Education for sustainable development

On the one hand, enabling high-quality education for all people is a key goal of the United Nations (Goal 4 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). On the other hand, education is also an indispensable prerequisite for sustainable development and for achieving the other Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Since around the turn of the millennium, “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD) has established itself as a new concept and at the same time as an overarching task of the education systems in Europe and other parts of the world.

ESD is intended to enable people to think and act in a sustainable manner in the face of the complex challenges of the 21st century. This requires knowledge, skills, and values to be acquired. Children and young people should learn to actively get involved in social processes for the purpose of their own legitimate interests in the future. It is therefore about educational processes “that enable students to reflect on their possible role in a world of complex challenges, to make responsible decisions, to recognize their own scope for action for social, economic and political change and to assert themselves despite contradictions, uncertainties and conflicting goals to participate actively and creatively in negotiation and design processes.” (Guideline ESD North Rhine-Westphalia p. 13)

Green Cool Schools can make meaningful contributions to ESD understood in this way:

Current problems and questions of sustainable development are addressed with topics relating to climate change, soil protection or the greening of schools or urban areas.
The experiments and practical activities for greening schools contribute to integrating sustainability systematically and recognisable in the classroom and to further developing schools into sustainable places of learning.
With the questions about the soil, about plants or about the climate, a strong ecological and scientific “mainstay” is established in the project. However, Green Cool Schools also touch on issues of rural or urban development, the design of schools including the underlying values or democratic planning processes. This also “serves” the other dimensions of sustainable development – such as the political, cultural, social and economic ones.
With the experiments and activities being clearly anchored locally on the one hand and the European dimension appropriately acknowledged in each topic on the other hand, a broader multi-perspective view is promoted.
With e.g., the consideration of complex “natural” systems such as the soil and their influence by humans, systemic thinking is at least partially supported.
The consistent combination of knowledge acquisition and practical action helps to overcome contradictions between knowledge and action and to let students experience their own effectiveness.
With the experiments and practical activities for greening schools, a framework is set up, in which pupils can learn independently and participatively.