Journal of Education and Human Development

Environmental Professional Competence Education: A Need of University Students and Present and Future Society
Aymee Alonso Gatell, Nivia T. Álvarez Aguilar, Jaime Arturo Castillo Elizondo

Abstract
This paper is aimed at analyzing professional competencies, particularly university students’ environmental professional competencies (EPC). Understanding the meaning and sense of professional competencies lead the authors to recognize the need of integrating conceptual, procedural and attitudinal knowledge, to distinguish between general professional competencies and environmental professional ones, and to design activities for educating and fostering their development on the basis of recognizing a distinctive character, determined by the social object of each career and its actual corresponding formative process. The study examines not only world-wide published materials on the topic but the university educational practices of several Latin-American countries. The findings also include a definition for EPC that takes their function and the specific environmental content into account. The importance of EPC in satisfying university education requirement is also appraised. From authors’ perspective an important reference is contributed for similar studies in other areas of education. These findings prove the necessity of a finest conceptual precision of environmental professional competence education in current conditions.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jehd.v5n1a15