Education for Sustainable Development in Germany

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has a long history in Germany. Theoretical examination of ESD and its pilot implementation in the German education system began in the 1990s. In the decades before that, however, environmental education and development education were already playing an increasingly important role in educational research and practice. In Germany, ESD is understood as an emancipatory approach that aims to enable learners to contribute to sustainable development by developing sustainability competences and by facilitating changes in attitudes, values, paradigms and world views. After an initial pilot implementation of ESD, the UN Decade of ESD and the subsequent Global Action Programme on ESD have led to more extensive integration of ESD into the German education system. Whereas initially it was more a matter of individual projects in individual educational institutions, ESD now seems to be gradually becoming part of the structure of the German education system. An increasing number of federal states are adopting ESD as an overarching compulsory issue that must be addressed across all educational levels and sectors. However, there remain significant differences between the sectors and the German federal states, which this chapter also seeks to illustrate

Political science · Sustainable development · Sociology and Education Studies