Abstract
Perhaps the most important issue in our time is how to sustain our planet’s resources, while developing wealth and well-being for a growing population. This monumental task has been defined in the concept of sustainable development (SD). During the last few decades the world communities have agreed upon addressing SD through international treaties. As a response Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been launched as an answer to cope with sustainability. However, empirical studies are a missing link in the discourse around ESD, where decisions and implementation strategies are heavily based on policy recommendations and gut feelings by practitioners. We used data from 2413 students in grades 6, 9, and 12 from 51 schools across Sweden to study the effectiveness of ESD. In line with the current debate on the definition of ESD, we quantified the extent to which teaching can be labeled as holistic and/or pluralistic. Through a series of descriptive analyses and the estimation of structural equation models, our results indicate that ESD can indeed impact on student outcomes in terms of their sustainability consciousness. The results of this study reveal the key role ESD plays in addressing SD, paving the way for a more sustainable future.
Highlights
Perhaps the most important issue for survival in our times is how to sustain the natural environment and our planets resources at the same time as develop wealth and well-being for a growing population.This monumental task has been defined in the concept of sustainable development (SD)
Our results show that these adolescents should not too hastily be considered a lost cause or an audience too preoccupied with themselves to be open for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD); the convex curve shows that while at first more effort is needed for pluralism to promote sustainability behaviors in grade 9 students, as the efforts increase so does the effect size, with grade nine students showing the highest reported sustainability behavior at the high end of the pluralism continuum
Future research efforts could focus on the effectiveness of ESD in approaches where the correlation between holism and pluralism are a dependent variable
Summary
Perhaps the most important issue for survival in our times is how to sustain the natural environment and our planets resources at the same time as develop wealth and well-being for a growing population. This monumental task has been defined in the concept of sustainable development (SD). Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been launched as one of the key answers to dealing with sustainability. ESD has been adopted globally as a consequence of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (DESD; 2005–2014), which has reshaped curricula worldwide. The present study reports on a large scale investigation that tests these two key questions
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