Actions for sustainable development through young students’ eyes

Abstract

Young students have raised their voices in debates on what action for sustainable development (SD) is necessary. Nevertheless, research that gives voice to 10 to 13-year-olds while looking into SD issues in all their complexity of interrelated environmental, social, and socio-economic perspectives, is scarce. This study aims to give voice to these youngsters, asking them directly how they suggest they can contribute to SD. Building on the concepts of action and SD, this qualitative study reports on early adolescents' own suggestions for action.Participants suggested direct, indirect, individual, and collective actions both in the private and public sphere. Their actions targeted SD issues with interconnections between areas concerning the planet, peace, people, partnership, and to some extent also prosperity. We compare our results with findings of earlier studies to further the discussion on how young people feel they can and want to contribute to SD.

Honing action competence in sustainable development: what happens in classrooms matters

“…The nine items that cover the sustainable development categories of environmental, social, and peace issues were drawn from early adolescents' own suggestions for feasible actions in a pre-study. (For a more detailed description, we refer to Sass, Quintelier et al, 2021 and…”

The environmental citizenship opinions questionnaire: a self-assessment tool for secondary students

“…Although further research is needed to check conceptual understanding of the target group, previous studies provide similar results. This was for instance shown by an overemphasis of the environmental or planet dimension of sustainability in student understanding of the concept (Walshe, 2008;Benninghaus et al, 2018;Sass et al, 2021b) or of underrepresentation of the economic dimension in student summaries of sustainability issues (Berglund and Gericke, 2018;Van Harskamp et al, 2022). It is furthermore known that science teachers have narrow views of sustainability.…”

Jeunes, Communication & Climat. Diversité des enjeux climatiques auprès des 15-24 ans en Belgique

“…Il peut aussi prendre des formes plus traditionnelles d'engagement dans les mouvements politiques de long terme (parti politique, syndicat, asbl…) ou contextuel (manifestation). En résumé, la plupart des jeunes ne sont pas moins engagés, ils s'engagent différemment que leurs aînés (Sass et al, 2021b).…”