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Sustainability Teaching Tools in the Digital Age
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Sustainability Teaching Tools in the Digital Age

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 9000

Special Issue Editor

Dr. María Napal

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Sciences, Universidad Pública de Navarra, 31006 Pamplona, Spain
Interests: ICT in education; science teaching; STEM education; inquiry-based learning; ecology; chiroptera; environmental education
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

You are invited to submit your papers to this Special Issue of “Sustainability Teaching Tools in the Digital Age”. Institutions and governments across the world are commited towards reaching the Millenium Goals and implementing the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development, and it is widely recognized that education has a role in building this sustainable future. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) seeks to endow learners with the “knowledge, skills, values and attitudes” that will empower them to become “sustainability change-makers” (UNESCO 2017, p. 7). In this sense, it is essential that all educational institutions and communities commit themselves to ESD, so that all students, from early childhood education to tertiary education, develop the competencies needed to take the path towards sustainability; that is, to close the gap between theory and action (Rychen and Salganik, 2003), developing competencies such as system and critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving competences and self-awareness, among others (Rieckmann, 2008).

Digital technologies and “technology-enhanced” learning, with an increasing presence in formal and informal education, have the potential to affect the development of these competencies, allowing for more flexible, innovative and student-driven teaching pedagogies and practices. However, there is a gap in the integration of these three dimensions, linked with a lack of reflection on how educational technology can contribute to promoting the acquisition of skills and values not just for a more competitive labor market in the 21st century, but for a sustainable future.

For this Special Issue, we invite papers that analyze the innovative and meaningful integration of digital technologies for providing sustainability education, and, in particular, for fostering sustainable competences, which empowers and entices learners for transformative change. We welcome systematic review, research and conceptual papers that delve into the link between sustainability challenges and ICT-mediated innovative educational approaches.

This Issue will focus on (but may not be limited to) the following:

  • Digital technologies for innovative teaching pedagogies and practices about sustainability education;
  • Learning about sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals across all disciplines of study through digital technologies;
  • Digital technologies for critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and strategic thinking towards sustainable futures.

Dr. María Napal
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • pedagogical integration of ICT
  • education for sustainable development
  • transformative education
  • citizen science
  • sustainable development goals
  • ICT and gender equity

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 1215 KiB  
Article
A Deep Transformative Dimension of ESD in Japanese University: From Experiential to Emancipatory Learning in Online and Offline Environments
by Hideki Maruyama
Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10732; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su141710732 - 29 Aug 2022
Viewed by 2653
Abstract
(1) Japanese universities have an important role in the sustainability of the students who are “oppressed” by social norms, while some of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) practices take a conventional approach. The purpose of this study is to take an educational [...] Read more.
(1) Japanese universities have an important role in the sustainability of the students who are “oppressed” by social norms, while some of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) practices take a conventional approach. The purpose of this study is to take an educational programme as a case study on sustainability of oneself, others, and nature at a university in Tokyo, to compare the programme before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to illustrate what elaboration is required for the future programme. (2) This study used literature on the ESD framework for deeper learning and the Japanese youth as well as descriptive data such as observation and reflection of the participants in the ESD practice. (3) The relationships are confirmed among experiential, social, and transformative learnings in the formal and informal settings. The dynamics in the education about, in, and for sustainability is shown with education theory. The study shows a deeper dimension of self-transformation of the students in the online and offline learning environments. (4) The study suggests that the ESD programme with participatory and transformative approaches as socialisation and subjectification can lead the emancipation from “business as usual” for the Japanese university students when they accept new perspectives through the process of self-discovery and dialogues with others. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Teaching Tools in the Digital Age)
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14 pages, 1894 KiB  
Article
Innovation of Teaching Tools during Robot Programming Learning to Promote Middle School Students’ Critical Thinking
by Hehai Liu, Jie Sheng and Li Zhao
Sustainability 2022, 14(11), 6625; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14116625 - 28 May 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2482
Abstract
In the digital age, robotics education has gained much attention for cultivating learners’ design thinking, creative thinking, critical thinking, and cooperative abilities. In particular, critical thinking as one of the key competencies in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) can stimulate imagination and creation. [...] Read more.
In the digital age, robotics education has gained much attention for cultivating learners’ design thinking, creative thinking, critical thinking, and cooperative abilities. In particular, critical thinking as one of the key competencies in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) can stimulate imagination and creation. It is of great value to explore critical thinking cultivation in robot programming learning. Therefore, this study applied different teaching tools to take the content of “making a manipulator through programming and construction” in a robotics course as an experimental context to examine the promotion of learners’ critical thinking. Before the experiment, a pre-test was conducted to measure students’ critical thinking ability. Then, all students were divided randomly into two groups: one as an experimental group with the teaching tool of Construction–Criticism–Migration (CCM) instructional design, and the other as a control group with the traditional teaching tool of demonstrate–practice instructional design. After a 6-week experiment, the measurement of critical thinking was applied as a post-test. SPSS was used to conduct an independent sample t test and one-way ANOVA to explore whether students’ critical thinking ability had improved and whether differences were found between the experimental group and the control group after the 6-week experiment. The results showed that the experimental group students’ critical thinking ability significantly improved, whereas no significant difference was found before and after the experiment for the control group. A significant difference existed between the two groups. This study provides an example of a new instructional design teaching tool for the teaching of robot programming and can provide valuable suggestions for instructors in middle schools. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Teaching Tools in the Digital Age)
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33 pages, 3651 KiB  
Article
Enhancing Transformative Learning and Innovation Skills Using Remote Learning for Sustainable Architecture Design
by Stanislav Avsec, Magdalena Jagiełło-Kowalczyk and Agnieszka Żabicka
Sustainability 2022, 14(7), 3928; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14073928 - 26 Mar 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3311
Abstract
The currently used educational technology with artificial-intelligence-powered solutions, although rather instrumental, may lead to discontinuity in learning, as it lacks social and emotional value, which is an essential part of education for sustainable development and results in an immersive experience through which higher-order [...] Read more.
The currently used educational technology with artificial-intelligence-powered solutions, although rather instrumental, may lead to discontinuity in learning, as it lacks social and emotional value, which is an essential part of education for sustainable development and results in an immersive experience through which higher-order thinking skills can be adopted. This paper aims to explore transformative learning (TL) and innovation skill improvement accommodated by transactional distance theory in a 16-week remote sustainable architecture design course. The analysis identified the following: (a) significant progress in students’ attitudes toward uncertainty and criticality while social support differs due to the influence of classmates, faculty staff, teamwork, writing and reading assignments, promoters from industry and extracurricular activities; (b) significant progress in TL achievement while innovation skill development differs significantly across the groups in which online collaborative learning was found as an influencer in creativity and motivation; (c) self-efficacy influenced by feedback in and on actions, such as essay and other writing assignments, verbal persuasions and positive social comparisons; (d) lack of development of situational awareness, continuity of learning and interactions/situations to empower teammates in handling conflicts to develop leadership ability; (e) decrease in risk-taking ability, especially in a group of students in which social support was limited due to the absence of challenging situations and tasks. The results support the use of remote intervention directed at prosocial motivations and action-focused group goals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Teaching Tools in the Digital Age)
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