Education for Sustainable Development in Primary Education Textbooks—An Educational Approach from Statistical and Probabilistic Literacy

• Main Authors: Claudia Vásquez, Israel García-Alonso, María José Seckel, Ángel Alsina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: Education for Sustainable Development; Sustainable Development Goals; statistical and probability literacy; stochastic education; mathematics textbooks; instructional approaches
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6/3115

Based on the Stochastic Education Approach to Sustainability Education, the statistical and probability tasks for sustainability education in a collection of primary school mathematics textbooks in Chile (6–14 years old) were analyzed. A content analysis was carried out based on four categories: contexts for sustainability, levels of articulation, cognitive demand, and authenticity. The results show that: (1) there is a low presence of contexts for sustainability; (2) the tasks are not articulated to develop any of the Sustainable Development Goals; (3) there is a clear predominance of memorization tasks; (4) the teaching of statistics and probability in textbooks is not aligned with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). These results are the roadmap for a new educational approach that allows the design of statistical and probability tasks to educate for sustainability in Primary Education. This new approach should promote that, through the progressive development of statistical and probabilistic literacy, students understand the different problems (social, economic and environmental) that we are faced with, as well as the measures that must be adopted to transform and act for a more sustainable world.