Abstract
The role of local and central public administrations in promoting sustainable development and building up a better future for society is essential. In order to fulfill this mission, employees in public administration sector must engage in long life learning processes, for the purpose of developing skills such as: anticipation, interdisciplinarity, diversity of perspectives, working with incomplete or complex information, participation in sustainable development processes, cooperation, individual decision-making capacities, empathy, solidarity, and self-motivation. The Education for Sustainable Development as a component of lifelong learning is, in this light, of utmost importance. In this spirit, this paper investigates what is the Romanian public sector employees’ perception of long life learning as an essential premise of Education for Sustainable Development, by analysing on the one hand the degree of digital maturity of public institutions in Romania, and on the other hand the interest of employees in such institutions to engage in Education for Sustainable Development function of the following disjunct behavioural/emotional states: Disappointment, Conflicts, Satisfaction/Contentment, Doubt, Exhaustion, Attachment.
Highlights
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define a developmental corridor and a welfare concept with which a considerable increase in global population might be made tolerable [1], in the attempt to mitigate the increasingly negative impact of humans on the planet’s resources
Considering the need for the employed staff of public institutions to accept and engage in continuous training, primarily via programmes set within the organisations or via courses contracted with other institutions or companies, as well as considering the observation that Romanian public sector is faced with challenges that require the continuous development of knowledge of the staff employed in this sector, we formulated the following research theme: What is the Romanian public sector employees’ perception of lifelong learning (LLL) as an essential premise of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)?
Our study showed a high degree of digitalisation of work tasks in the Romanian public sector
Summary
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define a developmental corridor and a welfare concept with which a considerable increase in global population might be made tolerable [1], in the attempt to mitigate the increasingly negative impact of humans on the planet’s resources. The employees therein should have the best understanding of the changes that take place and their impact on the future of communities. They will not be able to promote sustainable development unless they have sufficient skills and knowledge on sustainability [2,3]. These are ensured via engagement in the lifelong learning (LLL) process and, via a component under the name of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The employees’ wish to perfect their skills on an on-going basis is influenced, by a wide variety of factors—such as their actual workplace conditions, namely the level of computerization in the institutions where they work, their level of workplace satisfaction, access to refresher courses whether enabled or not by the employer institutions, potential benefits that could be obtained upon attending such courses—most of which are correlated with their age, training and experience
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