Dealing with the great challenges of the 21st century requires far reaching changes in the lifestyle and perceptions of humans to ensure an appropriate quality of life for all, now and in the future. To provide people with the necessary competencies, the UN initiated the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) program. The two-year research-education, cooperative project ‘AustrIndia-4QOL’ aims to contribute to the goals of ESD. It is based on a collaboration between students from schools in Austria and India on the topics of quality of life, sustainability and global justice. The purpose of this particular case study is to explore the effects of a weeklong face-to-face collaboration in the final part of the AustrIndia-4QOL project. Therefore, it is examined whether or not Austrian and Indian students’ concepts regarding the Sustainable Development Goals ‘Gender Equality’ and ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ change as a consequence of encountering differing perspectives. Short texts written by the students at the beginning and at the end of this collaboration, according to guiding questions, form the basis for a qualitative content analysis. The findings illustrate that the students’ awareness increased and their evaluation of topics related to the discussed sustainable development goals changed.

Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts "AustrIndia-4QOL" forschen Schüler/innen aus Feldkirch in Vorarlberg und Manali in Nordindien gemeinsam zum Thema Lebensqualität. Die Kommunikation erfolgt dabei vorwiegend über die Social Media Plattform Facebook. Dieser Artikel beschreibt ausgewählte theoretische Grundlagen und erste Zwischenergebnisse eines Pretests, um damit einen Überblick über die Ausgangsbedingungen zu schaffen. Die abschließend präsentierten Unterrichtserfahrungen aus der ersten Projektphase ermöglichen bereits Aussagen über die Chancen und Herausforderungen, die eine derartige Zusammenarbeit mit sich bringt.

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt die theoretischen Hintergründe, den Ablauf und die Zielsetzung des Forschungsprojekts "AustrIndia-4QOL". Schüler/innen einer 7. Klasse AHS aus Vorarlberg arbeiten über digitale Medien mit Gleichaltrigen aus einer Schule in Nordindien zusammen und setzen sich gemeinsam mit Fragen zur Schaffung hoher Lebensqualität unter dem Gesichtspunkt intragenerationaler Gerechtigkeit auseinander. Durch moderat konstruktivistisch gestaltete Lernsettings wird versucht, bei den Jugendlichen das Bewusstsein und die Handlungsbereitschaft für eine nachhaltige Lebensweise zu stärken.

Today’s environmental challenges have been determined and exacerbated by human behavior. It is imperative that education develops learning-settings that enable students to make their individual lifestyles more sustainable. The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of the research-education-collaboration ‘AustrIndia-4QOL’ (Teenagers from Austria and India Perform Research on Quality of Life) on the teenagers’ awareness of the importance of environmental aspects in regards to quality of life, and on their willingness to act towards more sustainable lifestyles. Therefore, the results from a collaboration via social media and from a collaboration with additional face-to-face workshops were analyzed. The question of whether an increased awareness or willingness to act is followed by a change of real action after the project was also investigated. The results indicate that conducting education for sustainable development requires long term educational engagement, and that unintended effects cannot be excluded.

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