ESD and Education for All: synergies and potential conflicts

The world continues to face critical challenges such as: global climate change, the rapid depletion of natural resources, the frequency of natural disasters, the loss of biodiversity. The concept of Sustainable Development shows us what mistakes humen made before and what can we rethink to do something now for the future. Education is a key point for Sustainable Development. The development and implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) are a global challenge and face many obstacles around the world. This comes as no surprise as ESD has many faces, spans many sectors and disciplines, emphasizes new forms of learning and ways of thinking and needs to be grounded in local contexts while at the same time being receptive and sensitive to what happens elsewhere. As a result, this research wants to grasp the spirit of ESD. First, I take an analysis for the contexts and structures of ESD as the basic viewpoint of education. Besides, Environmental Education (EE) in many countries around the world established strongly. The simultaneous existence and development of EE and ESD has given rise in some countries to question about the relationships between the two. So the second of my research clarifies the distinctions and relationships between the two. Third, as the 1970s, ESD followed many international conferences to discuss, modify, deepen and advocate, the resolution requested UNESCO in 2003, as the designated lead agency for ”Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014”, one of the UN-supported major programmes. Reviewing of the contexts and objects of DESD and rethinking the challenges of ESD are to understand the seven strategies of DESD. Fourth, furthermore, my research summarizes the relationships with 4 major international education initiatives by UN-supported : the Millennium Development Goal (MDG)、the Education for All (EFA)、the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD)、the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), and points out how the EFA and ESD are distinct but also overlap. Fifth, the DESD has raised high expectations among the countries around the world who seek to promote and develop ESD. As a result, in 2007, UNESCO established a DESD Monitoring and Evaluation Expert Group (MEEG) to advise on appropriate monitoring mechanisms for assessing. Finally, my research follows the advice of the MEEG with inducing some findings and challenges of DESD, and draws a conclusion of ten great effect on the development of ESD.

This paper considers the question of what education for sustainable development (ESD) research might signify when linked to the concept of “retention”, and how this relation (ESD and retention) might be researched. It considers two different perspectives on retention, as revealed through educational research trajectories, drawing on existing research and case studies. Firstly, it discusses an ESD research agenda that documents retention by focusing on the issue of keeping children in schools. This research agenda is typical of the existing discourses surrounding Education for All (EFA). It then discusses a related ESD research agenda that focuses more on the pedagogical and curricular aspects of retention, as this provides for a deeper understanding of how ESD can contribute to improving the quality of teaching and learning within a wider EFA retention agenda.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a key component of the concept of sustainable social development advocated by the international community. The international community has successively set periodic goals for ESD, e.g. The Dakar Framework for Action and Education 2030 Framework for Action, to advance universal education that is conducive to global equity and quality development. According to the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) reports of UNESCO, ESD has made great strides on many fronts worldwide since 2000, but the gaps between countries with different incomes and levels of development remain significant, and gender and class inequalities in educational opportunities persist. China has yielded substantial results in ESD with all its indexes reaching or even surpassing the goals set in The Dakar Framework for Action. And in response to the Education 2030 Framework for Action, the Chinese Government is formulating Education 2030: Modernization of Education in China to guide China’s ESD, with the aim to raise the level of education for all, gradually address the educational inequalities among regions, between urban and rural areas, and among different social strata, and develop more inclusive and equitable quality education, thus achieving the goal of lifelong education for all.

Education for sustainable development (ESD), though not carried out formally under that designation, can be seen happening through various avenues of learning available in a developing country like Bangladesh. Challenges such as those associated with the environment, population, development and climate change constitute the context for recognizing the centrality of education in development. In particular, environmental education and education for sustainable development address these challenges. Thus, the narrow mandate of education as a means of preparing people for economic prosperity has been surpassed in the country. Specifically, mass-scale overall courses in basic environmental studies (Poribesh Shiksha) have been initiated by the national government in primary schools (Year 1–Year 5) and secondary education from the 1990s. At the tertiary level, many higher education institutions and universities are providing courses specifically related to allied fields of environment and its management. However, a stronger but more scattered notional ESD is being implemented by non-formal education (NFE) systems and activities that are organized principally by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) at grass-root levels in both rural and urban areas. The importance of ESD is being clearly recognized by different agencies like the media (both newspapers and electronic media) and they are being seen as important actors for the purpose of drawing environment and sustainable development issues to the fore. A review of government policies, programmes, rules and regulations shows that there is a concerted effort in recognizing the role of education for environmental and sustainable development at different levels of the country.

Three years into the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, there has been considerable discussion regarding education for sustainable development (ESD) at a policy level, yet very few countries and communities have moved to integrate ESD into their educational curriculum. In this article we argue that the conceptualization and implementation of ESD can be advanced by grounding it in the human capability approach.We define education for sustainable human development as educational practice that results in the enhancement of human well-being, conceived in terms of the expansion of individuals' agency, capabilities and participation in democratic dialogue, both for now and for future generations.We conclude that incorporating Amartya Sen's human capability approach as the basis of ESD will provide the clarity of direction and purpose needed for the transformation of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

This article discusses findings from a tri‐country study of student teachers' understandings of the purposes of education, their conceptions of sustainable development and the task of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). At its heart are case studies of 30 student teachers from Initial Teacher Education Programmes in England, Denmark and Germany (10 from each country). While they are diverse in their personal, professional and subject disciplinary backgrounds, and they work in a variety of school subject areas, all the students share the objective of becoming members of the teaching profession in the primary or lower secondary schools of their countries, and thus each one currently faces the additional challenge of understanding and responding to national, cross‐cutting policy initiatives on sustainable development and ESD. As interpretative research, the study catalogued and mapped similarities and differences in student teacher understandings, and identified those notions, thoughts and ideas that were meaningful to a beginning teacher's interpretations and sense‐making of key ESD concepts and tasks. The findings highlight the widespread importance of ‘taking responsibility’ and ‘having responsibility’ as key notions in interpreting their professional role and student learning in relation to ESD. An explorative framework developed during the data analysis suggests that in making sense of ESD, student teachers have recourse to one or more of at least four identifiable rationalities for ascribing responsibility to oneself or others, where each rationality articulates a different set of responses to questions about the prioritized locus of agency and the nature of the decision‐making process. The framework offers a critical and generative tool for stimulating debate in the field about policy and professional preparation and development and, in particular, the nature, processes and qualities of learning that are understood to ‘generate a sense of responsibility’, within the broader—and in the case of ESD—related quests of education and sustainable development.

There is a growing interest among educational leaders in Namibia to promote transformational leadership in schools. The aim of this paper is to report on the contribution of education for sus-tainable development to transformational leadership among school principals in Namibian schools. The results of the study show that education for sustainable development can be seen as a tool to promote transformational leadership because it provides an opportunity for the sharing of responsibilities, opening communication channels, and achieving change in terms of leadership as well as managing personal hygiene by learners and the wider community. The results also show that the contribution of education for sustainable development to transformational leadership is challenged by the fact that education for sustainable development is a new concept. This shows a lack of awareness, a lack of parental involvement, and a lack of teamwork and unavailability of funding. This study shows the need to run training and awareness programmes by positioning education for sustainable development at the interface of self-leadership strategies and components of transformational leadership. It also indicates that school principals need to be provided with the skills required to implement education for sustainable development. The Namibian environmental education/education for sustainable development policy and related strategy must be aligned to address the roles and responsibilities of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Environment, other ministries and departments, and civil society and private actors who have a stake in education for sustainable development. The rewarding of committed environmental clubs and associations is also recommended. These directions should be incorporated as a non-negoti- able aspect for the contribution of education to sustainable development and transformational leadership in Namibian schools.

The rational for this paper is contextualized within a broader national and international agenda of reaching Education for All (EFA), knowledge transformation and production with an overall focus on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Whose education and whose development is at issue? The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize EFA in a broader developmental context. Definitions of formal-, non-formal and informal education are applied in order to analyze the epistemological perspectives underlying the educational achievements more than two decades after Jomtien in 1990. Concepts of contextualized expansive education and object-oriented learning will be used to reveal the systemic causes of the challenges the individual actors experience in their daily learning activities. Two case studies further illustrate how a broad stakeholder involvement through collective design and implementation created innovation and educational transformation that contributed to relevant and sustained learning/knowledge and development at an individual and community level. The paper argues that in the current sociocultural context, responses to EFA need to be based on a comprehensive national education strategy, situated in the local context. By creating space for educational innovation, through interaction and negotiation, the confluence of the epistemological lenses characterizing formal, non-formal, and informal learning could ultimately be a strategy to adequately respond to the diversified learning needs of the population and sustainable developmental of the country. One expected outcome of the paper is a contribution to the future strategies of EFA beyond 2015, built on the urgent requirements for inter-professional partnership and collaboration through a multidimensional approach to education and learning.

PurposeSince 2006, higher education institutions (HEIs) in Sweden, should according to the Higher Education Act, promote sustainable development (SD). In 2016, the Swedish Government asked the Swedish higher education authority to evaluate how this study is proceeding. The authority chose to focus on education. This paper aims to produce a report on this evaluation.Design/methodology/approachAll 47 HEIs in Sweden were asked to write a self-evaluation report based on certain evaluation criteria. A panel was appointed consisting of academics and representatives for students and working life. The panel wrote an evaluation of each HEI, a report on general findings and recommendations, and gave an overall judgement of each HEI in two classes as follows: the HEI has well-developed processes for integration of SD in education or the HEI needs to develop their processes.FindingsOverall, a mixed picture developed. Most HEIs could give examples of programmes or courses where SD was integrated. However, less than half of the HEIs had overarching goals for integration of SD in education or had a systematic follow-up of these goals. Even fewer worked specifically with pedagogy and didactics, teaching and learning methods and environments, sustainability competences or other characters of education for SD. Overall, only 12 out of 47 got a higher judgement.Originality/valueThis is a unique study in which all HEIs in a country are evaluated. This provides unique possibilities for identifying success factors and barriers. The importance of the leadership of the HEIs became clear.

This study was carried out to explore Myanmar lower secondary school teachers’ perception on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The research focused on the teachers’ level of ESD awareness and knowledge, their attitudes towards ESD, and their willingness to adopt ESD within their classroom setting and as well as their teaching skills. The sample consisted of 248 lower secondary school teachers of thirty schools in Sagaing Township, Myanmar. The Five-point Likert scale questionnaire was developed. Its reliability was measured by Cronbach’s alpha. The results indicated that, in general, the teachers have positive attitude towards ESD and willingness to adopt ESD in their teaching subjects. However, the participants’ level of awareness of ESD concepts is rather low and they do not understand ESD concept clearly. They do not have adequate teaching skills for integrating ESD concept into their teaching subjects. The findings also revealed that although there is no significant difference in the level of awareness and knowledge of ESD concept and attitude towards ESD, level of science teachers’ teaching skills in integrating ESD into science topics is higher than that of other subject teachers, and a significant relationship exists in three variables: teachers’ knowledge of ESD concept, attitude towards ESD and their teaching skills respectively. These findings might be useful as a baseline survey in implementing in-service science teacher training program integrated with ESD in Myanmar.

In the field of environment-related education, the period from the early 1970s to the present is marked by both continuity and contestation. There has been a remarkable continuity of interest in linking education and environment (especially, but not only, in schools); and there has also been contestation and resultant evolution in the language of the field, with terms like ecology education, environmental education and education for sustainable development becoming highly visible at different times. Environment-related education represents an interesting case in educational innovation – one being played out at an international level. In particular, we are currently in the throes of a situation in which the environment-related work formerly known as ‘environmental education’ (EE) is being aggressively and extensively ‘re-badged’ as ‘education for sustainable development’ (ESD). There are strong attempts internationally to supplant the use of the term EE with the newer term ESD; most of these attempts are associated with the current international United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) runs for the period 2005–2014, and is gathering pace across the world (Selby, 2006). Speaking at the international launch of DESD in New York in March 2005, UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura suggested that The ultimate goal of the Decade is that education for sustainable development is more than just a slogan. It must be a concrete reality for all of us – individuals, organizations, governments – in all our daily decisions and actions, so as to promise a sustainable planet and a safer world to our children, our grandchildren and their descendants… Education will have to change so that it addresses the social, economic, cultural and environmental problems that we face in the 21st century. (UNESCO, 2005:2) Now that the United Nations has taken this concept on board in such a significant way in proclaiming a Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, ESD is clearly supplanting environmental education in the language of environment-related education.

PurposeIn education concerning environmental issues, there are two predominant currents in the world, environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). ESD is the formal commitment and therefore promoted by the United Nations, to ensure that countries achieve sustainable development. In contrast, EE was the first educational trend with an environmental protection approach. The purpose of this systematic review that seeks to show whether the migration from EE to ESD is being effective and welcomed by researchers and especially by universities is presented. With the above, a global panorama can be provided, where the regions that choose each model can be identified. In the same sense, it was sought to determine which of the two currents is more accepted within engineering education.Design/methodology/approachThe review followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyzes parameters for systematic reviews. In total, 198 papers indexed in Scopus, Science Direct, ERIC and Scielo were analyzed. With the results, the advancement of ESD and the state of the EE by regions in the world were identified.FindingsIt was possible to categorize the geographical regions that host either of the two EE or ESD currents. It is important to note that ESD has gained more strength from the decade of ESD proposed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. For its part, EE has greater historical roots in some regions of the planet. In turn, there is evidence of a limited number of publications on the design and revision of study plans in engineering.Originality/valueThrough this systematic literature review, the regions of the world that are clinging to EE and those that have taken the path of ESD could be distinguished. Moreover, specific cases in engineering where ESD has been involved were noted.

The paper presented here is part of an interdisciplinary project called "Educational Management," the purpose of which is to analyze the management and accountability policies applied in Public Institutions of Higher Education (IHE). Education for Sustainable Development has a privileged place since the approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations (UN), as it is listed as one of the goals pursued by these objectives. The approach to sustainable education was established at the World Conference on Education for All (EFA), held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990 and continued at the World Education Forum in 2000. The 4th Sustainable Development Goal seeks to promote learning opportunities and ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education. This goal is a commitment to educational innovation and university social responsibility as it is a protagonist in the formation of students and the creation of learning spaces. Likewise, IHEs must generate a culture and expansion of knowledge, scientific-technological innovation and be a model for society. Furthermore, they must contribute to the Agenda for Sustainable Development, the final document of which, entitled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” promotes the end of poverty, fights against inequality and injustice, and addresses climate change so that no one is left behind by 2030.

Education is an essential component of three global development agendas, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), Education for All (EFA) and the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is argued that focus on the quality and relevance of education can assist in the current process of renewing the three agendas. During the last decade, ESD-based approaches and initiatives have shown to be able to produce quality learning outcomes, in formal school systems and other learning settings. Two examples of effective ESD-inspired initiatives with teacher educators in Southern Africa and with multi-stakeholder city team in Southern Asia are described and their essential transformational features identified. Proposals by the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) are an attempt at being more responsive to the quality dimension of education by broadening learning domains. However, high-stakes (international) testing instruments are not necessarily aligned with the needs of relevant and quality education. The transformational ESD features show what can be done to make educational testing and assessment more inclusive, appropriate and useful.

Communication about nature and the environment was important throughout the history of humankind. Humans learned about their environment by observation, by leaving adverse conditions or trying to overcome unfavourable condition in the nature by practical solutions.The exchange of information altered from oral to written and to digital, and from local to global. As an important result, the available amount of information simply exploded. However, it is reasonable to assume that especially local knowledge in many regions has disappeared.The development of environmental education represents a chronological sequence, which in general can be subdivided in five consecutive steps: 1. Communication of disaster stories and religious narratives (at local scales) 2. Education in religious institutions and schools about water and food production, nature, medicine, astronomy, religion, and other disciplines with the idea to enable human life and solve social problems (at regional scales) 3. Scientific education of modern concepts to solve environmental problems including ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation (at regional to supra-national scales) 4. Transdisciplinary exchange of scientific information and education of children, students, the public and stakeholders in economy and politics with the purpose to limit environmental disaster and species extinction (at regional to supra-national scales) 5. Environmental education which enables avoidance of environmental catastrophes, species extinction and social disasters (at all spatial scales) These phases can be seen as logical sequence of the past. However, the development in the past was not that clearly arranged as different aspects occurred at different times and in different regions independently. Today a combination of the first three steps is still globally relevant. Culturally different accentuation is realized at regional scales.The fourth step is only partially achieved and has to be intensified. The fifth step simply has not been reached, yet. However, diverse educational programmes show a strong effort to avoid environmental disaster based on scientific knowledge across all disciplines, which are related to human wellbeing, health, survival, animal welfare, and survival of species and ecosystems.The formal establishment of environmental education (EE) started in the middle of the twentieth century due to a worldwide growing concern about environmental problems. The concepts of environmental education and education for sustainable development (ESD) meanwhile are established in educational systems across the world.However, also these concepts today are intermingled between short-term perspectives (health, wellbeing, profit) and long-term perspectives (survival of ecosystems and biodiversity, resource use, recycling), and between nature conservation and development. Furthermore, dependent on the concept different aspects of economy, social science, and ecology are merged with the effect that the target course sometimes is getting rather weak.The central purpose of biodiversity conservation education (BCE) is the analysis and intermediation of the relationship between nature and culture, evolution and extinction, species and ecosystem, natural constraints and human possibilities. In general the term biodiversity is more related to natural sciences while conservation is part of the ethical-social discourse. Thus, also BCE requires the contribution of various disciplines.Modern concepts such as EE, ESD, and BCE have to respect, disentangle and analyze extremely complex problem areas including gaps of knowledge. EE and ESD promote multiple and sometimes competing goals. Furthermore, due to the holistic approach, the targets of ESD are partially ambiguous, while BCE is related to smaller and clearer targets.Since many environment-related education approaches are interdisciplinary if not holistic, school curricula of traditional core disciplines often do not provide enough space for relating contributions.Independent of the different positions and phases, the enlargement and intensification of environmental education in public schools and media is seen as an important measure parallel to political decisions and practical management of ecosystems.KeywordsEnvironmental education (EE)Education for sustainable development (ESD)Biodiversity conservation education (BCE)