EDUCATION FOR CHANGE: HIGHER EDUCATION IN CROATIA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Purpose - Sustainable development is one of the key elements of any society’s progress. It includes economic vitality, equity, social cohesion, environmental protection and sustainable management of natural resources. Educating new generations for sustainable development will increase awareness, enable better governance, critical thinking and the development of new methods and tools for a safer and healthier world. The importance of education for sustainable development (ESD) was recognized in the 1990s and as a result the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe adopted the Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development in March 2005. At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted, setting 17 sustainable development goals. The 4th goal of the Agenda 2030 is to ensure inclusive and quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities. Accordingly, World Education Forum 2015 adopted the Incheon Declaration for Education 2030 and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4. The purpose of this paper is to determine the scope of application of the Strategy for Sustainable Development in the Republic of Croatia in higher education and areas for improvement and the possibility of implementing Incheon Declaration for Education 2030 in the Croatian education system with determining the knowledge and opinions of students about the above. The theoretical part of the paper explains sustainable development in general, principles, goals, elements and conceptually defines education for sustainable development. This is followed by the basic assumptions, goals, principles and implications of the Strategy and their application in Croatia. The empirical part of the paper includes the results of the primary research conducted in 2022 among students of Croatian higher education institutions. The research was conducted using the survey questionnaire technique. Their knowledge, education and interest in sustainable development are analyzed. The methods used in this paper are deductive, inductive, method of analysis and synthesis and descriptive method. The result of the paper is an overview of documents related to education for sustainable development, evaluation of the success of the implementation of the Strategy in the Republic of Croatia and the possibility of applying the Incheon Declaration to higher education and knowledge and opinions of students. The importance of sustainable development is also evidenced by the large amount of literature dealing with this topic, however, a small number of authors research ESD. In this sense, this paper contributes to the discussion of this concept in the context of higher education, and since it presents the results of primary research for the first time, it gives a concrete original scientific contribution to this topic and is a good basis for further research.