Engaging youth in sustainable development: learning and teaching sustainable developments in lower secondary schools

Abstract

The examples of practice presented in this book focus on students aged 10 to 15, which, depending on the national school system, includes the upper level of primary school, as well as the lower and partly the upper secondary school levels. This age group spans many developmental stages. Currently, most ESD publications are geared toward children in primary schools or toward students at the higher secondary and tertiary levels of education, who have almost reached adulthood. Beginning to concentrate more on the pre-adolescent students is about more than just adapting and implementing learning material to the potential of students from that age group. It also involves reflecting on the role that youth of this age group play in our present-day society. Are they taken seriously? What kinds of actions can they take? Whom do they trust? Do they have the capacity and ability to ask for considerable goals and to understand and make clear to others the necessity to act?