Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): Pedagogical Approaches that Make a Difference

  • Kausar Hussain
  • Nazia Aman
  • Nahida Noor
  • Zafar Wali Shah

Abstract

A developing trend and problem in the global community at large, and in the field of education specifically, is education for sustainable development. The three components of ESD are environmental, social, and economic. A tool for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is education for sustainable development, or ESD. It has the power to bring about the social change required for the nation to become sustainable. Promoting and putting into practice sustainable development principles can be done in large part through education. Furthermore, education can help people become more resilient to development and environmental challenges and pave the way for a sustainable future. ESD is a multidisciplinary idea that examines development from the perspectives of the social, economic, and environmental spheres. Therefore, it is crucial that educators employ powerful pedagogical strategies that will aid in advancing the idea of sustainability in education. In order to investigate the most efficient tactics and approaches for teaching ESD in an educational setting, this study examined a variety of earlier publications. The analysis of several studies from journals, research papers, and textbooks has led to the conclusion that a paradigm change— from transmissive to transformative learning—is required. This type of learning requires transformative pedagogies. It is only via such educational techniques that the development of the essential competences required to advance sustainable development can be achieved. Additionally, it is shown that some of the most successful pedagogical strategies for fostering and maintaining ESD in the field of education include lifelong learning, social learning, problem-based learning, active and experiential learning, critical pedagogy, dialogue education, transformative or transformational learning, and constructivist approaches. To sum up, in order to accomplish the goal of ESD, instructors must be equipped with the appropriate pedagogies.

Published
2024-01-22