Tracing the development of primary students’ expressed sustainability conceptions through SDG-based classroom action research

As global educational systems grapple with how to prepare the next generation for intersecting ecological, social, and economic crises, a new qualitative study from Istanbul, Türkiye, sheds light on how young children conceptualize sustainability. Published in Frontiers in Psychology, the eight-week classroom action research project tracked 31 fourth-grade students—aged nine to ten—within a public primary school setting. Led by researchers Ahmet Akif Erbağ and Tuba Topcubaş, the investigation utilized the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an interdisciplinary pedagogical framework to observe how children’s initial, often fragmented understandings of sustainability evolved into multidimensional literacy concepts.

Background Context and the Shift in Environmental Education

Historically, primary school education surrounding environmental topics has tended to isolate ecological actions—such as turning off water taps or sorting paper waste—from broader socio-economic realities like poverty, gender equality, and future resource consumption. Contemporary educational frameworks, such as UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the European sustainability competence framework (GreenComp), emphasize that modern challenges require systemic thinking.

However, prior research has largely evaluated interventions through pre- and post-intervention outcome metrics, leaving a distinct gap regarding how students’ internal mental models actually shift during instruction and how teachers dynamically adapt curricula to counter misconceptions. To address this, the Erbağ and Topcubaş study combined an 8-week interdisciplinary instructional intervention with an action-research feedback loop, utilizing the SDGs not as isolated subjects, but as thematic lenses for inquiry-based learning.

Chronology and Action Research Cycles

The project spanned 24 class periods (equivalent to 16 clock hours) across eight consecutive weekly cycles during the 2024–2025 academic year. Each week targeted a specific cluster of SDGs:

• Weeks 1 & 2: Focused on foundational human needs, poverty, zero hunger, climate action, and terrestrial/marine ecosystems through role allocation, station work, and empathy-based storytelling.
• Week 3: Addressed good health and wellbeing and clean water via a guided water-filtration experiment.
• Weeks 4 & 5: Explored international partnerships, quality education, gender equality, and reduced inequalities through fictional-country scenarios and structured debates.
• Weeks 6 & 7: Examined peace, justice, strong institutions, affordable energy, and responsible consumption.
• Week 8: Culminated in a capstone project requiring students to analyze and redesign an unsustainable urban landscape by integrating ecological, technological, and social requirements.

Throughout the implementation, the research team maintained a structured cycle log. The second author taught all lessons while the first author documented student responses, verbal interactions, and emerging misconceptions. When classroom evidence revealed gaps—such as students conflating the physical removal of visible dirt in water with biological safety, or proposing single-actor military interventions for complex geopolitical crises—immediate pedagogical adjustments were deployed. These included counter-questioning strategies and explicit discussions regarding microorganisms and multi-layered international cooperation.

Key Findings and Empirical Data

To measure conceptual shifts, the researchers administered identical open-ended conception tasks before and after the 8-week intervention. Using a matched participant-level analysis across a common six-domain codebook, the data revealed a striking departure from baseline understandings:

• Everyday Routines: Initially, 23 out of 31 students defined sustainability through daily habits like going to school, eating, and doing homework. Post-instruction, this routine-based framing dropped to zero.
• Environmental Content: References to environmental care rose dramatically from 10 students initially to 30 students post-instruction.
• Social and Ethical Dimensions: Mentions of social responsibility, justice, and ethics expanded from just 4 students to 23 students.
• Resource Use and Future Outlook: Concepts of resource management and considerations for future generations were entirely absent (0 students) in baseline tests. Post-instruction, resource conservation appeared in 25 responses, while future-oriented global perspectives appeared in 14.

Interestingly, while the variety and depth of expressed themes expanded significantly, a matched analysis of response length versus domain density revealed that the proportional density of ideas per 100 words remained stable (19.5 versus 18.5 domains per 100 words). This statistical nuance indicates that the intervention did not merely encourage verbose writing; rather, it fundamentally altered the kind of conceptual content children expressed, shifting their focus from mundane personal routines to complex socio-ecological systems.

Implications for Future Educational Frameworks

While the study offers robust qualitative insights into classroom dialogue and conceptual growth, the authors note several limitations. The research was bound to a single classroom in Istanbul, relying on written conceptions and classroom transcripts rather than longitudinal behavioral tracking. Furthermore, the linguistic structure of the Turkish term for sustainability (sürdürülebilirlik, morphologically tied to "continuation") initially biased students toward literal definitions of keeping habits going, a lexical nuance that educators in other linguistic regions must consider.

Despite these caveats, the findings provide a replicable model for educators aiming to move beyond superficial environmental awareness. By treating student misconceptions as pedagogical springboards and utilizing iterative action research, primary classrooms can foster the early stages of relational reasoning—connecting local actions to global water security, agricultural economics, and ethical resource distribution. Subsequent research will need to determine whether such conceptual broadenings translate into lifelong nature connectedness and enduring ecological stewardship.