycling and product reuse” was selected by 3 student teams in 2023, corresponding to the 2022–2023 academic year.

). Thus, the most frequently selected topic concerned the qualitative analysis of people’s attitudes toward food waste (FP 11, with a total of 10 selections). In six cases, students developed projects on the importance people attach to the information provided on product labels (FP5), while in five cases, projects were selected that focused on the study of general attitudes toward the purchase and use of clothing products (FP4). Notably, only one topic was not selected in any of the three years, FP2, concerning general attitudes toward the purchase of environmentally friendly products and patterns of green consumption. Its zero frequency may reflect a certain degree of thematic overlap with more specific topics on the list, such as product labeling, clothing, or second-hand goods, which address green consumption through particular practices rather than in general terms. At the same time, this pattern may be related to the gap, frequently discussed in the literature, between favorable attitudes toward green consumption reported in industry-based studies (First Insight, 2024; Deloitte Global, 2025) and actual engagement in such practices. However, based on the available data, topic choice cannot be interpreted as direct evidence of students’ attitudes or behaviors. This observation should therefore be treated as a hypothesis for future research.

From this perspective, the thematic distribution of the qualitative research projects may be considered an important indicator of the interest students attach to forms of consumption with both direct and indirect impacts on everyday life, confirming the relevance of the course in relation to Generation Z’s concerns about sustainable consumption and sustainable development. Accordingly, the course did not treat sustainability merely as a content theme, but integrated it into a learning process oriented toward the critical investigation of consumption practices and toward understanding the relationship between individual choices, social structures, markets, and socio-ecological consequences. The integration of project-based learning into the course design thus functioned as a framework for operationalizing ESD competencies, offering students the opportunity to apply their conceptual knowledge in empirical contexts, to collaborate, and to develop a systemic understanding of sustainable consumption. In this respect, the analyzed teaching experience may illustrate how initiatives situated at the level of individual courses can help reduce the gap between education for sustainable development policies, university curricula, and the pedagogical practices discussed in the specialized literature. In light of the experience accumulated during the first years of the course, one future direction of development concerns the expansion of the pedagogical design through the integration of experiential learning activities oriented toward direct collaboration with relevant community actors.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

The results of the teaching activities highlight the course’s potential to contribute to the development of ESD competencies among students. In light of the experience accumulated during its first years of implementation, the next stage aims to expand the pedagogical design through the integration of experiential learning activities oriented toward direct collaboration with relevant community actors.

The competency–activity mapping illustrated how the sustainability competencies presented in this article could be operationalized within the course design. Therefore, the normative competency may be addressed through the analysis of how sustainable consumption is represented in the media, the examination of measures implemented at the community level, and the exploration of dimensions related to sustainable and unsustainable consumption within the final team-based project. In addition, the anticipatory competency may be addressed through the development of a campaign promoting sustainable consumption behaviors and the preliminary assessment of its potential effects, as well as through the comparative and future-oriented dimensions of the collaborative research project. At the same time, the strategic competency is reflected in the analysis of corporate strategies, the examination of existing campaigns or interventions, and, more directly, in the design of students’ own campaign proposals. The collaborative competency is addressed conceptually through activities focusing on community and collective action, while being more directly embedded in the team-based structure of the final research project. Self-awareness is explicitly addressed only within the final collaborative project, whereas integrated problem-solving is incorporated into both the students’ campaign proposal and the final research project. Furthermore, the critical-thinking and systems-thinking competencies recur across several activities and constitute broader dimensions of the course design. This is evident, for example, in the analysis of the environmental impacts of specific goods, products, and services and in the synthesis of findings from scientific research focused on sustainable consumption. Overall, as noted throughout the article, the mapping indicates differences in the extent and manner in which individual competencies are operationalized across course activities, rather than providing evidence of their acquisition by students.

In addition, such a pattern is closely aligned with the ESD literature, which emphasizes that all these competencies should be explicitly fostered in higher education when addressing complex sustainability challenges (Rieckmann, 2012). Through the elective course presented in this study, students move beyond the simple analysis of individual consumption choices and, through specific activities, are encouraged to establish connections among social actors, consumption behaviors, and their consequences for the environment, communities and organizational practices. At the same time, the mapping shows that systems thinking and critical thinking are addressed across several activities, whereas the collaborative competency, integrated problem-solving competency, and self-awareness depend more strongly on the final qualitative research project carried out in student teams. This finding suggests that the types and structures of learning activities may influence which sustainability competencies can be addressed more explicitly and is consistent with various studies emphasizing the relationship between pedagogical approaches and the sustainability competencies they can support (Lozano et al., 2017; Tejedor et al., 2019). More specifically, the fact that the collaborative project is aligned with most of the competencies, while each individual task addresses only a limited number of them, appears to be consistent with Lozano et al. (2017), who identify project-based and problem-based learning among the pedagogical approaches considered capable of covering the broadest range of sustainability competencies. The uneven coverage highlighted by the mapping also reflects patterns reported in other analyses. Lambrechts et al. (2013), for instance, found that competencies related to responsibility and emotional intelligence were more widely integrated into the programs they examined, whereas those related to future orientation, personal commitment, and action taking were less frequently represented. A partly similar pattern may be observed in the course analyzed here, where normative competency is addressed through several activities, while anticipatory competency and self-awareness are limited to one or two activities. This may suggest that the uneven integration of certain competencies may represent a structural challenge of competence-oriented education for sustainable development rather than a feature specific to this elective course. At the same time, Cebrián and Junyent (2015) point to a possible disconnect between existing ESD competency frameworks and students’ awareness of them, suggesting that such frameworks may need to be more explicitly integrated into the curriculum. From this perspective, the activity–competency mapping proposed in this article can be interpreted as one potential way of translating the UNESCO framework into the day-to-day design of a course.

In the future, the course may be extended into a service-learning teaching strategy, through which students can apply their academic knowledge and competencies in activities carried out for the benefit of the community. As Tejedor et al. (2019) emphasize, such pedagogical approaches combine practical learning with social responsibility through active and collaborative work that encourages reflection and critical thinking. Within this logic, the course could evolve into an educational framework in which academic learning is directly connected to community needs and to sustainability-related challenges. Recent evidence also supports this direction. A systematic review by Rodríguez-Zurita et al. (2025) finds that service-learning and community-engagement practices in higher education can contribute to the development of sustainability competencies.

The institutional context provides a favorable setting for such further development of the course. Beginning in 2025, the Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences became an official member of a local NetZero City Coalition, an initiative bringing together nearly 100 institutions and organizations, including NGOs, private companies, public authorities, media institutions, community associations and academic entities, with the aim of achieving climate neutrality in the Municipality of Iași and its metropolitan area by 2035 and reducing local carbon emissions by 80% under the Climate City Contract (Iași Municipality, 2025). Building on this institutional context, starting with the 2026–2027 academic year, the elective course could be further enriched through service-learning activities, such as collaborative projects addressing community needs, focus-talk events with coalition representatives and idea-generation sessions. These activities would enable students to engage with real-world stakeholders and transfer sustainability-related knowledge and competencies from the academic field to the wider community, thereby generating mutual benefits for both educational and community development. Therefore, this extension of the course could contribute to introducing an experiential dimension by shifting activities from the analysis of sustainability-oriented initiatives toward direct engagement with social actors and everyday real-life challenges (Barth et al., 2014). Collaborative and strategic competencies could be more strongly embedded if students were required to formulate responses to sustainability issues in authentic contexts, moving beyond purely conceptual analysis.

It is important to note that these directions represent a future stage in the development of the course and do not form part of the empirical core analyzed in the present article. They are relevant mainly because they highlight the potential for expanding the proposed pedagogical model and illustrate how teaching experiences oriented toward sustainability can evolve into more complex forms of collaboration between the university and the community.

Thus, throughout this article, we have presented an example of an elective course dedicated to sustainable consumption behaviors that incorporates transformative approaches, as well as active teaching strategies recognized in the specialized literature as catalysts for student engagement and for facilitating critical and reflective learning (García-González et al., 2022). The contribution of this article may be summarized along three main lines. First, it documents a concrete curricular innovation through which sustainability was integrated into a university program in the social sciences. Second, it shows that the topic of sustainable consumption can function as an effective pedagogical gateway for operationalizing the key sustainability competencies proposed by UNESCO. Third, it brings into the international literature an example from the Romanian higher education context, which remains less visible in debates on education for sustainable development. From this perspective, the course can connect sustainability principles with decisions and practices that students can recognize in everyday life, while allowing these to be examined in relation to more complex social, economic, organizational and environmental processes. Such an approach could also support a transformative learning perspective, according to which ESD should encourage critical reflection on established and everyday consumption practices rather than remain limited to the mere transmission of conceptual and theoretical information (García-González et al., 2022).

As highlighted throughout the article, the course may be regarded as an example of curricular innovation, through the transition from a course addressing consumer behavior in general to one that explicitly focuses on a specific dimension of it, namely sustainable consumption. In this form, the course integrates transformative pedagogical approaches and active teaching strategies, which the specialized literature considers favorable conditions for student engagement and for the development of reflective learning processes.

In addition, the article has emphasized the use of a flexible pedagogy, reflected in the autonomy granted to students in choosing their topics. The diversity of these topics may have encouraged students’ genuine interest and may be interpreted as a pedagogical mechanism that supports intrinsic motivation and engagement with sustainability-related issues. Such autonomy creates conditions for critical reflection and is aligned with normative competence, as it allows students to explore topics relevant to their own values and concerns. At the same time, the variety of topics made it possible to adapt to different interests and to approach sustainability-related challenges from multiple perspectives. This thematic diversity also created opportunities for exercising collaborative competence and forms of learning with a transdisciplinary character, giving students the opportunity to analyze sustainable consumption issues in relation to diverse social, economic, and cultural dimensions.

Such a flexible pedagogical approach is particularly relevant because the development of ESD competencies is difficult to achieve through strictly traditional methods, especially when it comes to transmitting values, encouraging critical reflection, and strengthening strategic action. At the same time, the results presented must be interpreted in light of several limitations of the study. First, the analysis is based on a single institutional case, which does not allow for broader generalizations. Second, the analytical approach is focused primarily on curricular design and the pedagogical logic of the activities, rather than on the standardized measurement of competency acquisition. Moreover, although the students’ projects provide relevant indications regarding their interest in the topics addressed and their degree of engagement in the proposed activities, the article in its current form does not include a systematic qualitative analysis of all the projects completed by students. Similarly, no standardized instruments were used to rigorously track the development of ESD competencies among students, which means that the article does not allow for deterministic conclusions regarding the relationship between learning outcomes and the adoption of sustainable consumption practices. This distinction between the existence of learning opportunities aimed at developing ESD competencies and the actual demonstration of their acquisition is particularly important, given that research on the assessment of sustainability competencies has highlighted both the diversity of available assessment approaches and the need to use specific instruments when examining changes in students’ competency levels (Redman et al., 2021). To address this limitation, future research could incorporate validated instruments such as the Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire developed by Gericke et al. (2019), available in both long and short forms, within a pre-course and post-course design or a systematic qualitative content analysis of the completed student projects, based on an explicit coding framework linked to the eight competencies. Consequently, this case study should be understood primarily as an analysis of how potential curricular alignment can be achieved and of the pedagogical opportunities involved, rather than as an assessment of outcomes related to the actual acquisition of competencies. However, even under these conditions, courses of this type can function as catalysts for the transformation of higher education toward sustainability. They provide a favorable framework for experimentation and co-creation in which competencies for sustainable development can be fostered. In this sense, we argue that even relatively short-term forms of educational intervention, such as the elective course analyzed here, may generate long-term effects by initiating processes of transformative learning and by producing gradual changes in the way students understand the complementarity between consumption habits and socio-ecological responsibility.

In conclusion, the teaching experience analyzed shows that a university course dedicated to sustainable consumption behaviors, even in an elective format, can provide a feasible framework for integrating sustainability competencies into the education of social science students. The relevance of the case does not lie in demonstrating a definitive impact, but rather in the fact that it offers a concrete, transferable, and adaptable pedagogical model through which universities’ general commitments to sustainability can be translated into effective curricular practices. More specifically, the case study highlights how ESD competencies can be operationalized through various types of learning tasks rather than through a single pedagogical strategy. Therefore, in addition to describing the course, the mapping provides a starting point for identifying areas in which its competency-oriented design could be further optimized.

At the same time, participation in programs centered on education for sustainable development (ESD) may have positive effects on the shaping of professional behaviors, fostering the development of responsible professional practices oriented toward sustainability, ethics, and social responsibility. The specialized literature emphasizes that there is a connection between the development of ESD competencies and the increased capacity of students to act sustainably in diverse professional contexts (Wiek et al., 2011). These competencies may become transferable across careers (Lozano et al., 2017) and may even contribute to shaping professional identity (Mulder et al., 2012). From this perspective, it can be argued that ESD plays an important role not only in personal development, but also in preparing future professionals to make ethical and strategic decisions both within the organizations in which they will work and within the communities of which they will be a part. At the same time, the potential impact of education for sustainability is not limited to the professional sphere. Generations of students who develop such competencies may, in the long term, contribute to the transmission of sustainable values and practices in private life as well, through the processes of primary socialization. As agents directly involved in this process, they may pass on to their children the knowledge, values, norms, and behavioral practices associated with sustainability (Matthies & Wallis, 2015). Beyond the formal mechanisms that support education for sustainability, provided mainly by educational institutions, the specialized literature also highlights the importance of informal mechanisms of socialization, which are highly individualized and deeply rooted in personal experience and the family setting. These mechanisms refer to the process of socialization for sustainability both at the individual level—socialization to the self-dimension—and at the societal level—socialization to societal sustainability (Francis & Davis, 2014).

In this context, a relevant direction for future research could involve exploring how participants in courses or educational programs oriented toward sustainability transfer the knowledge and values they acquire into family life and everyday interactions. Such investigations could examine whether, and to what extent, one may speak of a process of sustainability socialization, in which educational experiences at university influence both individual practices and the intergenerational transmission of values associated with sustainable development. Future research of this kind would complement the design-focused perspective of the present article by examining whether the pedagogical opportunities identified here are subsequently reflected in students’ demonstrated competencies, in their consumption practices, and even in their professional paths over time.