Sustainable development education: long-cycle model, international benchmarks, and student self-assessment

Abstract

This study evaluates quality-related characteristics of a long-cycle engineering education model from the perspective of education for sustainable development. The aim was to assess whether the model's documented curricular architecture, its interpretive alignment with international engineering-education benchmarks, and student self-assessments provide convergent evidence of its relevance for sustainability-oriented engineering training. The study combined documentary analysis, program-level mapping of sustainability-relevant elements, interpretation through the frameworks of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the International Engineering Alliance (IEA), and the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) standards, and a comparative anonymous survey of engineering students from Russia and Latin America. The final analytical sample comprised 505 questionnaires. The documentary and mapping results indicate that the model has a coherent and practice-oriented program configuration integrating fundamental, specialised, practical, research, economic, and digital components. The survey results do not prove universal superiority; however, they indicate selective student-reported advantages of the experimental trajectory, especially in familiarity with sustainable development, understanding of future professional activity, and self-assessed applied competencies. Overall, the study proposes a structured framework for evaluating sustainability-oriented engineering curricula while explicitly limiting the interpretation to a case-specific, perception-based assessment.