Implementing Education for Sustainable Development at High Schools: Lessons Learned from a Case of Teaching about Halogen-Containing Pesticides in Vietnam

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Initiatives and case studies have been reported to mainstream ESD in curriculum and textbooks, including ESD-integrated chemistry lessons. In Vietnam, although ESD has recently received much attention, the integration of ESD in teaching chemistry is still rare. This paper reports a participatory action research study, which developed and examined an ESD-integrated chemistry lesson on "Halogen derivatives" through the issue of fruit loaded with halogen-containing pesticides in Vietnam. The lesson was designed on Sjöström's tetrahedron of chemistry education to achieve both the outcomes of Vietnamese general education and ESD learning objectives suggested by UNESCO. After the teaching intervention was applied to 83 students (11th grade) in a high school in Vietnam, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through questionnaires (including Likert-scale items and open-ended questions) and interviews. Prepost comparison was used to analyze data about changes in students' understanding of SD. Data from Likert-scale items were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while other qualitative data were subjected to qualitative content analysis. Results showed that the students enhanced their perception of sustainable development concepts, engaged in making informed decisions, and perceived the lesson's relevance regarding individual, societal, and vocational dimensions. Notably, the data revealed that the pressure from school exams and traditional assessments might limit Vietnamese students' willingness to approach ESD-integrated lessons. The results suggested that initiatives integrating ESD into assessments and teacher education, should be implemented to facilitate the mainstreaming of ESD in Vietnam.