COVID-19 and education for sustainable development role: an assessment of Latin American schools

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health crisis but also a crisis for all humanity. In early 2020 and the “Decade of Action” to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, humanity needed to change its ways of relating, communicating, consuming, and teaching to reduce the spread of COVID-19. However, this pandemic may mark a transformational period for all society around the world, if the right actions are taken, since behavioral changes have already been forced on humanity, a fundamental requirement for sustainable practical actions. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) allows students to be empowered to face present and future global challenges, creating more resilient and sustainable societies. This approach signals and emphasizes the transforming role of ESD increasingly in the current global context. The objective of this article is to present the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in schools’ ESD, as well as to which extent ESD may prepare resilient citizens to face a future global crisis. The methodology is classified as a descriptive and qualitative critical assessment based on UNESCO reports and government websites. Schools from the Latin America region are the scope of the study. The results show how this region is conducting the primary and secondary education process during the pandemic, how these methods are evaluated, highlighting how quality education, in addition to encouraging students to promote virus prevention, prepares future citizens for the promotion of a society committed to present and future generations. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.