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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Education and Approaches".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 14186

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Prof. Dr. Jordi Colomer Feliu

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Guest Editor

Department of Physics, University of Girona, 17003 Girona, Spain
Interests: reflective learning; STEM education; tertiary education; education for sustainable development; science education; curriculim building student skills
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Dolors Cañabate

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Guest Editor

Department of Specific Didactics, University of Girona, Girona, Spain
Interests: physical education; cooperative learning; STEAM education; primary education; education for sustainable development
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability journal launches a special issue on “Locating cross-educational approaches to develop sustainable development goals-SDGs”, which might be of a broad interest since it will deal with the application of cross-educational approaches (from a holistic perspective) to foster, develop, entail, the individual Sustainable Development Goals. The strategy of the United Nations postulates that Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) stresses that education systems at all levels, (i.e., primary, secondary and tertiary), be underpinned by and embedded with ethics of solidarity, equality, and mutual respect among people, countries, cultures and generations. The principles for ESD at all levels of education, according to the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the world leaders, urge politicians and policy makers to move society towards a sustainable future. In educational centers, all types of knowledge, competences, skills, and attitudes that foster sustainable development have become the center of attention because ESD is needed for future agents in the field of sustainable development. ESD aims to develop the 17 SDGs approved by the United Nations that highlight a global vision for sustainability. Education institutions play a fundamental role in empowering individual reflection on one’s own actions to foster current and future social, cultural, economic and environmental understanding and impacts, to activate participation both locally and globally and to reframe complex situations through a sustainable basis. Teaching, then, should define, test and assess efficient cross-educational approaches based on developing SDGs at all levels of formal, non-formal and informal education. Manuscripts, then, should focus in any SDG, in the application of either scientific, humanistic and artistic disciplines from Higher Education systems, to secondary and primary education centres.

Prof. Dr. Jordi Colomer Feliu
Prof. Dolors Cañabate
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Cross-Educational Approaches
Sustainable Development Goals
Education Sustainable Competences
Transformative Methodologies.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 315 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cooperative Learning to Reduce Inequalities: Instructional Approaches and Dimensions

by Dolors Cañabate, Remigijus Bubnys, Lluís Nogué, Lurdes Martínez-Mínguez, Carolina Nieva and Jordi Colomer

Sustainability 2021, 13(18), 10234; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131810234 - 14 Sep 2021

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3906

Abstract

This manuscript deals with how cooperative learning in pre-school and primary education can be dimensionalized in terms of reducing gender differences and inequalities. In this study, formulated through instructional approaches delivered in four medium- to very high-complexity schools (the number of students with an immigrant background ranging from 30% to 100%), 376 pre-service teachers and 43 qualified teachers were asked to analyze the instruction that they gave to 1658 pre-school and primary students over two consecutive years. Instruction was defined in terms of contextualized physical education challenges that included cooperative psychomotor physical challenges, guided discovery activities and psychomotor problem-solving. The analysis was based on reflective narratives on both gender differences and inequalities, which evinced 792 comments regarding gender (618 by the pre-service teachers and 174 by the schoolteachers) and 627 comments for inequalities (363 by the pre-service teachers and 264 by the schoolteachers). The analysis produced categories based on critical reflection—on both individual and classroom scales—from the pre-service teachers and the schoolteachers. Each of the cooperative learning dimensions, i.e., positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, social skills, and group processing, were investigated to produce a set of principles and competencies that best promoted education for sustainable development. The research produced 42 principles that operated under the tenet of leave-no-one-behind, with positive interdependence and promotive interaction providing the higher number of principles that are best suited to tackle, through cooperation processes, equity and inclusivity issues in pre-school and primary education classrooms. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating Cross-Educational Approaches to Develop SDGs)

25 pages, 806 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Development of Students’ Assumed Responsibility for Their Own Learning during Participatory Action Research

by Aušra Kazlauskienė, Ramutė Gaučaitė, Dolors Cañabate, Jordi Colomer and Remigijus Bubnys

Sustainability 2021, 13(18), 10183; https://doi.org/10.3390/su131810183 - 12 Sep 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2597

Abstract

The goal to ensure sustainable development in the education process obliges to create such practices of teaching and learning which would create conditions for individuals to act in complex situations in a sustainable manner. Personalized, perceived responsibility of a learner for one’s own learning becomes important for implementation of sustainable learning. This research is aimed to reveal authentic experiences of school students assuming responsibility for learning, emphasizing prospects of sustainable education development in practice and possibilities for improvement by employing the strategy of participatory action research. The data was collected according to the stages of the chosen action research during lessons on learning to learn. Forty-six school students and two teachers took part in the research. On the basis of content analysis, it was revealed that school students assume the responsibility for learning when it is grounded on cooperation taking place in the dialogue-based culture, where negotiation and creation of opportunities to choose are among the most important strategies making the assumed responsibility relevant. Intervening conditions emerging in the context of the strategies were also identified: making learning experiences relevant, clarity of criteria, attitude towards failure and the self as a major resource of learning, expectations, and goals and feedback of learning. Interacting with each other, prevailing strategies, and intervening conditions act as components of sustainable development of school students’ assumed responsibility for learning. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating Cross-Educational Approaches to Develop SDGs)

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12 pages, 490 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cooperative Learning for a More Sustainable Education: Gender Equity in the Learning of Maths

by Jose Antonio Prieto-Saborit, David Méndez-Alonso, Jose Antonio Cecchini, Ana Fernández-Viciana and Jose Ramón Bahamonde-Nava

Sustainability 2021, 13(15), 8220; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158220 - 23 Jul 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2449

Abstract

Education and gender equity are of high priority in the list of objectives when looking to achieve sustainable development; however, various studies have analysed that these objectives are far from being reached. The goal of this paper was to investigate the influence that cooperative learning has on academic performance and on the gender gap in the subject of Maths. A total of 14,122 students between the ages of 10 and 19 took part in the study. The hypothesis posed was that gender differences observed in Maths would significantly be reduced in those classrooms in which cooperative learning had a higher degree of implementation. In the results, the analysis of the regression of means and gradients showed that gender predicts Maths results in a positive manner (estimated beta = 0.12, p < 0.01) and interacts with cooperative learning by taking a negative value (−0.26) and with an associated critical value less than 0.05. In other words, the relation between cooperative learning and Math grades is significantly higher in males than in females. However, females achieve better marks, which generates a certain relation of equity. These results prove that cooperative learning can reduce gender differences in the learning of Maths. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating Cross-Educational Approaches to Develop SDGs)

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20 pages, 17438 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Education for Sustainable Development in Primary Education Textbooks—An Educational Approach from Statistical and Probabilistic Literacy

by Claudia Vásquez, Israel García-Alonso, María José Seckel and Ángel Alsina

Sustainability 2021, 13(6), 3115; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063115 - 12 Mar 2021

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4443

Abstract

Based on the Stochastic Education Approach to Sustainability Education, the statistical and probability tasks for sustainability education in a collection of primary school mathematics textbooks in Chile (6–14 years old) were analyzed. A content analysis was carried out based on four categories: contexts for sustainability, levels of articulation, cognitive demand, and authenticity. The results show that: (1) there is a low presence of contexts for sustainability; (2) the tasks are not articulated to develop any of the Sustainable Development Goals; (3) there is a clear predominance of memorization tasks; (4) the teaching of statistics and probability in textbooks is not aligned with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). These results are the roadmap for a new educational approach that allows the design of statistical and probability tasks to educate for sustainability in Primary Education. This new approach should promote that, through the progressive development of statistical and probabilistic literacy, students understand the different problems (social, economic and environmental) that we are faced with, as well as the measures that must be adopted to transform and act for a more sustainable world. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Locating Cross-Educational Approaches to Develop SDGs)

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