Redefining Our Role: Educators as Advocates for Sustainable Development

“All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.” - Zoe Weil, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life.

Over the past two years, we have both trained as Advocates for the Global Schools Program. The Global Schools Program is an initiative led by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The goal of the Global Schools program is to “equip teachers with training, a toolkit, and resources to transform pedagogy and promote sustainable development literacy in classrooms” (Global Schools). The Advocates training program is a six-month Kindergarten to Grade 12 teacher training program. According to Kendra-Lee Heney, a member of the Global Schools Program education team:

“By equipping teachers with the resources to facilitate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), we are creating a generation of global leaders who are informed, inspired, and ready to act to combat the grave challenges we are facing in the 21st century. Through our Global Schools Advocates program, we have reached over 300,000  K-12 students globally. These students have already developed innovative solutions to pressing environmental and social issues within their local communities. We know their global reach will be monumental.”

The program's training, discussions, and experiences have made us think about our role as educators in a different light. Although we have often embedded the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into our teaching, shifting our perspective has changed the way we integrate them in day-to-day learning experiences. 

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that ESD “empowers people with the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and behaviors to live in a way that is good for the environment, economy, and society. It encourages people to make smart, responsible choices that help create a better future for everyone” (Education for Sustainable, n.d.). When we read this, we thought to ourselves, this could and should be every teacher’s job description. Our most important role is not to prepare students for external or standardized tests; it’s about helping students develop into good humans. Humans who care. Humans who think critically. Humans who take actions, small and big, in their lives to better our world. 

There are three learning domains addressed in the ESD goals. They are:

• Cognitive domain: Knowledge and thinking skills necessary to better understand the SDGs and the challenges in achieving them.
• Socio-emotional domain: Skills that enable learners to express emotions, develop motivation, communicate clearly, and promote the SDGs.
• Behavioral domain: Skills needed to change behaviour and take action.

Before our term as advocates, Nickie had found that she often focused on the cognitive domain in her classroom. She designed learning experiences to help students understand a problem, identify the obstacles to solving it, and connect these concepts to scientific principles. This often led to a “doom and gloom” mentality of our planet, as it focused only on the problem, not how humans worldwide have made changes for the better. 

A 2021 study revealed that 84% of young people aged 16-25, representing 10 countries, were somewhat worried about climate change (Tosin). Approximately 50% of them had experienced emotions that can be classified as eco-stress or climate-stress (Tosin). As we have previously written in an article for TIE, many students feel that concerns about climate change are negatively impacting their mental health (Browne et al., 2024). We wondered how a focus on the cognitive domain in educational practices was contributing to eco-anxiety.

We want to be part of the solution, not create new problems. Could we shift our teaching practices to empower students to become changemakers? How could we help students understand that they are the ones who can and will change the future?

Moving towards solutionary thinking:

We realized that carefully adapting our lessons could help students develop agency and start to see themselves as agents of change, problem solvers, and individuals who can make a difference. We began to shift towards a solutionary approach as outlined by Zoe Weil and the Institute for Humane Education (see graphic below). This approach focuses on the behavioural domain, equipping students with the skills they need to become changemakers, rather than simply understanding the reasons for the problems. It is action-oriented. When students are equipped with these skills, they can and will make a difference. 

Solutionary Framework. (Photo source: Institute for Humane Education)

One way we shifted our focus was by organizing a Solutionary Summit at our school. We were inspired by the work of Kathryn Berkman and her team at Munich International School, who had hosted a Solutionary Summit the prior year. According to Kathryn, holding this type of event leads to long-term positive effects. She shared:

“In addition to benefiting all the students attending the Solutionary Summit and strengthening the youth network of Changemakers, each school that hosts a summit of this sort grows capacity within the community to include youth in real-life problem solving. I'm honored to be part of a growing movement of educators to empower compassionate humans with the experience, skills, and disposition to address the challenges across generations.”

At our full-day Summit, International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IB MYP) students in Grades 6-10 attended panels and workshops focused on the UN SDGs. We wanted to amplify student voice and student leadership at our Summit, so all of the panel discussions and workshops were student-led. Over 50 students from our community stepped up to be panelists and facilitate workshops, sharing their learning for a better future. These students were provided with additional training and resources to help them develop their leadership and facilitation skills during our advisory program.

To prepare for our school’s Solutionary Summit, students engaged in teacher-led immersive elective classes beforehand. These classes were composed of mixed Middle Years Programme (MYP) from grade levels 6 to 10, ran for five weeks, and lasted a total of approximately 11 hours. Each immersion was themed around an SDG goal. Nickie led an immersion titled “Fashion for the Future (SDG 12),” and Megan led one titled “The Power of Plants (SDG 15).” Some of the other immersions offered were titled “Edible Insects (SDG 2),” “Language Equity (SDG 4),” and “Trash Talk (SDG 11).”

To give you an idea of the experiences in the immersions, Nickie’s focused on the lesser-known impacts of the fashion industry. Students spent the first week understanding and learning about the social, ethical, and environmental impacts of the fashion industry through an interactive game, watching videos, and reading various levelled articles on the topic. Learners spent the remaining weeks looking at ways they could minimize the negative impact and take action. They worked on various projects, including an advertising campaign to help raise awareness in the community (see one of their posters below) as well as learning techniques to repair and upcycle clothing, including how to embroider, basic sewing techniques, no-sew techniques, and appliqué. A group also organized a clothing collection to generate items to upcycle, and the unused items were donated to local organizations (avoiding a trip to the landfill). 

Fast fashion posters created by Nickie’s students using Canva. (Photo source: Nickie Hansen)

In Megan’s plant-focused immersion, students studied traditional medicinal uses of plants in Laos, connecting to their local community. They learned about different plant properties, the importance of preserving biodiversity, and how herbal medicine can be used alongside modern medicine to promote health and well-being. Students in this immersion planted a healing herbs garden on campus featuring immunity-boosting plants like turmeric, garlic, onion, moringa, ginger, and morning glory. They also participated in a herbal tea tasting and explored current research about medicinal plants with the Deputy Head of the Department of Traditional Medicine from Lao National University. 

(From left to right) Moringa plants growing in the school garden, planted by Megan’s students and multilingual plant matching game cards designed on Canva by Megan’s students for the Summit workshop ((Photo credit: Megan Vosk and Vientiane International School).

The Solutionary Summit: Changing student thinking

We conducted a pre- and post-survey with students before and after the SDG immersions and the Solutionary Summit to gauge their knowledge of the SDGs and gather their thoughts on what it means to be a solutionary. The pre-survey was administered on March 19, 2025, and the post-survey was administered on May 7, 2025. Eighty-three students took the pre-survey, and 99 students took the post-survey. 

One of the questions from the post-survey asked students to reflect on what they had learned in their immersion. Their comments showed a deepening understanding of systemic and solutionary thinking. Here are a few:

• “Small actions can lead to big changes.”
• “If we can't learn to be vulnerable with a small group of people and have hard conversations, we can't have them outside either.”
• “There are many more ways to achieve sustainable goals for our world than I thought.”
• “The most important things I learned in my immersion were to help the world, even if it’s a small thing, do not do things that will make things worse for the world, and try not to use single-use stuff.”
• “I learned how education is dependent on the amount of money each country has. There are more countries in poverty than countries that are not in poverty. We need to help developing countries develop.”

Some of the student Likert scale responses from the pre- and post-surveys have been compiled and presented for comparison below: 

• “Being a solutionary means having a positive mindset and taking action to try and solve global problems.” 
• “A solutionary is someone who advocates for revolutionary change.” 
• “Thinking like a solutionary can help us solve global problems by looking at issues from different perspectives and thinking about how different sustainable solutions can solve different problems.”
• “By thinking like a solutionary, we won't be blocked by our fears. We will be able to overcome issues and come up with solutions. Everyone has unique thoughts and different ways of thinking. We all need each other, and we need to work together to be solutionary as a whole. We can solve big problems little by little.”
• “Thinking about solutions instead of only problems helps us feel more hopeful about our future.”

After we looked at the post-survey data, we observed some noteworthy shifts in student thinking. Student knowledge of the SDGs has increased based on their immersion experiences and the Summit day. In addition, students’ understanding of the SDGs' importance has also increased. Perhaps, more importantly, a significant number of students have shifted their thinking and now consider themselves solutionary thinkers who can take action for a better future. 

Conclusion:

When thinking about sustainable development and the future of our planet, many students feel powerless because the scope of the problems is so daunting (Hickman et al., 2021). Understanding the problems and the associated emotions is grounded in the cognitive and socio-emotional domains of ESD. However, students do not have to feel this way if given opportunities to engage in change-making behaviours. Students in secondary schools can be taught that they have agency and that they can undertake tangible initiatives (such as gardening, upcycling old clothes, and leading workshops) that are solutions-focused to make a difference. This shift towards focusing on the skills needed in the behavioural domain of ESD gives students small-scale opportunities to make a positive impact at the local level. This is a powerful way to foster hope and positivity about the future.  

We hope other teachers will be inspired by the work of Munich International School and our school, and plan to host summits at their schools next year! Together, we can create positive change in our communities, empowering students. They will, after all, define the future of our planet for generations to come. We would be happy to share our ideas, resources, and plans with you. 

Here are a few resources that may be helpful if you would like to try something similar at your school. 

• Link to pre-survey
• Workshop planning document to guide students through the workshop creation process.
• The panel questions that we asked our volunteer student panelists.
• A list of student-designed and led workshops student leaders offered at our Summit.
• Summit Day schedule to see how we allocated our time.
• A bingo card that we gave students to complete to keep them engaged during the day.
• Link to post-survey 

Want to empower yourself to learn more?

• To find out more about solutionary education, consider taking IHE's Solutionary Micro-credential Course.
• To learn more about becoming a Global Schools Advocate, click here. 

References

Education for sustainable development. (n.d.). UNESCO.org. Retrieved May 16, 2025, from https://www.unesco.org/en/sustainable-development/education

Browne, P., Hansen, N., Milton, J., & Vosk, M. (2024, August 14). Seeds of Change: Pursuing a Meaningful, Authentic Learning Experience. The International Educator. Retrieved May 16, 2025, from https://www.tieonline.com/article/3809/seeds-of-change-pursuing-a-meaningful-authentic-learning-experience

Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., & Clayton, S. (2021, January). Young People's Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon. SSRN Electronic Journal. Retrieved May 16, 2025, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354470198_Young_People%27s_Voices_on_Climate_Anxiety_Government_Betrayal_and_Moral_Injury_A_Global_Phenomenon

Thompson, T. (2021, September 22). Young people's climate anxiety revealed in landmark survey. Nature.com. Retrieved May 16, 2025, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02582-8#ref-CR1