Environmental Education and Sustainable Development: Practice and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

The 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), formulated by the United Nations General Assembly, contains 17 items that complement each other. However, there are three goals that were considered relevant to this Special Issue as they concern with health and well-being, as well as the quality of education and social responsibility about the production and consumption.

With the need to develop approaches that are broad and sustainable, but that can also involve people in promoting positive changes in the community, especially regarding environmentally friendly practices, we would like to invite researchers to reflect together on the challenges of environmental education and sustainable development, as well as best practice.

Considering that education is a wide system important for sustainable development, there are many questions we can raise, but this Special Issue is centered on two: i) What we can do to promote sustainable development? ii) What is the role of education? In order to capture students' attention and stimulate their creativity, teachers should use new technologies and teach interactively.

Students at schools also need to learn how to use facts and critical thinking from their surroundings, as well as how to adapt to their environment. In other words, the development of a dynamic AI curriculum (D-AI-C) and an information smart system (ISS) are  creative endeavors aimed at assisting educators in staying up-to-date on AI-related matters and equipping them with resources to instruct pupils.

However, certain behaviors need to change; therefore, the objective is promoting sustainable development practices. In this case, behavior becomes the heart of the matter. In order to understand behavior, it is crucial to identify the main variables as well as the most important players/agents influencing behavior change. In this context, individual and social beliefs can be relevant, as well as sensorial system and individual perception. Moreover, social marketing glasses can complete the most appropriate framework.

Behavior may be predicted. Using social lens, decision-making is based on a social consensus and tribal wisdom. The experiential perspective focuses on individually seeking out and learning about novel, thrilling events. The instinctual perspective entails merely acting on instincts and what seems right at the time.

From a complementary perspective, it is possible to explore physiological factors, as well as neurological signals, to understand motivations, preferences and decisions. As such, neuromarketing can be used for consumer behavior prediction based on neural network algorithms, examining customer perceptions by robots using eye tracking technology and the identification of human feelings via a webcam. AI can help in collecting huge volumes of data through robots designed to track changes on websites and social media. AI has advanced neuromarketing research by making tests easier to perform and helping disclose patterns that were previously difficult to spot. Deep learning is issued to identify consumers' interests from a merged electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data. A re-current neural network is known as long short-term memory (LSTM).

Through intervention strategies, individuals, communities, organizations and governments can help promote good lifestyles. It is also possible to use techniques for engaging individuals and promoting the adoption of eco-friendly practices and healthier behaviors.

From the perspective of resource utilization, production, supply chains and consumption need to be considered a continuous process as well as environmentally friendly. In other words, challenges should be overpassed, for example, through education, which can result in better practices for the individual and society. Finally, it is important to highlight that development depends on being sustainable, and education can result in better practices of the individual, society and environment.

This Special Issue is centered on (but not limited to) the following suggestions for topics:

• Developing environmental education, as well as sustainable development;
• Sustainable development challenges;
• Sustainable development best practice;
• Learners and educators with the knowledge, skills and attitudes regarding sustainable development that can help us understand motivations, preferences and decisions;
• Helping education and training institutions integrate sustainability into teaching and learning;
• Transformative changes needed in education and training for sustainability;
• Implementation of sustainability principles by higher education institutions;
• Sustainability-based curricula and culture change;
• Interdisciplinary studies on sustainability;
• Political environment and stakeholders’ interest affect sustainability;
• Examining customer perceptions by means of neuromarketing.

Prof. Dr. Rocsana Bucea-Manea-Tonis
Prof. Dr. Orzan Gheorghre
Prof. Dr. Oliva M. D. Martins
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• agenda of sustainable development goals
• environmental education
• sustainable behaviour
• sustainable development
• social marketing
• neuromarketing