The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: How to Get Students Involved?

This paper shows a novel way to work with the UN’s Agenda for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, implementing a project based approach in a chemistry high-school course. The integration of inquiry-based learning, as well as the project based strategies, allowed students to develop multicultural skills that are crucial for becoming a global citizen. What is more, it provided the opportunity to integrate the scientific method and improve scientific writing by submitting a paper at the end of the project.


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Published by SCHOLINK INC. students work cooperatively with the aim of producing concrete products (Ergul, 2017).
Moreover, project based learning allows for positive interdependence to take place, which is a basic component of collaborative learning. In such scenario, individual success depends on the overall success of a group, given by the frequent use of relevant social skills, promoting interaction among participants and personal responsibility to achieve the group's goals (Laal, 2013). Laal, Geranpaye, and Daemi (2013) propose that by working as a group, individuals are strengthened in the process since members gain greater individual competency by trying to achieve a common goal.
Since students belong to a multicultural program, it was decided to approach the topic by carrying out a one-semester project in which students integrated inquiry based learning in order to develop specific multicultural skills by focusing on the United Nations Goals for Sustainable Development. Mexico has been involved in pursuing these goals since 2016-the national indicators per goal can be reviewed in  (Petro & Pineda, 2017).
As suggested by Frydychova (2013), students are required to possess well-developed academic skills, including extracting key information from scientific texts, taking notes and writing scientific papers.
Based on this, students were required to submit a paper with the highlights of the project as the final product. The basic components of a scientific paper were taken from Meo, as suggested in MEO's Fish Bone Model (2018).
By practising Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL), students are in contact with something that resembles what real scientists do and actively participate in producing knowledge by going through the different stages: orientation, conceptualization, investigation, conclusion and discussion (Bardone, 2017;Pedaste, 2015). One advantage of the inquiry-based learning is that students are not led to experimentation step-by-step where the focus is to complete experiments rather than understanding the process in depth.
In contrast, IBL leads to more meaningful and permanent knowledge (Bayram, 2013). Studies have also shown that IBL lessons proved to be more enjoyable and relevant compared to traditional clases and stimulating for students' motivation towards science (Suduc, 2015).

School Context
One hundred and seventy four students with an average age of 16 to 17 years old participated in the project, all enrolled in the subject "Matter and Sustainability" which belongs to third semester of high-school at Prepa Tec, Campus Estado de México. All of the students belong to the multicultural program.

Inquiry Cycle
The steps presented by Pedaste (2015) were followed to complete the inquiry cycle. As part of the orientation stage, students were presented with the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Teachers were in charge of introducing the goals, as shown in image 1, briefly describe what each objective was about and involve students in giving examples related to specific actions that could lead to meeting the objectives. After this, students were randomly divided in teams of 5 and one objective was assigned to each team.

Figure 1. UN Sustainable Goals for the 2030 Agenda
During the conceptualization step, students came up with a research question that was focused on the UN objective and they wrote down a hypothesis. Students were offered (but not limited to) the following options for the project: experiments, models, campaigns or community action.
The investigation stage was divided in two parts. The first one lasted one month, in which only two fifty minute sessions from class time were devoted. By the end of this phase, students delivered a draft with the following components: research question, main objective, introduction (which consisted in a brief theoretical support to their specific topic), justification (in which they explained the impact of their topic at a national and global scale and their point of view on the matter), hypothesis, variables, methodology (including required material and steps to follow) and a brief description on how they would obtain data for the project. The second part lasted two months (again, two fifty minute sessions were devoted to this) and it consisted in carrying out the experiment, model, campaign or action as well as obtaining data and evidence through pictures or videos. With these, they were required to write an article (which led to the conclusion stage from the inquiry based model) in which results (including data presentation and analysis), discussion, conclusions and team work were assessed. Team work was assessed by an online submission through Google Drive in which each member's contribution was checked by using the history changes tool. The checklist and rubric for both the draft and the final delivery are shown below. Two final sessions were used so that each team could present the findings to the rest of the group, which led to the final discussion stage.

Results
As a result, the following projects were developed:  Reforestaction: It consisted on a reforestation campaign in which students were invited to participate.
The team contacted a non profit organization in their community, organized volunteers and ended up planting 240 trees in a session. Besides writing the article, they recorded a video as part of the campaign evidence (https://youtu.be/R6umKDocHMg). The objective worked on this one was 15 "life on land".   Aquaponics: Students developed a system in which crops were nurtured by fish waste found in water, and at the same time fish were benefitted. Their idea was that the aquaponic system would reduce the amount of resources needed for growing food and at the same time it would decrease the carbon footprint derived from transport and the use of fertilizers.

Figure 5. Proposal for the Aquaponic System
 Green Tec: Students conducted a study of the amount of resources used in their school. They focused on modern and reliable energy for everyone, which is one of the Agenda 2030 goals. After figuring out electricity consumption, they proposed different actions that would reduce energetic use at school, and they carried out an awareness campaign so that the community would use electricity in a wiser way.
 Imperium, Sustainable city in a developing Country and Making a more sustainable city: These three projects addressed the Sustainable Cities and communities goals. Their aim was to build a 3D model (two physically, the other sketched by using autocad) in which different elements of sustainability were incorporated. Some of the issues considered were waste disposal, green areas availability and green energy.   The potential of sea water, Cleaning water, cleaning our minds and Coffee filter: Focusing on clean water and sanitation, there were three proposals. The first one was converting sea water into drinkable water by analyzing the feasibility of the method used in Israel. They compared growth in two plants, one irrigated normally and one with the saline solution. The second project carried out a survey on water use habits, in order to create awareness among people regarding the importance on taking care of water bodies. The last one was an experiment related to water pollution in which they created a coffee based filter to remove oil from water bodies.

Discussion
Most students were aware of what sustainability represents, but through this project-based proposal, they not only acquired the corresponding concepts related to the topic. Instead, they were able to take full responsibility and do something about it, creating consciousness about the type of changes that are required to actually achieve the goals proposed in the Agenda 2030. This provided an excellent opportunity to reflect upon every day actions that we can do to reduce our negative impact in the planet and students were also willing to inform and involve the school community into most of the projects.
One of the main goals of this project was to develop the multicultural engagement competency, since students were encouraged to take action and get involved with the sustainable goals. At the same time, creativity was fostered because students were free to choose the way in which they would impact their communities. The project was also an excellent opportunity to explore multicultural knowledge due to the fact that they had to explore what people were doing in other countries to achieve the sustainable goals and include it in the research. What is more, students reflecting on how their daily activities were affecting the planet allowed them to develop the multicultural social and emotional learning competency by gaining cultural sensitivity in terms of reducing their impact on the planet and assessing how their actions affected others.
As noted by Bardone (2017), Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) was also relevant in the development of the project, since students had to look for authentic scientific papers to support their methodology, and research about similar projects that were carried out in different parts of the world.
Moreover, RRI fosters citizens that are able to collectively take responsibility for science and scientific inquiry in and for society.
The main objective of asking students to submit a scientific paper was to develop academic writing skills. According to Eslava-Schmalbach (2013), papers should convey results in a way that the reader's understanding is facilitated. Through the discussion, students worked on the competencies in which results are contrasted in an investigation or experiment, and conclusions are communicated.
Most of the elements mentioned by Laal (2013)  different stages of the process. Positive interdependence was shown in many situations where students needed for others to contribute in order to obtain tangible results. Needless to say, one of the evaluated elements was precisely team work as shown in the rubric above. Therefore, ensuring that everyone participated affected the grade of each member in the team. Interaction was needed to conclude the investigation, and negotiation was necessary for designing the experiment. Everyone was responsible for the article submission, so roles had to be assigned by team members and work was distributed accordingly. Social skills were developed at every stage of the project.

Conclusions
As can be seen, it is important to engage students in activities that enable them to take action. In order to achieve this, inquiry based learning can be coupled with project based learning so that the teacher assumes the role as a facilitator. With this intention, students become responsible for their own learning process, developing several multicultural competencies in the way. Both IBL and PBL provide the opportunity to work on multicultural social and emotional learning, multicultural knowledge, multicultural communication and multicultural engagement. With this in mind, integrating the Sustainable Development Goals established in the Agenda 2030 provides the perfect opportunity for students' involvement in world related issues. Additionally, by asking students to deliver a scientific article with their project results scientific literacy can be integrated as well. This in turn, enables teachers to carry out responsible research and innovation.