Welcome to our course “SDG 4.7 across curriculum and education spaces”. This course aims to provide a framework and roadmap for how education can help drive achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, a sweeping set of global goals agreed to by all United Nations member countries in 2015, with a deadline of being achieved by 2030.

Sustainable Development Goal 4 focuses on education, and challenges us to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. Within this broad goal, target 4.7 calls on us to “ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development”.

This course is focused specifically on helping education stakeholders, and especially teachers, better understand how you can help achieve target 4.7 for a sustainable future. We take the SDG 4.7 framework and its vision to see how educators from K-12 and beyond can operationalize it through curriculum design, lesson planning, community connection, and monitoring to incorporate the essence of SDG4.7 and ESD.

To build this course, we sought the insight and expertise of a multitude of important voices in our community, including teachers, youth activists, community educators, think tanks, researchers, school board members and others who are passionate about ESD and have been shaping the thinking around SDG 4.7. The most effective use of this course is to take essential ideas and core concepts and try to use the framework and tools the course offers for curriculum design, lesson planning, and advocacy.

Many of the ideas discussed here are transformative and help to flip our thinking about core competencies that children should expect to achieve by the end of their formal schooling experience. We especially focus on Climate Change Education, Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development with a keen eye towards preparing our children for a more sustainable and regenerative future. We hope this course gives you ideas and inspiration to make SDG 4.7 a reality in your classrooms and communities.