Toolkit for the Interdisciplinary Infusion of the SDGs into Classrooms

Sciences

The following resources provide instructors with materials to support, introduce and infuse the SDGs into their lessons.

Biological Sciences Lesson Plans

  • Visit Gender-Inclusive Biology. Educators, parents, guardians, and students are asking questions that society is still struggling to answer. Students anywhere on the gender spectrum directly feel the effects of how we answer and what we do not answer. This website aims to curate resources and connect science educators, students, learners of all types, parents, guardians, and everyone involved in supporting and learning to grow a more inclusive biology curriculum.

Chemistry Lesson Plans

Earth Sciences Lesson Plans

Environmental Sciences Lesson Plans

  • View this discussion activity for SDG #13: Climate Action. The lesson includes discussion questions, videos and response exercises for students. 
  • Read Geomedia by Michael John Long. Three chapters form Part 3 of the guide Engaging STEM: A Guide to Interactive Resources. The author provides practical OER resources such as interactive maps, sample activities, guiding questions and teaching guides on how to use geomedia projects in the classroom.

Physics Lesson Plans

  • Visit the Wakelet SDG page for lesson plans, links, videos, student challenges, activities, infographics and tasks for all of the 17 SDGs.

Edutopia

Edutopia serves as a lighthouse for educational innovation, providing a vision for integrating 21st-century skills into lifelong learning. Through showcasing best practices and innovation in real-world education, it inspires educators, students, and policymakers to transform education for the better. Explore Edutopia’s vision for education and its commitment to project-based learning, social and emotional learning, and technological advancement.

These case studies from Edutopia offer inspiring examples of how integrating various academic subjects and adopting innovative teaching methods can prepare students for a world where knowledge is interconnected and sustainability is key. Each case study demonstrates the potential for educational practices to contribute towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by fostering an environment of innovation, critical thinking, and holistic learning.

More Case Studies

  • The Sustainable Development Goals Fund has an online database of sustainable development case studies with a selection of effective practices on how to achieve a sustainable world while advancing the 17 SDGs.
  • 30 Self Nudges for the SDGs is an SDG i-Level Project that launched the Self-Nudging Online Toolkit for University Staff on SDGs. Self-Nudges help remind university teachers and staff of the relevance of their work to the SDGs, prompting them to think about sustainable development, apply this mental framework to their work and as a result create more contributions to SDGs while feeling better about what they do. A continuous and reinforced engagement with the SDGs will create a mindset conducive to forging new individual contributions to sustainable development and the SDGs.
  • Visit BioRender, the world’s first tool to help scientists create and share professional, visual, accessible and universal scientific figures. They believe that science is universally communicated and understood through visuals. Science communication should always be fast, repeatable and standardized.
  • Read about The Big History Project, a social studies course that spans 13.8 billion years of history. It weaves insights from many disciplines to form a single story that helps us better understand people, civilizations, and how we are connected to everything around us.
  • Visit Canadian Geographic Education a standing committee of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. They offer teacher guides, lesson plans, giant floor maps, videos, infographics, maps & activities, and interactives.
  • View the Education Scotland Excel spreadsheet for STEM and SDG resources searchable by sector, theme, provider, opportunity, region, authority, month and year.
  • Visit Faculty for a Future and search the Seed Library It is a searchable database of open-access educational resources that can support educators and students by integrating sustainability into discipline-specific teaching and learning. Search by issue, discipline, resource type and characteristic.
  • FairTrade Canada advocates for thriving farmer and worker communities that have more control over their futures. They stand in solidarity with producer organizations, without compromise, to their standards, prices, or vision to make trade work for everyone along the supply chain. Their impact is economic, social and environmental.
  • The Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium is a collaborative initiative to support the development of mid-century national food and land-use pathways consistent at the global level that could inform policies towards greater sustainability. FABLE is convened as part of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU).
  • Find Geospatial data and timely data sets for countries around the world by SDG.
  • The Global Footprint Network supports the shift towards a sustainable economy by advancing the Ecological Footprint, a measurement and management tool that makes the reality of global limits central to decision-making.  Ecological footprint projects can be an effective way to get students to think about how sustainability intersects with their lives.
  • The Land Portal Foundation was established to create, curate and disseminate land governance information by fostering an inclusive and accessible data landscape. Over the last decade, the portal has evolved from a simple information gateway to become a knowledge broker, a resource base, a vibrant online community of users and a trusted voice within global land governance.
  • Nature Map offers freely available global maps of terrestrial biodiversity, carbon stocks and water supply, designed to support governments in policy design.
  • The POPGRID Data Collaborative aims to bring together and expand the international community of data providers, users, and sponsors concerned with georeferenced data on population, human settlements and infrastructure. They seek to improve data access, timeliness, consistency, and utility; support data use and interpretation; identify and address pressing user needs; reduce duplication and user confusion; and encourage innovation and cross-disciplinary use. They bring expertise and perspectives from diverse natural, social, health, and engineering science disciplines and sectors, and from government, academia, private industry, and nongovernmental organizations. 
  • Visit the SDG Academy for free, open educational resources. Content includes climate science, earth science, energy systems, environmental science, information technology, marine biology and oceanography and can be searched by language, SDG, series and subject.
  • Visit the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems a thematic network that aims to connect experts and practitioners to turn knowledge into practice for SDG #2. There are projects, reports, recent work and publications. 
  • The Sustainability Curriculum Consortium represents an opportunity to fill a gap in the sustainability movement in higher education. They envision a consortium that builds our collective capacity as educators and change agents, along with the administrators and stakeholders who can support them, to improve the ways sustainability is perceived, modeled, and taught; that serves as a generator of principles, practices, and shared resources, to move the education component of higher education sustainability up to and beyond campus operations.  
  • TeachSDGs helps instructors to connect to the SDGs through resources such as videos, global projects, social media and teacher connections. 
  • Read the Amazon Assessment Report 2021 – The Amazon We Want. It is the first scientific report carried out for the entire Amazon basin and its biome. The report calls upon governments, companies, civil society, and all inhabitants of the planet to implement the report’s recommendations and act together for the conservation and development of a sustainable Amazon. Read more.
  • This is the Food, Environment, Land, Development Field Tracker (FELD) report of an analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted by countries for COP26 to provide answers to the questions: How action-oriented are the NDCs about transforming the food and land sector? What specific policy measures do they propose, and which institutional mechanisms have been put in place to coordinate implementation? What are the main policy gaps and opportunities for countries to prioritize now, globally and at home?
  • Explore IISD’s policy brief titled Harnessing Potential of Outer Space for Achieving the SDGs. This brief discusses the potential and challenges of utilizing outer space technologies for the achievement of the SDGs. With advancements in space technologies and their increasing accessibility, this resource offers an exciting perspective on the potential intersection of outer space and sustainable development.

  • Read Nature’s commentary on How artificial intelligence can tackle climate change. This article discusses the potential of AI technologies in mitigating climate change and their relevance to SDGs, offering a fresh perspective on the intersection of advanced technology and sustainable development.