Contributions of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to Quality Education: A Synthesis of Research

Robert Laurie, Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi, Rosalyn Mckeown and Charles Hopkins
Additional contact information
Robert Laurie: Robert Laurie, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, Canada. E-mail: robert.laurie@unb.ca
Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi: Yuko Nonoyama-Tarumi, Adjunct Researcher, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Japan. Email: y.tarumi@kurenai.waseda.jp
Rosalyn Mckeown: Rosalyn McKeown, Secretariat, UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability, York University, Toronto, Canada. E-mail: mckeowni@utk.edu
Charles Hopkins: Charles Hopkins, Chairholder, UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability, York University, Toronto, Canada. E-mail: chopkins@edu.yorku.ca

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 2016, vol. 10, issue 2, 226-242

Abstract: This research is a synthesis of studies carried out in 18 countries to identify contributions of education for sustainable development (ESD) to quality education. Five common questions were used for the interviews in each country to solicit education leaders and practitioners’ views on the outcome and implementation of ESD. The analysis revealed that major themes repeated across the 18 studies, showing that ESD contributes in many ways to quality education in primary and secondary schools. Teaching and learning transforms in all contexts when the curriculum includes sustainability content, and ESD pedagogies promote the learning of skills, perspectives and values necessary to foster sustainable societies. The research also identified the need to integrate ESD across all subjects, to provide professional development for teachers to ensure ESD policy implementation and to adopt ESD management practices to support ESD in the curriculum in order to broaden ESD across countries.

Keywords: Education for sustainable development; quality education; primary education; secondary education; formal education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0973408216661442 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jousus:v:10:y:2016:i:2:p:226-242

DOI: 10.1177/0973408216661442

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Education for Sustainable Development
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().