Drawing Sustainability: Students See Dimensions but Miss Systems Thinking—Exploring Learning Progressions in Education for Sustainable Development

This study examines how students aged 10–20 conceptualize Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), focusing on their ability to think multiperspectively and justify decisions multidimensionally. In a classroom-based teaching experiment, 131 high school students from Lower Saxony completed a drawing task visualizing sustainable village transformations, followed by interviews with twelve participants. Their negotiation processes, verbal responses, and drawings were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The visualization of village transformations functions as a biology-didactic ESD activity, where students apply decision-making and problem-solving strategies to address biological system levels (e.g., individuals, populations, ecosystems) and their interconnections (trophic levels, food webs, biodiversity). Results indicate age-related differences: students in grades 5–7 primarily emphasized social and ecological aspects, designing idealized living spaces for themselves. Upper-secondary students (grades 11–13) incorporated societal, political, and economic considerations, prioritizing economic development. However, no consistent relationship between multiperspectivity and multidimensional reasoning was identified. Based on these findings and related research, the study advocates integrating systems thinking with a comprehension-oriented approach, combining the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and the Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER). This aims to address the complexity of ESD more effectively, avoiding oversimplified, monocausal narratives that undermine the multidimensional nature of sustainable development.