Abstract

Education for Sustainable Development is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and has been widely recognized as a key factor and an integral element of quality education. It is part of Goal 4 and permeates all other goals of sustainable development. The problem is that the Ukrainian experience of remote observation of the global process of sustainable development and the formation and implementation of Education for Sustainable Development shows that we are on the margins of these events. We need to understand the global context of our stay in the world in order to change our position and our role in the fateful events and movements of the century at their deepest level of cause. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the theory of sustainable development is an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth, which ignores the environmental danger of development on an extensive model. The three components of sustainable development - economic, social, environmental - appear as aspects of a single, holistic process of social development. But despite all the declarations to achieve a balance between economic growth, social community development and the environment a quarter of a century after the Rio Conference, this has not happened. Sustainable development requires a change of outlook. That is why issues related to the transformation of our way of thinking, changes in the value-semantic paradigm of life of national societies as part of global humanity are on the agenda. Education can play a significant role in this complex matter, and it must itself change into a new way of becoming a person adapted to living in a world of instability, uncertainty, complexity and contingency. The purpose of the paper is to justify the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development in Ukrainian education as the agenda for its reform based on documents from the UN, UNESCO, OECD and the like. The content of the concept of Education for sustainable development and its evolution, the trends in the integration of education in sustainable development and the role of education in achieving sustainable development goals are analyzed.