Policy Brief: Sustainable development and global citizenship in Latin American and the Caribbean educational systems; state of the art in measurement methods, and challenges for the learning of boys, girls and youngsters

What is the situation of Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship of children and adolescents in Latin America today? To this end, we analyzed the link between citizenship, the environment, and sustainable development. We briefly reviewed the literature on the characteristics of programs and policies that have shown positive effects in promoting education for citizenship and environmental care, and studied regional evidence regarding what is evaluated and what are the results of students in the region on these issues according to different national and international assessments. The document concludes that, although the countries of the region have incorporated some curricular guidelines allowing progress in the knowledge of some dimensions of ESD and GCED, the learning processes promoted in Latin America and the Caribbean have been isolated and insufficient. At the same time, it is observed that the GCED and the ESD are aspects that are scarcely assessed in the region, both at national and international levels. Although there is some information from key categories, such as conceptions of peace, tolerance, human rights, or knowledge of environmental sciences, there is no information allowing us to understand the complete attitudinal, cognitive and socio-emotional levels of students in the region on Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship.