Scaffolding Sustainability

Critical Thinking for SDG Achievement

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_14How to use a DOI?

Keywords

critical thinking; sustainable development goals; higher education; sustainability pedagogy; transformative learning; ESD competencies

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals represent humanity’s most comprehensive framework for addressing deeply interconnected global challenges, yet progress on more than half of all targets remains insufficient. This chapter argues that the implementation gap is, in part, a cognitive problem that reflects a mismatch between the analytical demands of sustainability challenges and the thinking capacities cultivated by conventional higher education. Based on a narrative review of recent scholarly literature at the intersection of critical thinking and sustainability education, the chapter examines how universities can integrate critical thinking (CrT) pedagogies with SDG-focused curricula and proposes the Critical Thinking Scaffolding for SDG Achievement (CrTS-SDG) model as a conceptual framework for that integration. The analysis identifies five clusters of evidence-based pedagogical strategies, documents a structured asymmetry between which SDGs receive sustained pedagogical attention and which remain underserved, and advances a central argument: the depth of genuine CrT–sustainability co-integration depends less on the choice of pedagogical strategy than on the underlying conceptualization of sustainable development that a given program presupposes. To improve the quality of sustainability education, this conceptualization must itself become an object of critical inquiry.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Rita Payan-Carreira
AU  - Hugo Rebelo
AU  - Ana Maria Cristóvão
AU  - Luís Sebastião
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/23
TI  - Scaffolding Sustainability
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference of Growing up the Future: Education for Sustainability (GROUFES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 161
EP  - 174
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_14
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_14
ID  - Payan-Carreira2026
ER  -