Abstract:

Since September 2015, when the General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that posed 17 sustainable development goals to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been seeking the ways to promote and improve the quality of science education which is directed to the acquirement of knowledge, skills and values for sustainability, and reorienting the school curricula towards sustainability, thereby raising the students’ awareness through a better understanding of the concept of Sustainable Development (SD) and education for sustainable development (ESD). Sustainable development literacy builds upon a progression of environmental and ecological literacies. The principal departure from these fields is the conception of the interrelationship between human and natural systems. The basic premise of sustainable development is that human and natural systems are dynamically interdependent and cannot be considered in isolation in order to resolve critical issues. The three interlinked areas are most commonly identified within sustainable development: society, environment, and economy, where political aspects are subsumed under the heading of society.

The reality in 2021, 5 years later, is still unsatisfactory in the context of the low level of secondary school students’ sustainability literacy. There have been quite many studies for assessing the high school students’ sustainability literacy but no such studies at the level of secondary school although United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the project SDGs set its target group at youth between the ages of 15 and 19. The project aimed at creating unprecedented experiential learning for massive numbers of young people and engaging them in sustainable development problem-solving.

The current research investigated the interrelationships between the secondary school teachers’ and their students’ perceptions of sustainability. The sample was formed of 22 teachers of different subjects of one secondary school and their 101 students. The questionnaires for both teachers and students were conducted to find out their perceptions, knowledge and behavioral attitudes of sustainable development. The preliminary results show that in spite of the fact that sustainability is considered as cross cutting topic at secondary school’s curriculum, only half of the teachers deals with the problems of sustainable development at their lessons and almost 90 % of the teachers considers the environment to be fundamental component of sustainability. The results reveal that only two students (0.02%) mentioned the social and economic aspects of sustainable development that leads to a conclusion of the crucial impact of teachers' perceptions on students’ level of sustainability literacy. The further analysis of the results of this research will give the more detailed overview of the teachers’ perceptions of sustainable development and influences on students’ knowledge, conceptual understanding and behavioral attitudes towards sustainable development and their sustainability literacy.

Keywords:

Sustainable development, sustainability literacy, secondary school students.