"Education as foundation for sustainable development

The Curriculum Framework for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) helps to im- plement the national strategy “from project to structure”. It is a contribution to the new UNESCO Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development following the UN ESD-decade and to the United Nation’s 2030-agenda with the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Its focus is on ensuring that – in times of rising global challenges – quality of school education becomes the foundation for sustainable development.

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Orientation at the fundamental principle of sustainable development

The learning area Global Development is a substantial part of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD); it supports the integration of ESD into school education. The overall orientation at the fundamental principle of sustainable development is based on a global consensus existing for more than 20 years. Following the principle of perspective change, as many different perspectives as possible are being included in the shaping of a sustainable future.

Unlike school subjects, the learning area Global Development is hardly based on empirically grounded concepts of reference sciences that have been differentiated over many years. Hence, it is mainly oriented at national and international resolutions on sustainable development and at a didactical concept of dimensions of development which is based on the principle of sustainable development that has been accepted and gradually extended by the community of states since the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development. On the background of different interests of actors and taking into account cultural diversity, the concept provides orientation for the analysis of decisions and processes on different levels as well as insight into their interconnectedness. It needs to be taken into account however that – unlike in politics – the central principle of sustainable development in education is not meant to be a primarily normative sustainability paradigm in terms of “guarding rails” and defined limits of planetary carrying capacity or even desirable patterns of behaviour but rather to provide orientation for analysis, evaluation and action in processes of learning."

-Abstract, Curriculum Framework - Education for Sustainable Development-