Positive psychology in education for sustainable development at a primary-education institution

Abstract

The present global environmental crisis is demanding serious rather than superficial changes within the cultural assumptions of human-to-human and human-to-nature relationships. In this sense, education is one of the strongest tools to model our future and a key factor of cultural change. One of the principal aims of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is to develop cognitive and affective skills that affect people's values, such as empathy and critical thinking. Together with compromise and responsibility towards a group, it is possible to build new values and ways to interact with both people and the environment. In the present study we used positive psychology principles in creating teaching interventions to empower empathy and critical thinking through an ESD programme at a Chilean primary school. The results show that an intervention of this kind helps to harmoniously build reflective thinking and empathy within students. This enables them to achieve important changes in their disposition to make sound personal and environmental decisions, and prepares them to positively meet imposing present and future challenges.

Keywords:

• sustainable development
• education for sustainable development
• positive psychology
• critical thinking
• empathy

Notes

1 In Chile, especially in rural provinces such as San Esteban, Education for Sustainable Development is an emerging concept in public schools. For this reason together with the school curricula manager, we agreed that the programme would be named with the familiar title of “The Environmental Education Programme”.