From ecodesign to DFS in engineering education
Résumé
Sustainability concept is becoming ingrained in the international engineering community. The next generation of engineers has to be trained to appreciate economic, environmental, and societal impacts of its decisions, with an international perspective and at a local and global scale. Such complex problems require an integrative approach and engineers must be prepared to meet challenges that extend beyond the boundaries of a single discipline or culture. To achieve this issue, students need time but also adapted curricula focused on sustainability and ecodesign concepts to support evolution of their skills, their knowledge and their culture. In this paper we propose an analysis of sustainable and ecodesign trainings in France to estimate if French students have well-adapted programmes and enough time to develop skills and knowledge about sustainability. Our study concerns curricula from secondary school to university and engineering school. We put in evidence the limits of the French system and we propose preliminary recommendations for the development of progressive and coherent curricula about sustainability for engineers.