Education for Sustainable Development: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities

Dear Colleagues,

Education institutions (EIs) play a key role in promoting the awareness of progress towards sustainable development (SD). As they rear and train eventually committed future professionals, both secondary schools (SSs) and higher education institutions (HEIs) make valuable contributions to the achievement of a fairer and more sustainable society—hence the need for acquiring transversal competencies in the realm of sustainability. At present, HEIs should focus their efforts on what has come to be termed the "third university mission," i.e., service to society, as they may become drivers of efforts to promote a shift in perspective in both students and graduates toward a more sustainable and safer world. New teaching approaches, such as service learning, have proven useful in engaging students in community-benefit-focused advances, especially concerning damage prevention and provisions. The successful attainment of these competencies directly relates to attitudes, expectations, readiness, and behavioural engagement. In addition to transmitting knowledge, therefore, EIs must promote learning foundations under a holistic perspective that can address the complexity of behaviours and decisions that SD demands; these should promote both a shift in perspective and training for future responsibilities, encouraging the progress of the self and of all humankind. Such a commitment involves rethinking policies, instruction strategies, and the tailoring of outcomes to ensure training in democratic values, equal opportunities, person-centred principles, and transversal competencies, emphasizing the ethical dimension of education in alignment with the common good. Given these requirements, SD is an ongoing challenge for humankind in general, as well as for institutions and policymakers in particular.

The current job market is fickle, as it is currently undergoing rapid changes and witnessing the emergence of new professional and scientific areas. These include geographical and political situations, as well as the social context and the activity sector of the societal environment where each institution is located. Given this backdrop, the mission of HEIs risks becoming unclear and challenging. Likewise, education is undergoing continuous changes, which are greatly accelerated by digital transformation and the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). With regard to AI, its advent in academia has contributed to the increase in uncertainty, given the consequences of its sudden appearance into areas of instruction, research, and our lives. It is an indisputable fact, verified by various international reports, that artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) has come to constitute a rapidly developing field within educational technology. Studies informing educators about the affordances of AI are therefore essential because students already use such technology, which has begun to change traditional practices and teaching–learning approaches. As a result, new challenges and opportunities are needed concerning the role of AI as is related to tackling SD competencies, with AI being intended to shed light on SD issues rather than contribute to solutions directly.

This Special Issue focuses on the SD features that are attainable from educational actions, building specifically on both outcomes and competencies. We encourage potential authors to submit original quality research articles and reviews that concern (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• Concern regarding the link between university rankings and sustainability objectives;
• Insight into strategic areas to address from an EI standpoint, as relates to the search for a better sustainable society;
• Reflections on the role of the development of competencies for SD and the learning methodologies associated with them;
• The rationale behind university rankings and the accreditation processes concerning SDGs;
• Key ideas for future pathways toward SD competencies and their incorporation into EI curricula;
• Opportunities stemming from AI features toward a better sustainable and peaceful world, a fairer society, and a promising future;
• Addressing socio-civic competence gaps in future professionals from a holistic perspective, including the concept of the circular economy as a pathway to achieve SDGs;
• Managing the role of AI tools in addressing SD challenges.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Juan Carlos Mosquera Feijoo
Dr. Marcos García Alberti
Prof. Dr. Fernando Suárez Guerra
Guest Editors

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.