Abstract:

Higher economic growth causes higher energy consumption. As fossil fuel capacities are limited, human civilization is faced with the need to introduce sustainable patterns of production, consumption, and good energy management. For such endeavors, it is necessary to change the ways of thinking of energy consumers in the direction of sustainable development. These changes must be intertwined with education because it shapes individual and collective knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes. Education, in fact, is a catalyst for social change and is causally related to everyone. Therefore, in numerous international and national documents, which regulate the issue of energy consumption and production, special emphasis is placed on education and the search for ways to implement the contents of sustainable development in curricula. Thus, new subjects were either formed, or the existing contents, primarily from physics, chemistry, biology, geography, etc., were recombined in the light of sustainable development. In Serbia, in particular, there are both forms of introducing sustainable development in education. New subjects have been created covering topics related to water, air, sustainable land management, and waste management. However, issues of energy consumption, conversion, and production are largely retained within existing science subjects. Therefore, this paper aims to present ways of implementing these terms in teaching using project-based learning. This approach was considered the most appropriate because it includes knowledge from several subjects and combines them, answering the question related to energy as a global problem. The paper presents an example of a Stirling machine that shows the conversion of heat into mechanical and electrical energy. Through experimentation, students understood the relationship between energy input and output, i.e., they could directly see what affects energy losses and how they can improve the system. Learning from the mistakes they made during the experiment, which caused greater energy losses, is very important because it gives students a unique opportunity to see and discuss their work's consequences. With these procedures, students will pay more attention to the way they consume (electricity), which is most often obtained by processing fossil fuels. Raising student energy literacy, which can be understood as knowledge of the complexities of energy and energy use, will cause human responsible behavior based on sustainable development.

Keywords:

Energy literacy, sustainable development, project-based learning, Serbia, students.