Education for a sustainable development in an international perspective

Education is seen as the key factor on the road to greater sustainability. A German-Chinese team of researchers is developing environmental education modules and using these at selected Chinese primary schools.

What is needed to translate the idea of sustainable development into reality? Social stakeholders, people who are able and willing to act, are playing an important role in the examination of this question. Even in Chapter 36 of the “Agenda 21”, the development and environmental action programme adopted during the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, education was described as the key factor on the road to greater sustainability. The question of the basic conditions for establishing the skills and attitudes that are necessary for a sustainable development leads, amongst other things, to the significance of school as an educational institution or to the role of the stakeholders who are acting professionally there. 

Project objective

The objective of the Chinese-German research project “Environmental Education” is to establish sustainability-specific skills and attitudes in primary school pupils and teachers via the development of ten modules from the area of environmental education and the use of these modules at Chinese primary schools in selected provinces. Representatives of LFZ Shanghai and LFZ Zhejiang and qualified staff from 19 pilot primary schools in both regions and other selected schools from the regions of Yunnan, Xinjiang and Qinghai are involved in the development of the modules.

Project duration

With financial support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation, the Chair of Education/Primary and Pre-Primary Education at the University of Passau was charged with the scientific monitoring and evaluation of the module development. The project has been set up for a period of three years (2015 - 2017).