The aim of the roundtable is to think about reform of education through the SDGs from a practical perspective and to discuss what research in the field of ESD and its counterparts can offer to this agenda.

Sustainability or sustainable development has long been associated with Education for Sustainable Development (a somewhat contested term), which is seen as a significant means by which sustainable development in terms of the Brundtland Commission might be achieved. 

Building on the presentations in the symposium (Environmental and Sustainability Education Research in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals: global policy initiatives, the logic of  global policy implementation and national policy impacts), the roundtable will explore the relationship between ESD (and its counterparts) and the SDGs; and will discuss how the SDGs might be used practically in schools, universities and elsewhere, such as by external environmental education providers, to both develop curricula and monitor outcomes of programmes of learning that address aspects of these goals.

As Bill Scott blogs, ‘It is widely agreed that [the SDGs] have the potential for focusing attention on ways to address, and perhaps even resolve some of the huge range of problems the world faces today.  In particular, the breadth of the issues covered by the Goals has the power to be bring teachers, students, leaders and external activists together.’  These goals are already being addressed by many research and teaching programmes in universities around the world.  Schools are also working with them to guide their curriculum development; for example, at  the Torriano Primary School in London where a whole year was given over to learning about the SDGs.  This approach and others like it are addressing what some see as a significant need to reform education.  The potential for educational reform on the back of this agenda presents an opening where the knowledge developed through research within the field of ESE can be of great service.  There is an opportunity for the reform of education based on the SDG Agenda to be informed by the rich and diverse body of literature and research; and this roundtable seeks to discover ways in which this might be realized. 

Taking Bill Scott’s background paper (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/edswahs/2016/11/23/the-sdgs-as-a-radical-curriculum-alternative/) on the SDGs as a radical curriculum alternative as a starting point, the roundtable will begin with short inputs from Marco Rieckmann (University of Vechta, Germany) on his work on ESD and the SDGs for the UNESCO (2017, in press), from Elsa Lee (The University of Cambridge, UK) and Nicola Walshe (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK) on the potential of the SDGs to act as a framework for evaluating the work of an arts-based environmental education charity and from Victoria W. Thoresen (Hedmark University of Applied Science,  Norway) on the SDGs as a tool for learning about change and cooperation. There will then follow an extended discussion drawing on the experiences, suggestions and critical inputs of those present.  

The aim of these discussions about the potentials and practical implications of using the SDGs in both formal and informal learning settings is to stimulate thinking and practice amongst this audience of educational researchers and practitioners.  We seek to understand how our experience within the field of ESE might inform the reform of education that is needed to complete that journey on ‘The road to dignity by 2030: ending poverty, transforming all lives and protecting the planet’ (UN, 2014).

The discussant will make links between the points raised in the roundtable and the outcomes of the aforementioned symposium, reflecting on how the SDGs influence educational reform agendas, including the roles of policy and educational research. 

United Nations (2014) The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet. Synthesis Report of the Secretary-General On the Post-2015 Agenda UNESCO (ed., 2017, in press): Guidance framework “Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)”. Paris