Education for Sustainable Development Goals: learning objectives (2017), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) contains eight cross-cutting competencies that are “interrelated with each other, transversal, multifunctional, content-independent, and key for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)“. They include:
- Systems thinking: The ability to recognize and understand relationships; to analyse complex systems; to think of how systems are embedded within different domains and different scales; and to deal with uncertainty.
- Anticipatory: The ability to understand and evaluate multiple scenarios for the future – possible, probable and desirable; to create one’s own visions for the future; to apply the precautionary principle; to assess the consequences of actions; and to deal with risks and changes.
- Normative: The ability to understand and reflect on the norms and values that underlie one’s actions; and to negotiate sustainability values, principles, goals, and targets, in a context of conflicts of interests and trade-offs, uncertain knowledge and contradictions.
- Strategic: The ability to collectively develop and implement innovative actions that further sustainability at the local level and further afield.
- Collaboration: The ability to learn from others; to understand and respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others (empathy); to understand, relate to and be sensitive to others (empathic leadership); to deal with conflicts in a group; and to facilitate collaborative and participatory problem solving.
- Critical thinking: The ability to question norms, practices and opinions; to reflect on one’s own values, perceptions and actions; and to take a position in the sustainability discourse.
- Self-awareness: The ability to reflect on one’s own role in the local community and (global) society; to continually evaluate and further motivate one’s actions; and to deal with one’s feelings and desires.
- Integrated problem-solving: The overarching ability to apply different problem-solving frameworks to complex sustainability problems and develop viable, inclusive and equitable solution options that promote sustainable development, integrating the abovementioned competences.
Each SDG and associated cross-cutting competency has learning objectives described in the following domains:
- The cognitive domain comprises knowledge and thinking skills necessary to better understand the SDG and the challenges in achieving it.
- The socio-emotional domain includes social skills that enable learners to collaborate, negotiate and communicate to promote the SDGs as well as self-reflection skills, values, attitudes and motivations that enable learners to develop themselves.
- The behavioural domain describes action competencies.