The Missing Link in Sustainability Education: Knowing the SDGs Is Not the Same as Connecting Them

Future teachers may see sustainability as a responsibility to future generations, yet their priorities shift when difficult choices are introduced. In a new study, hunger, health, clean water and poverty moved to the top, while climate action, responsible consumption and partnerships ranked much lower.

Published in Sustainability, "Pre-Service Teachers' Metaphorical Perceptions of Sustainable Development and Their 2030 SDG Priorities" by Halil İbrahim Akyüz of Kastamonu University examines this gap among 93 pre-service teachers in Türkiye.

The research does not suggest that future teachers reject climate action, resource efficiency or global cooperation. Instead, it raises a more complicated educational question: can people recognise sustainability as an integrated system while still making decisions as if its components were largely separate?

A Future-Facing Vision Gives Way to Immediate Human Need

The researchers asked participants to complete the statement "Sustainable development is like ... because ..." and analysed 226 valid metaphor responses. The exercise produced a strongly positive and future-oriented picture of sustainability, built around ideas of responsibility, continuity, environmental protection and connection between generations.

Future and intergenerational transfer accounted for 32.3% of all metaphor units, making it the largest theme. Participants compared sustainable development with bridges, seeds, children, inheritance and even piggy banks, images that framed present-day choices as investments or obligations extending into the future. Environmental protection and responsibility accounted for another 23%, while sustaining life and continuity represented 18.6%.

Several figures capture how participants conceptualised sustainability:

• 32.3% of metaphor units focused on the future and intergenerational transfer.
• 23% centred on environmental protection and responsibility.
• 18.6% related to sustaining life and continuity.
• 13.3% described balance, harmony and systems integrity.
• Only 3.5% focused specifically on sustainable resource use.

The picture changed when participants had to rank the SDGs. Zero Hunger ranked first, followed by Good Health and Well-being, Clean Water and Sanitation, No Poverty and Quality Education. Zero Hunger received a mean rank of 2.99 and was placed first by 38 of the 93 participants, far ahead of most other goals.

The Ranking Exposes a Blind Spot in Systems Thinking

Goals associated with longer-term environmental, technological and institutional transformation appeared much lower. Climate Action ranked 13th, Responsible Consumption and Production 12th, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure 16th, and Partnerships for the Goals last. Life Below Water and Sustainable Cities and Communities were also among the lower-ranked priorities.

Participants frequently described sustainable development through environmental responsibility and obligations to future generations, yet environmental goals did not command comparable priority when placed against hunger, health, poverty and water. Their conceptual language was holistic, but their hierarchy of urgency was much more concentrated around immediate human needs.

One of the clearest consistencies appeared around sustaining life. Metaphors involving water, breath, oxygen and sunlight aligned closely with the high ranking given to hunger, health and clean water. Education also showed reasonable alignment, with learning and awareness appearing in the metaphor analysis and Quality Education ranking fifth.

The strongest contradiction appeared elsewhere. Future-oriented metaphors were the dominant conceptual theme, while several goals associated with longer-term resilience remained relatively low. Environmental protection was highly visible in participants' descriptions, but Climate Action, Life on Land and Life Below Water were not similarly prioritised. Partnerships for the Goals ranked last despite participants frequently describing sustainability as a balanced and interconnected system.

Such divergence points toward a challenge extending beyond knowledge of individual SDGs. Someone may understand that sustainability requires balance and interdependence without being able to translate that understanding into decisions involving competing social, environmental and economic priorities.

Teacher Education Cannot Stop at SDG Awareness

The study's policy significance lies in the role future teachers will occupy. Teachers do more than communicate definitions of sustainability. Through curriculum choices, classroom examples and discussion, they can shape whether students understand hunger, climate, water, consumption, inequality and institutions as separate topics or as parts of the same development system.

For teacher-training institutions, simply increasing familiarity with the 17 goals may therefore be insufficient. Programmes may need to spend more time explaining causal relationships among them. Climate stress can influence food and water security; consumption patterns affect resource pressure; institutions shape the capacity to respond to environmental and social risks; partnerships can determine whether knowledge, finance and technology are mobilised effectively.

The authors recommend a more interdisciplinary and practice-oriented approach, including case analysis, problem-based learning, local sustainability projects and decision-making exercises. Such methods could help trainee teachers develop systems thinking, critical thinking and futures thinking rather than approaching each SDG as an independent subject.

The implications extend beyond Türkiye. In many developing-country contexts, hunger, health, water access and poverty remain immediate and politically visible concerns. It would therefore be understandable for educators or citizens to place them above less tangible institutional or environmental objectives when forced to choose. The policy challenge is not to dismiss those priorities, but to demonstrate how environmental degradation, infrastructure weaknesses, consumption patterns and institutional capacity can influence the same basic needs people place first.

Such an approach is also relevant to SDG Target 4.7, which calls for education to equip learners with the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development. Treating sustainability as a network of connected risks and choices would give that ambition more practical meaning than teaching the goals primarily as a list.

The Evidence Is Suggestive, Not Universal

The study offers an inventive way of examining the difference between conceptual beliefs and explicit priorities, but its findings must be carefully interpreted. The sample consisted of only 93 pre-service teachers from one public university, and every participant had already completed a sustainability-related course. The results cannot therefore be assumed to represent teachers across Türkiye, much less educators internationally.

Methodological limits are equally important. Metaphors reveal perceptions rather than tested knowledge, classroom competence or behaviour. Some participants produced several metaphors, which may have given their ideas greater weight in the frequency analysis. The researchers also compared metaphor themes and SDG rankings only at the aggregate level rather than linking each person's metaphor responses directly with that individual's rankings.

The ranking method itself creates another caution. Participants were required to place all 17 goals in order, so a low position does not mean a goal was regarded as unimportant. It indicates only that participants gave other objectives greater relative priority within a forced-choice exercise. Future research could test whether different results emerge when respondents are asked to evaluate SDG interactions, trade-offs and synergies rather than construct a single hierarchy.

Larger cross-country studies could also examine whether the same pattern appears across education systems and development contexts. Linking individual metaphor responses with individual rankings, tracking participants before and after practice-based sustainability training, and observing how future teachers eventually translate sustainability concepts into classroom practice would provide a stronger test of whether systems-oriented education changes decision-making.