Education for Sustainable Development: A Cross-Community Knowledge Building Approach

This study investigates Cross-community Knowledge Building (CKBS) as an approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that empowers diverse communities of learners to take collective responsibility for advancing sustainable development goals (SDGs) through Knowledge Building.A Grade 1 class in Toronto, Canada and a Grade 9 class in Tarragona, Spain engaged in collaboration on sustainability challenges over four months.Using natural language processing, semantic network analysis, and temporal analysis of student contributions on Knowledge Forum, we examined cross-age and cross-community collaboration patterns that emerged during one phase of their sustainability inquiry.We found that Grade 1 students introduced foundational concepts grounded in their lived experiences while Grade 9 students expanded and deepened these ideas with more sophisticated concepts.However, the collaboration also surfaced challenges related to asymmetric participation and technological constraints for the younger learners.This study demonstrates the potential of CKBS as a model for Sustainability Education. Theoretical frameworkCross-community Knowledge Building for Sustainability (CKBS) draws its theoretical foundation from Scardamalia and Bereiter's (2006) work on Knowledge Building and Wals' (2007) work on Social Learning.Sustainability is considered a wicked problem as it is inherently complex, interconnected, value-ridden, and uncertain (Craps, 2020).Sustainability challenges are not merely technical or scientific; they are intricately intertwined with values, world views, justice, and human relationships with each other and the natural world (Misiaszek, 2017).Wals and colleagues (2009) maintained that transferring expert knowledge to learners and linear problem-solving is inadequate in tackling the wicked problem of sustainability challenges.Wals and van der Leij (2007, p. 18) proposed Social learning as an approach to sustainability education, which they referred to as "learning that takes place when divergent interests, norms, values, and constructions of reality meet in an environment that is conducive to learning."Social learning is rooted in dynamic and complex physical and social