The planet’s urge for sustainable development requires a new educational paradigm.
Experts on the future of education and the 21st century skills (UNESCO 1996; UNESCO 2017; Council of the EU 2018; OCDE 2019) are unanimous regarding the need to transcend the current mechanisms of pure knowledge transfer into others (Bowen, C.M. 2020) that put in practice what makes us different from robots. These competences, so intrinsically human are also the ones essential for individuals to act on their societies to change and transform them into more sustainable communities having a positive impact on their environment and socio-economic ecosystem (UNESCO 2009).
The author of the present study proposes the use of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs] (UN, 2015) and the EU Youth Goals (Council of the EU, 2018) as frameworks to build student-centred didactical proposals through small projects (PBL) within the Portuguese as a Foreign Language class and improve student participation in societal challenges.
This proposal emerged from a practical experience as reader of Portuguese Language in the University of Salento, Italy which paved the way for an action-research methodology that will be explained in this study.
The investigation itself is based on three different didactic experiences reveling that there is still a long way to go in what learning experience design and Education for Sustainable Development is concerned.

Sustainability at the heart of 21st century language learning through student centred methodologies: A didactical proposal

[Conference proceedings](https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/transforming-pbl-through-hybrid-learning-models-timely-challenges)