Reflective Self-Assessment as a Lens on Sustainability Competency Development

Preparing students to engage with sustainability challenges requires not only teaching key concepts and competencies but also supporting students in recognizing and taking ownership of their learning in ways that connect to future professional and civic roles. This study examines what reflective self-assessment reveals about sustainability competency and skill development in a large-enrollment introduction to sustainability course. Drawing on qualitative analysis of an end-of-semester reflective assignment, we examine patterns in what students emphasize, how they describe their learning, and which course learning activities and contexts they associate with competency development. The findings indicate that students frequently identify systems thinking and other sustainability competencies while also prominently emphasizing general and professional skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. Learning is most often grounded in lab-based active learning contexts and, when students are prompted to articulate their learning in professional narratives, they are integrated into accounts that identify sustainability competencies and broader skill development. Taken together, the findings suggest that reflective self-assessment can function not only as an assessment approach, but also as a pedagogical strategy that supports student sense-making, recognition, and ownership of sustainability learning relevant to future academic, civic, and professional pathways aligned with the aims of SDG 4.7.