Welcome to the web page of the project “Formal Education in Service of Sustainable Development (forOR)”.
forOR is a scientific research project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (project number: 2031).
Main focus of the project
Over the past three decades, the idea of “sustainability” has undergone a sort of evolutionary path of importance in the context of educational policies and practices at the international, national and institutional level, as evidenced by the ever-increasing number of declarations, acts, recommendations and strategic documents that regulate and describe the (desirable) direction of development of the formal education. In parallel, the construct of sustainable citizenship has been gradually replacing the well-known constructs of ecological, environmental and socially responsible and active citizenship.
According to the UNESCO Guidelines (2015, 2017), the sustainability citizens ponder the influence of their own behavior regarding the ecological, social, political and economic aspects of the world. There is a consensus among experts in the field that sustainability citizens must possess certain competencies that enable them to constructively and responsibly act in today’s world. Those include cognitive, affective, volitional and motivational elements, and can be seen as the interplay of knowledge, abilities, skills, motives, and affective dispositions. Sustainability competencies represent what a sustainability citizen needs to constructively and successfully deal with the complex challenges of today: the critical thinking skills and the knowledge needed for a better understanding of sustainable development goals and challenges in achieving them (cognitive domain), social skills that enable cooperation, negotiation and communication for the purpose of promoting sustainable development goals, self-reflection abilities, values, attitudes and motivation for sustainable development (socio-emotional domain), and the ability to act accordingly (behavioral domain).
Despite the fact that over the last 15 years education for sustainability has to a significant extent found its place within formal education, studies point to its serious limitations – it wields positive influence on students’ knowledge (cognitive domain), but not on their attitudes and behavior (socio-emotional and (behavioral domain).
Main objective
The fundamental research question which is the starting point of this project is: To what extent does the formal education system in Croatia contribute to the development of sustainability citizens and what kind of a vision of education for sustainable development is forecast in 2030?
The following two main project objectives are established based on the underlying research question:
- To identify the determinants, dominant characteristics and representation of sustainability citizenship in Croatian formal education
- To explore the willingness/readiness of (future) secondary school teachers to implement sustainable development in formal education and develop typology according to the factor of innovation/willingness for introducing change
Based on the obtained results of empirical research, we will anticipate and develop the expected scenario for Education for Sustainable Development in the Republic of Croatia 2030.
In order to achieve the foreseen objective of the research, a multi-methodological approach will be used, including theoretical analysis and several empirical studies to cover all levels of formal education in Croatia, including formal adult education. Empirical research will include collecting data on the representation and the determinants of sustainability citizenship among the following four populations: (I) secondary school students, (II) secondary school teachers, (III) student teachers (future secondary school teachers), and (IV) teachers in formal adult education.