Teaching Professionals Environmental Management and Cleaner Technology Combining Educational Learning and Practice Learning

The objective of the education of Environmental Manager is to make the student able to understand and co-ordinate solutions of environmental problems within the industrial sector and the public authorities. As such the education aims at qualifying the student both within the area of planning and co-ordinating efficient management of environmental problems and technological processes of change in companies, and within the area of planning and co-ordinating relevant public regulation.

Two of the major cornerstones in the education of Environmental Management are 1) the education should provide the students with new scientific theories and methods that relate to their field of practice. And 2) the education should bring in and develop new competencies and perspectives that can act as renewable elements in the students’ practical work.

Among other things this means that the education becomes a place where interplay is created between competencies of research and development on the one side and competencies of practice on the other side. In the actual teaching, this is done through the creation of a linkage between theoretical knowledge and methods and practical knowledge in the environmental field.

It also means that the education does not build on an existing system of a specific professional educational field such as for example engineering. Instead is relates to a specific field of practice (environmental management) and renewal of competencies within this specific practice, and to the inter-/multidisciplinary competencies that acting/operating in this field requires.

The bias towards integration of multiple disciplines shows e.g. in the perception that it is positive that more professions are represented among the students. The education focuses on professional competence as being practical and implying knowledge of practical problems and situations. This means that the focus is on a real competence in contrast to for example a formal competence.

Whereas a professional education aims at providing the student with a foundation, that makes it possible for her/him to develop a professional competence, this competence is already presupposed to exist when the student is admitted to the education of Environmental Management. The practical orientation of the education is planned on the basis that the students have different professional competencies and working experiences which can be included in the teaching, and that the teaching preferable result in competencies that the students consider as useful in a practical context.