Abstract:

This paper explores how information and communication technologies (ICT) can help reach the goals of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) set out by UNESCO in the Global Action Programme in the context of K12 education. The Global Action Programme aims to “reorient education and learning so that everyone has the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that empower them to contribute to sustainable development”(UNESCO, 2014). In primary and secondary education alone, there are estimated to be 1.29 billion students across the world (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2018), a huge number of students to be reached with ESD learning opportunities. To enable ESD, teachers’ skills also need to be improved to teach in this emerging area. There are around 31 million primary school teachers and 33 million secondary school teachers worldwide (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2015) – of these all 31 million primary teachers and a large proportion of secondary teachers would need ESD training. UNESCO member countries also recognize they need to bring 69 million new teachers into the profession(UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2016), who also need to be trained in this area. The huge challenge of meeting this goal by 2030 is apparent, and requires innovative strategies to even approach the objective. Information and communication technologies can help address this challenge, by enabling online professional development for teachers whether through online courses, communities of practice or joint learning projects. At the same time, ICT can support the development of learning activities for students that facilitate the development of sustainable development competences, attitudes and content-knowledge, while also affording innovative pedagogies such as peer-learning. This paper will discuss the opportunities and limitations for addressing both ESD teaching and learning at scale.

Keywords:

ICT, ESD, education, sustainability, teacher professional development, learning.