Alpenküche trifft Street Food

Nachhaltiger Genuss am Christkindlmarkt

Abstract

Adopting a problem-based and enabling approach, this paper reveals details of a project initiated and conducted by a group of students and mentored by their team of lecturers. The overarching goal was to transfer evidence-based theory concerning sustainable consumption into action in a public and informal learning environment. Therefore, the defined learning goals were self-sufficient planning, implementation and evaluation of this project titled “Alpine cuisine meets street food – sustainable consumption at a Christmas market”. In practice this meant an iterative process of shared-decision-making. The project evaluation gave first insights that this hands-on and self-empowering approach stimulated the development of key competences, such as Gestaltungskompetenz (design competence; de Haan, 2008, S. 12) and its twelve sub-competences. As a result, it seems that in-the-field learning in education for sustainable development results in a higher and more diversified outcome when theory is actually translated into real-life actions. Furthermore, as a sustainable (in terms of longer-lasting) outcome, a box full of materials for valuable subject-didactic stimuli tailored for communication with the target group was composed, show-casing the acquired principles and skills.