Education for sustainable development in mathematics classrooms

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is integrated as a requirement in the school curricula of many countries and subjects. In Germany, the orientation framework for global development with its three domains—recognizing, assessing and acting—provides a framework for the skills to be acquired in subject lessons. This article presents an initial empirical review of the ESD skills that can be reconstructed in mathematics lessons. The ESD skills demonstrated by the 116 participating students, divided into 34 small groups, were examined in relation to six different reality-based tasks with an ESD context using qualitative content analysis. The results show that the skills demonstrated in mathematics lessons can be captured by the three domains, and that recognizing plays a fundamental role. Furthermore, the importance of some ESD sub-skills with respect to mathematics tasks becomes clear. The results provide empirical evidence that mathematics lessons are a suitable place to promote ESD skills.