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What prompts young people to take positive action to promote sustainable development?
A major change in education is the shift towards sustainable development. The United Nations has declared 2005-2014 as the decade for integrating sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning. Ellen Almers, at the School of Education and Communication, Joenkoeping, Sweden, based her thesis on her investigation into what prompts young people to take positive action to promote sustainable development.
Investigating why a small group of Swedes in their mid-twenties devoted much of their time and energy into making the world a better place for themselves and for others, including future generations, Ellen Almers identified a series of motivating factors - social as well as emotional.
She also discovered that their knowledge of action strategies generally stemmed from experience acquired outside the classroom, in informal and semi-formal settings. Ellen Almers believes schools have a potentially significant role to play in encouraging more young people to take action for sustainable development.
'Education could be a useful facilitator, enabling more young people to dare and want to take the first step towards engagement in groups and organisations,' says Ellen Almers.
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