Designing an online platform for supporting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): to deliver knowledge, influence attitudes and enable actions for sustainable development in secondary school

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is recognized as a key foundation on which a sustainable future is built. This entails enabling acquisition of knowledge and skills, influencing values and attitudes, and aiding sustainable actions. In a two-year transnational research and development project, project partners have been engaged in designing and delivering an online learning platform (OLP) for supporting teachers applying ESD, in secondary schools.
This article discusses the design process and the challenges that arose with transforming identified research and policies to a suitable OLP for teachers to bring into their teaching, across diverse learning settings. Findings from the design process are based on observations from an initial Learning Design (LD) workshop with the involved project partners and a subsequent workshop with students interacting with the platform, together with project partner experiences on the overall design process and with teachers having applied the platform in their teaching. Discoveries from the development project unfolds challenges in designing an OLP for supporting ESD in schools, with a flexibility and sensitivity towards socio-cultural complexities and diverse learning contexts.