JustEd Evidence Brief 1: Key Findings

This evidence brief presents the key findings of JustEd: ‘Education as and for Environmental, Epistemic and Transitional Justice to enable Sustainable Development’, a research project that ran from 2020-2023, funded by the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund, led by researchers from the University of Bath (UK), Group for the Analysis of Development (Peru), Gulu University (Uganda), Tribhuvan University (Nepal) and the University of Bristol (UK). Our mixed-methods research design included analysis of policy, secondary school curricula, pedagogy, young people’s experiences and their intended actions related to the SDGs in Peru, Nepal and Uganda. 

We have identified the complex trajectories between secondary education and sustainable development and based on our analysis, we argue for far more attention to be paid to the role of education as justice to enable education’s expected contribution to sustainable development. By this we mean, the ways that schooling environments and educational experiences are just, and how far secondary curriculum and pedagogy respond to, and support young people to understand and eventually change, the multiple injustices that they experience in their daily lives. We have developed three evidence briefs to share key aspects of the project’s outcomes. This evidence brief presents our key findings about transitional, epistemic and environmental justice in education.