IN-PERSON: Learning. Life. Work

Abstract

The United Nations announced the “2030 Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) in 2015 to guide the world to act together to face the world’s crises and move towards sustainable development. Taiwan is an island located in a high-risk area with frequent natural disasters. In the process of rapid development of the technology industry, it is also faced with problems such as energy consumption, environmental damage, and the widening gap between rich and poor resulting in social inequality. In order to make SDGs education take root, over the past years, the education authorities have actively encouraged schools to design relevant courses to guide students to discuss SDGs and try to take actions to solve problems. These 17 goals are 17 critical issues related to survival of all mankind, and each issue involves knowledge from different disciplines. Therefore, SDGs education is most suitable to be conducted in the form of interdisciplinary course. The interdisciplinary curriculum, on the one hand, allow students to understand problems from the perspectives of different disciplines, and on the other hand, allow students to practice integrating various knowledge and skills to solve problems. In recent years, interdisciplinary curriculum models often used in primary and secondary schools in Taiwan include project-based learning, “Design for Change”, STEM, etc., each with different learning effects. This article will focus on several SDGs course cases that won awards in instructional design competitions to analyze the learning effects brought about by the three curriculum models, and propose implications for interdisciplinary curriculum design.