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Project

(D)EESD - (Differential) Effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) plays a key role in achieving the European ambitions within the Green Deal and beyond. ESD aims to empower learners with the competences necessary to achieving a better future for all, contributing to solutions for social, economic and ecologic issues. Building on European references framework like the 'Lifelong Learning Competences' and the 'Green Competences', recent scholarly work has identified the concept of action competence as central to ESD. Action competence can, as such, be a foundation for citizens to tackle wicked problems that characterize sustainability. Consensus among academics and societal stakeholders is that ESD, and its key pedagogical principles (holism, pluralism and action orientation) have the potential to facilitate learners' development of action competence. Evidence is building to support such claims, but it remains unclear under which conditions ESD is effective for who. Building on results and data from existing research, the DEESD project will focus on the complex issue of differential educational effectiveness in ESD in terms of achieving action competence in learners at schools. Secondary analyses using large scale data sets, and within the ethical constraints of those data, will be performed to address the central question 'what works for who in ESD'? Guiding questions concern the relation between configurations of ESD's pedagogical principles on the one hand and configurations of students' action competence on the other. The results will contribute to identifying effective strategies for facilitating the development of action competence of diverse target groups within formal education, and tailor ESD to the needs of learners. These insights pave the way for contributing to Horizon Europe ambitions of addressing global challenges in the fields of climate, energy, mobility, food, natural resources, agriculture, environment, democracy and security.
Date:1 Dec 2021 →  30 Nov 2023
Keywords:EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Disciplines:Education curriculum not elsewhere classified, Secondary education