Mapping sustainability and circularity competences in construction material curriculum in civil engineering education

The transition toward sustainable and circular construction practices calls for a transformation in civil engineering education, particularly within construction material courses. This study maps sustainability and circularity competences in courses offered at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), focusing on both general mandatory sustainability courses and domain-specific construction material courses. Using revised Bloom’s taxonomy, learning objectives were analysed for 13 courses to assess the integration and progression of circularity/sustainability-related competencies from BSc to MSc level. The results showed a large variation of sustainable/circular oriented learning objectives and curriculum descriptions, where a few courses mainly focused on sustainability and therefore (almost) all learning objectives were related to these competences, whereas other courses had none. This mapping represents an important first step in the transformation of the construction material curriculum and highlights the need for a systematic approach to update the course curriculum with the normative technological competences to support the green transition in the construction sector.