Sustainable Engineering Education: Project-Based Learning, Maker Spaces, and the Development of Professional Skills
A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "STEM Education".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 861
Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, titled, “Sustainable Engineering Education: Project-Based Learning, Maker Spaces, and the Development of Professional Skills.”
The future of engineering demands creative problem solvers capable of tackling complex challenges in a rapidly changing world shaped by emerging technologies, sustainability pressures, and evolving global needs. Educating engineers for sustainable practice requires more than just technical competence; students must be able to work with diverse teams and stakeholders and be equipped with the systems‑thinking skills needed to design solutions that are environmentally responsible, socially equitable, and resilient over time in a constantly changing world. Engineering graduates must be prepared not only to solve technical problems but to operate as adaptable, reflective professionals capable of navigating uncertainty, collaborating across disciplines, and contributing to sustainable and socially responsible outcomes. Employers have also expressed the need for graduates with a range of skills including communication, teamwork, digital capabilities, project management, risk management, ethics, cultural competencies, and data handling and visualisation, but developing and assessing these skills requires pedagogies, practices and physical spaces for learning beyond traditional university lectures and classrooms.
This Special Issue welcomes submissions that explore how professional skills for sustainable engineering can be developed and assessed in engineering students, including but not limited to:
- Sustainability education in engineering
- Problem-based and Project-based learning in engineering
- Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary projects
- Experiential learning
- Makerspaces in secondary education as a pipeline into engineering degrees
- Makerspaces in tertiary education for skills development
- Identification of future-focussed skills
- Development and assessment of professional skills for engineers
We welcome you to share this invitation with others who may be interested in these topics.
Kind regards,
Dr. Emily J. Cook
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- engineering education
- project-based learning
- problem-based learning
- experiential learning
- makerspaces
- professional skills development
- practice-based learning
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