1. Introduction
During the last few decades there has been a technological evolution, which has forced us to adapt to new technologies. Consequently, content studied at high school level has been readjusted to the development of society and its needs. Thus, today, we can understand education as a constantly changing process (formal, non-formal, and informal). It is aimed, through knowledge, attitudes, and values, at promoting a global citizenship that generates a culture of solidarity committed to the fight against poverty and exclusion, as well as to the promotion of human and sustainable development [
1,
2].
In this sense, education for sustainable development (ESD) can be understood as a holistic and transformative education form, addressing content, the environment, and learning outcomes. Therefore, it not only integrates content in relation to climate change, poverty, and sustainable consumption into the curriculum, but also creates interactive, contextualized, and learner-centered teaching and learning contexts. It seeks a transformative and action-oriented pedagogy, and is characterized by aspects such as self-directed learning, participation, and collaboration, the development of reflective capacity, inter- and transdisciplinary problem orientation, and the creation of links between formal and informal learning. Only such pedagogical approaches can boost key competencies needed to foster sustainable development [
3].
This pedagogical approach has been gained relevance and prominence, and has been transferred to different areas and institutions in the belief that the education system cannot and should not be oblivious to the challenges posed by the climate emergency taking place on our planet. Schools and high schools must become a place of stewardship and care for our environment, to become the engines of a culture based on environmental sustainability, social cooperation, and developing programs for sustainable lifestyles, as well as promoting recycling and interactions with green spaces and the more-than-human world.
Consequently, the new Spanish National Organic Law 3/2020, of December 29 (LOMLOE) [
4], proposed to collect content for sustainable development and citizenship established by the 2030 Agenda. This Agenda includes, among other topics, education on ecological transition and local action to address the climate emergency and energy crisis, established in several of the Goals of Sustainable Development (SDGs). The new law, materialized in the curricula of the different autonomous communities, requires adapting to the new demands posed by social, economic, and environmental evolution, while it is essential to promote the achievement of education for sustainable development through the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda [
5].
Transforming educational plans has become a great challenge for politicians and teachers, with the aim of improving society as a whole and finding synergies between intellectual development and the re-humanization of education for personal and social services. Scientific literacy, in this aspect, has become a key international objective in order to face the current challenges of humanity [
6]. For that reason, today, educational projects including these concepts have considerably increased. These projects are based on achieving greater empowerment for the student, giving meaning to their education through involvement in the problems of society, while the student must be associated with the real world context; in this case, climate change [
7,
8].
In this way, the student acquires meaningful learning when he/she is involved in society’s problems and is made to participate in them. The changes introduced in the teaching-learning models allow students to develop the skills and competences that are part of their reality through the design, implementation, and evaluation of projects connected to their life and interests.
An example of these new projects is the e-WORLD innovation project, owned by the Repsol Zinkers Foundation and intended for secondary school students. This project works specifically on SDG 7, affordable and non-polluting energy, and SDG 13, climate action, with the aim of raising awareness of the need to globally reduce CO
2 emissions. This program is carried out by applying two active methodologies: project-based learning (PBL) and cooperative learning (CL) [
9]. It approaches the teaching-learning process as contextualized through a real problem in which the students have to become involved in the decision-making process to face the problem, which causes the project to intrinsically embrace SGD4: quality education.
From the
constructivist theories framework, Ausubel defines meaningful learning as active learning, produced by the relationship between previous knowledge, already acquired by the student, and new knowledge [
10]. This learning is enhanced through the development of active methodologies, such as project-based learning (PBL) and cooperative learning (CL). Both methodologies cause the student to become actively participative in the learning process, while the teacher acts as a guide in the process [
11,
12]. The PBL promotes student skills for problem solving: autonomous learning, critical attitude, communication, cooperation, and decision-making [
13]. It also develops creativity, autonomy, and motivation [
14]. In addition, at the beginning of the learning process, clear and challenging criteria and guidelines are established to increase their involvement, where the teacher is a facilitator of learning [
15].
CL is a methodology based on the organization of a classroom, where the students work in groups due to the skills and resources exchange among classmates [
16]. In addition, teamwork learning promotes interpersonal relationships and respect [
17]. Recent studies have shown that the use of active methodologies in the classroom not only favors meaningful learning, but also allows the development of personal, social, and professional skills, or even critical spirit [
18,
19,
20], which are necessary to develop the skills that are evaluated in the PISA report [
21]. Therefore, a study of the use of active methodologies and their evolution according to the changes in education takes on special importance to ensure meaningful learning and learning by competencies.
In recent years there has been growing interest in emotional intelligence and the teaching-learning process in relation to the skills developed by the students [
22]. Emotional intelligence has its origins in the Theory of Multiple Intelligences as described by Garner [
23], in which he defines eight types of independent intelligences. Two of them, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences, are defined as the ability to attend to other people and the ability to have a coherent image of oneself, respectively. In the mid-1990s, the term emotional intelligence was established, defined by Goleman as “the ability to recognize our own feelings and those of others, to motivate ourselves and manage emotionality in ourselves and in interpersonal relationships” [
24].
Results regarding science teaching have shown that emotional intelligence improves learning outcomes [
25,
26]. Mellado et al. [
27] focused on the study of the emotions of science teachers and students with the aim of designing intervention programs for the control and self-regulation of their learning through knowledge of their emotions. In a similar trend, another study on the evolution of the emotions of physics and chemistry students throughout the three Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) courses showed that positive emotions in relation to science decreased after each course [
28]. Along the same lines, the results obtained in [
29] showed that students expressed mainly negative emotions in relation to science content.
In addition to the effects on cognitive aspects, emotions are important because they act as predictors of behavior. Weiner’s attribution theory makes it possible to explain why students experience positive or negative emotions towards subjects based on their successes or failures [
30]. Those students that present academic failures in science subjects have felt negative emotions that cause rejection towards scientific learning. On the other hand, those who have achieved academic success have experienced positive emotions that generate attraction and motivation towards this same type of learning [
31]. In this way, the use of active methodologies could provoke positive emotions that cause student interest in science to last, while enhancing meaningful learning.
Emotional intelligence also allows learning by competences. Its development can improve social skills and interpersonal interaction in students, which could be included in emotional competence [
32]. This competence favors problem solving and prevents violent behavior among teenage students through emotions management [
33]. In addition, neurodidactics, understood as a discipline that studies the mechanisms that the brain uses to optimize the educational process, has made it possible to explain, for example, why active learning methodologies based on projects (PBL) and cooperative learning favor student learning by promoting their interests and motivations [
34], and by acquiring skills and competencies [
18].
For the reasons previously stated, it has been considered necessary to study emotions in projects based on the implementation of the SDGs in the curricular content of secondary school students. In this way, it could be known if the learning situations through active and innovative methodologies, associated to a real problem in the student environment, favors motivation and interest in experimental sciences, as well as increases meaningful learning.
5. Discussion
Objective 1 of the study aimed to analyze the different impact of the skills developed by working with the two active methodologies while learning; a very positive impact was observed in both of them. These results corroborate the improvement in science education through active methodologies already described by many authors in the last few decades [
41,
42]. When comparing the two methodologies carried out in this study, the differences observed were greater. In fact, working with the CL methodology allowed the highest development of personal/interpersonal and interdependence skills in students. Further, CL allowed students to mature in terms of their commitment to individual and group responsibility for the learning process. Furthermore, it gave students the skills to understand and respect each other, which allowed them to be comfortable with their classmates. This is especially important today, as classrooms are increasingly more culturally diverse [
43,
44]. In contrast, BPL skills were less developed than in CL, which could be interpreted as a necessity to enforce critical and communicative attitudes and decision-making capacity, as there are aspects that still have to be fully developed in students [
45].
In relation to Objective 2, which aimed to evaluate the impact of the methodologies of emotions in science students, a predominance of positive emotions was observed over negative emotions. The challenge faced by teachers regarding reducing negative student emotions of students in physics and chemistry subjects is being overcome [
27,
29,
46] and, as a consequence, students’ attitudes towards science have already improved [
47].
The majority of positive emotions indicated that the learning process was favored. This was especially found when using CL. For instance, González-Gómez et al. [
48] explained how the intervention of the CL methodology had improved the management of students’ fear, as well as moral emotions, promoting an improvement in learning. This methodology developed a strong motivational process of belonging to a group and the ability to self-manage help among colleagues [
17], which could explain the positive emotions such as happiness and satisfaction. A majority of students felt self-confident, capable of regulating their emotions and generating a positive experience of the project [
49]. These results were similar to those described by Aguilar et al. [
50], as they observed that chemistry students in the fourth year of science developed greater motivation in the classroom when designing a specific program for that subject using PBL and CL.
Although negative feelings were minor in terms of presence, it is important to discuss what kind of reasons can explain their appearance. Emotions of fear, boredom, or disgust were considered to deactivate the teaching-learning process [
51]. The lack of criticism and communication, more related to BPL skills, could reflected negative emotions expressed by students. These emotions are considered unpleasant but exciting, according to Dávila-Acedo et al. [
27], and they promote confusion, but, when they generate tension, they can be considered as activating emotions of the teaching-learning process [
51].
Related to the Objective 3 of the study, where we tried to estimate the relationship between emotions and active methodologies, the results showed that both methodologies influenced student emotions. In addition, students expressed a majority of positive emotions, such as happiness, satisfaction, or surprise, contrary to those generalized by students in science studies with traditional methodologies [
29]. Emotions mark the development of student skills within the learning methodology, with cooperative learning and positive emotions being the most predominant. Although the main expressed negative emotions, nervousness and embarrassment, may generate tension, together they can act as activating emotions in the teaching-learning process. These results indicate that it is necessary to continue working on the development of social skills in students, since they are fundamental for their professional future. In current work environments, a change in teammates is frequent, which must be faced with emotional regulation due to the association between work productivity and being emotionally competent [
32].
Focusing on Objective 4, related to learning about the environment and energy, the results showed the same trend that other previous researches had found in the literature, in which CL was applied to all school stages [
52] or when PBL was used to teach robotics in secondary school and improve STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) learning [
53]. Active methodologies can favor the capacity for meaningful learning through an increase in student motivation, thanks to encouraging positive emotions [
54] and the ability to learn [
18,
19].
Limitations and Future Research Lines
The limitation of this study was the sample size. However, it can be justified by the kind of research performed, based on an exploratory case study methodology. In the literature, we found many case studies with similar small sample sizes [
55,
56,
57]. For instance, Brownell et al. [
58] concluded that even small sample sizes are important, as the results could provide an indicator of potential directions for improving teaching and learning. Another work justifies case studies from sample sizes of six individuals as, in education, parameters expansion cannot be controlled from the beginning of the research [
59].
As future research, it is proposed to further the study of the interconnection between emotions and learning, in addition to seeing how other current methodologies, such as STEM projects and service learning, influence emotions and favor ESD. It is important to know whether the involvement of students in these methodologies produces changes in the life habits of adolescents towards more socio-sustainable habits. Following this idea, it is also important to avoid territorial risk of bias in the study. Thus, for future research and the distribution of the same or new questionnaires to other high schools, we should first analyze what kind of data may produce territorial bias risk, similarly to the study by Bellantuono et al. that presented a comparison between the university academic rankings affected by bias [
60]. A possible way to overcome bias could be by creating a more extensive questionnaire with information regarding contextualization of social and economic conditions to students [
61].