Investigating education for sustainability in the primary schools of Szigetköz

Abstract

The global environmental challenges of our time are affecting our country, including the Szigetköz-Csallóköz region, with a range of climate change impacts, qualitative and quantitative problems related to fresh water, and changes in the Szigetköz and floodplain ecosystem (Guti 2020). A central question is how much the local population, the young generation now in school, perceive these problems, how much importance they attach to them and how their environmental awareness, knowledge and attitudes to sustainability can be improved. The Insula Magna - Complex Water Management and Sustainable Development Programme, which aims to prepare planning, information technology and monitoring developments related to water management and climate change impacts in the Szigetköz, provides an excellent opportunity to map the sustainability education activities of primary schools in the Szigetköz. The aim of the complex research we carried out was to investigate the environmental awareness of schoolchildren living and studying in the region, to analyse the pedagogical programmes of schools and to identify the sustainability pedagogical practices of the institutions and the emergent needs by means of written questionnaires to the headteachers. Based on the results, we conclude that all the institutions we studied have formulated their ideas on environmental and health awareness and sustainability education at a theoretical level, but that they are not yet implemented in practice and are not or only occasionally integrated into the curricular and extracurricular programmes in daily educational work. Based on the research results, our working group has prepared a package of developmental programmes that can contribute to the expansion of knowledge, the development and shaping of an environmentally and health-conscious attitude and the development of a sense of local identity in the Szigetköz. This draft programme is currently being examined, analysed and evaluated by experts and it is hoped that it will be positively assessed, and that we can start implementing the programme as soon as possible.