Demystifying Technology as the Basis of Education for Sustainability

Abstract

The chapter discusses the meaning and current understanding of societal sustainability and resilience, particularly in relation to the development of technologies that can or should enable the sustainability of any community and society. It presents the problems associated with the sustainability of small communities and societies, that is, the challenges they face in line with global trends and efforts that fundamentally undermine their resilience and sustainability. In doing so, it highlights education for sustainability and sustainable development as one of the most important prerequisites for the sustainability of any society and critically analyses the trends to which it is exposed. Arguments are then presented for the need to demystify technology for young generations as a crucial segment for the development of their critical thinking, which is largely neglected in such education. Such demystification is necessary for the younger generations to understand the causes of disruption, but also the needs of society and the economy at a local and global level. This is the only way to ensure their critical approach to solving the problems of the present and the future and to motivate them to take transformative action aimed at solving the problem of sustainability and sustainable development.

1. Introduction

Today’s world is changing rapidly, and as the population grows, so does the demand for essential resources such as energy, food, and water, while the amount of waste we release into the environment increases every day. All of this has led to a serious violation of planetary boundaries [1, 2], which is best shown by the climate disruption we have faced in recent decades. Despite these and numerous other indicators pointing to the catastrophic impact of human activities on the environment, compromising the sustainability of life on Earth, the human needs for more, better, stronger, more lucrative, and more profitable, continue to override all these indicators and common sense. In order to reduce the pressure on natural resources and the environment in the coming decades, the prosperity and development of any modern society should be based on “intelligent” management of its own potential and resources. This should ultimately ensure the sustainability and sustainable development of society, but also its resilience to the challenges it faces. Therefore, sustainability as the ability to do something continuously over a long period of time [3] remains a primary goal of any society, and the only question is how to achieve it. As sustainability is not a static state, sustainable development is about maintaining productivity by replacing depleted resources with resources of equal or greater value without compromising or jeopardizing natural biotic systems [4]. One could say that sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present generation in a way that does not jeopardize the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Although this definition of sustainable development is inadequate because needs can be interpreted in different ways, it expresses the concept in a simple way. Such development also presupposes the resilience of society, which is an important component of sustainability. Today, society’s resilience is threatened by numerous challenges from natural disruptions such as earthquakes to disruptions caused by human activity such as climate disruption, economic and financial disruption, to threats from recent pandemics or current wars. Resilience is the ability of a system, community, or society exposed to hazards to withstand, absorb, adapt, transform, and recover from the effects of hazards in a timely and effective manner, including maintaining and restoring its basic structures and functioning through risk management [5]. Basically, it is about socio-ecological resilience, that is. the ability to adapt or transform under conditions in which we are confronted with unexpected changes in socio-ecological systems to ensure continuous support for human well-being [6, 7]. Sustainability, that is. sustainable development, today generally encompasses three basic dimensions: the ecological (environmental), economic, and social dimensions [8], to which the institutional (political), cultural, and technical dimensions are increasingly being added [9, 10]. Although it is clear from this broad understanding of sustainability that sustainability and sustainable development are a cultural, traditional, linguistic, spiritual, political, and national (patriotic) phenomenon, it is often overlooked that it is still primarily an energy-ecological, economic, and labor-social issue [10]. At the same time, technology is an indispensable segment that should be given more attention. Indeed, if society does not ensure stability in these crucial economic, technological, and social issues, any other stability, including cultural sustainability and sustainable development, is highly questionable and without fundamental prerequisites for development. For this reason, the resilience of a society is measured by its capabilities, which include the ability to predict, absorb, adapt, and transform [11]. Predictive capacity refers to the ability of the system to predict and mitigate the effects of shocks through preparedness and planning, and absorptive capacity refers to the ability to absorb and manage the effects of shocks and stress [11]. Adaptation is the ability of human systems to change and learn in response to multiple, long-term, and future risks and to adapt after the shock has occurred, while transformability is the ability to take deliberate steps to change systems that cause risk, vulnerability, and/or inequity [11]. From the above characteristics and the definition of sustainability and resilience, it is clear that human capabilities are an extremely important pillar of society that should be given special attention. For although the global community, as well as local communities and states, are trying to counter the aforementioned disruptions with various regulations, it is already clear today that the problems and challenges of sustainability will have to be solved by future generations. These are problems that we are not yet able to articulate clearly and with technologies that we do not yet know. Thus, in addition to natural resources and infrastructure, the human component of sustainability and sustainable development also plays a major role as the concept of fairness encompasses several manifestations concerning the sustainable development of human society [12]. This also means that significantly more attention should be paid to learning and educating future generations for sustainability and sustainable development than is the case today, and that the focus should be on actions that lead to a real improvement in socio-ecological problems and are carried out consciously and critically [10]. At the same time, fostering critical thinking, creativity, and ingenuity among younger generations and raising awareness among the wider population about the challenges of sustainability, resilience, and sustainable development [13] remains one of today’s priorities for tomorrow’s world. The success of future generations in solving problems will certainly depend on what kind of generations we educate and raise today. Therefore, it is very important whether we produce generations of new unscrupulous and greedy people who will accelerate the further decline of the Earth and lead humanity to ruin, or whether we produce generations of conscious and empathetic critical thinkers and creatives who will find solutions for the benefit of humanity. For this reason, the main problem that this paper seeks to solve is the question of what the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) of the future should look like and what role technology and technology education should play in it.

1.1 Challenges and problems of sustainability and resilience of small communities and societies

As stated in the introductory chapter, there is no alternative to sustainability and resilience if we are to balance the natural environment and allow future generations to develop unhindered. To some extent, this is confirmed by the recent IPCC report on assessing the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities at global and regional scales [14]. This report identifies the vulnerabilities and limits of nature’s and society’s ability to adapt to climate change and notes that current trends do not point to progress, but also warns that the prospects for resilience to climate change are very limited unless work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions begins immediately [14]. However, the possibilities for reducing greenhouse gases require radical and very rapid changes, in technological, economic and social terms. This is particularly difficult to achieve in populous and poor countries and can be very devastating for small countries and their economies. The reason for this is often insufficient capacities, mechanisms and technologies for rapid and dynamic change. Although the Paris agreement provides for developed countries to provide financial, technical, and capacity-building support to countries that need it [15], the question is whether this will be enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale and stop global warming. At the same time, it is questionable to what extent National Determined Contributions (NDCs) can be considered relevant indicators of sustainability and resilience. The large and economically powerful countries and their economies, which are often also the biggest polluters, are already finding it very difficult to reach a consensus on the most important issues of sustainable development as this undermines their economic sustainability in many aspects. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental agreement between large and powerful states, communities, and economies, which has so far led to numerous agreements, as well as directives and regulations to stop further global warming and normalize the natural environment in due course. It is obvious that such measures favor the industrialized countries, which use their influence (superiority) to harmonize key documents according to their own economic resources and technological development. These countries also have sufficient financial and human resources to drive the necessary change. Small countries, whose contribution to the effects of climate change is often negligible, must also adapt to such regulations and measures as otherwise, they will lack the promised financial support for the transformation. Due to modest financial resources, limited human capacity, weak influence at the global level and, above all, technological inferiority (because technology ultimately enables change), small countries are often forced to buy technology, but also goods that meet the standards set. In this way, much of the financial support received from the industrialised countries flows back to these countries, while the small and poor countries still do not achieve the expected results because they try to adhere to something that is not adapted to them. All this hinders their own development and leads to economic decline, technological backwardness, social discontent, and political instability, which ultimately encourages the migration of their populations to countries with better living conditions. In such a context, it is difficult to expect the strengthening of sustainability, resilience, and sustainable development of small countries and peoples, which could undermine their social and cultural survival in the near future. It can be concluded that many societies and communities today are not resilient and their sustainability is severely compromised because they are unable to respond adequately to the many challenges and needs that lead society to sustainability, resilience, and sustainable development. One of these challenges is meeting the needs of the labor market for competent personnel with different profiles and levels of education, including a large number of people from the fields of engineering and technology. The other capacities of small countries and communities required to predict, absorb, adapt and transform into a sustainable and resilient society are often inadequate, to say the least. This can be seen in energy dependence, dependence on imports of all kinds of products (including food), dependence on imports of (often inadequate or low-skilled) human resources, but also financial dependence on rich countries. Hence, the need to intensify learning and education for sustainable development, especially in small and poor countries, but it must be significantly different from what is implemented today. Since the resilience and sustainability of society, that is. the sustainable and environmentally sound production of energy, food, and other goods, is the basis for the resilience and sustainability of the economy and society and thus the prerequisite for the cultural and demographic development of any country, it is undeniable that technology, engineering, and accompanying sciences should be more strongly represented in education for sustainable development. This is particularly important for small communities and countries whose path to sustainability certainly cannot follow the examples of large and powerful countries and cannot afford to be technologically inferior [16] because only technological ingenuity and creativity can lead them to sustainability.

2. Education for sustainable development (ESD) and technology

The accelerated degradation of the natural environment, population growth, and the associated increase in needs, as well as scientific progress, has led to the recommendation to integrate the values of sustainability and sustainable development into all aspects of learning [17, 18, 19, 20]. This is understandable as learning is an integral part of almost all conceptualizations of sustainable development, either implicitly or explicitly [2]. Sustainable development is, therefore, not only a product of learning but also a learning process, that is. a way of thinking and acting that is open to learning and change [2, 21, 22, 23]. However, despite the efforts of the global community and the fact that ESD is now an integral part of youth education, it has not mitigated the negative effects and has had a weak effect in promoting the value of sustainable development at the global community level. It happens although the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) approach is attempting to transform from an idealistic to an Education for Sustainable Citizenship, which is a more realistic approach to change concerning sustainability and sustainable development [24]. In other words, insufficient guidelines, false idealism, and censorship of critical ideas and content [10, 24] led to the need to focus education for sustainable development on local communities (countries, regions) as this is the only way to resist global corporate interests. Nevertheless, there are numerous unresolved problems, which stand in the way of successful education and learning for sustainable development today. Some of these issues are highlighted by Boström et al. [2] and relate to the problem of dialogue with those who have the power to prevent change, structural inertia, the value of different knowledge in the context of sustainability, the relevance of perspectives and decision-makers, resistance to learning, the problem of climate change denial, and the impact on social tensions and conflicts [2]. Some authors consider that the approach to ESD requires the renewal of so-called citizen pedagogy [25], which aims to educate people to think critically about political, environmental, economic, and social issues of sustainability and sustainable development. However, ecopedagogy [25, 26, 27] does not provide for the development of knowledge through which an individual could understand the background processes important for sustainability and sustainable development. At the same time, Global Education for Sustainable Citizenship (GESC), which is taught within the framework of ecopedagogy includes the scale dimension — insight into global society and mechanisms of action, the ethical dimension — sustainability as a normative concept, the relational dimension — the social construction of sustainability, and the political dimension — social and societal issues of justice [24]. Certain issues of sustainability, including ESD, are seen as a problem of human rights and the community’s right to real or simulated participation and decision-making on these issues [24]. All the mentioned dimensions and issues of sustainability and sustainable development are significant, but they cannot be sufficient to understand the real challenges of sustainable development because they exclude or do not explicitly name the crucial dimension, namely the technological one. According to its starting points, ESD should be inclusive and interdisciplinary, which means that this education should provide young generations with observation skills, critical thinking, creativity, adaptability, and skills necessary for a good life where they live, and give them the “tools” to build healthy and resilient communities [28]. This means that without knowledge about existing and sustainable technologies and the technological-ecological and energy problems of today, it is not possible to truly understand the problems, and therefore not possible to develop the critical thinking of the young generation. In fact, the development of critical thinking and criticism through “ecological indoctrination” have nothing to do with each other. The term “ecological indoctrination” implies various influences that radically shape the consciousness of younger generations in such a way that they regard any technology a priori as a danger to people and the environment [10]. Such ecologically indoctrinated people do not really understand the important issues and problems of sustainability and are easy prey for corporate interests and neoliberalism because they readily accept the “greening of the capitalist way out of the crisis” [24]. This favors the shifting of responsibility to corporations rather than changing current patterns of production, consumption, and distribution in the interest of greater environmental and social justice. Learning for sustainability, as well as education for sustainable development, often omits the dimensions necessary for understanding the actual cause-effect processes of human activities, which have caused the current state of the planet, namely the scientific and especially the technological dimensions [13]. Although it is often assumed that the scientific and technological dimensions are included in ESD through the ecological dimension in reality, this is often not the case and is left to the preferences of educators who often do not feel ready for such challenges [10]. However, without the inclusion of these dimensions in learning and ESD, it is not certain that acceptable solutions to the problems of sustainability and sustainable development can be found today, let alone in the future. Against this background, the question arises as to how the technological dimension can be integrated into learning and education for sustainable development and whether the approach to such integration can be unique. Thus, the approach of learning for sustainable development is not only the development of environmental literacy [29] or universal critical thinking [30], but necessarily includes the action skills needed to implement changes [31] that lead the local community, region or country toward sustainability. ESD should therefore be much more than the development of environmental awareness [32, 33] and take into account the environmental, social, political, but also human, economic and technological context of the reasons why something is used and the consequences it has for people, society and nature. At the same time, the focus should be on the changing context of the environment, whereby the active participation of young generations in shaping sustainable solutions or solving community problems makes this education transformative [13] to achieve transformative change toward resilience and sustainability [33, 34, 35, 36]. This requires teaching and learning processes that help students construct and appropriate new and revised meanings of acquired experiences [37]. The perspective of transformative learning assumes that learning and change are anchored in practice and institutions that it is a process of reviewing, questioning, and revising previously taken-for-granted assumptions, that it comprises cognitive, social, moral, and affective components, and that the social context, social relationships, conflicts, and power relations play a central role as an integral part of the learning process [2]. Boström et al. [2] present an approach to further develop the concept of transformative learning by integrating three additional dimensions, namely institutional structures, social practices, and conflict perspectives, which should be taken into account in a stronger integration of the technological dimension in ESD. However, although the authors critically note that the issues of education for sustainable development cannot be resolved solely within the framework of the social sciences, their proposals do not fundamentally abandon this context. In these considerations, the dimension of technological knowledge is once again marginalized, although an understanding of technology is a prerequisite for understanding the actual causes (and sources) of problems and challenges of sustainable development and a starting point for solving these problems in the future. So, it is not a question of training people who will only fight for sustainability through social initiatives, actions, and policies, but critical thinkers who understand today’s technology to be able to change it in the future, or who understand the arguments of those who will do so. Therefore, this education should focus on actions that lead to a real improvement of socio-environmental problems carried out consciously and critically. At the same time, the problem should always be approached systematically so that the individual can see the problem as a whole, understand the importance of the interrelationships of the individual elements of the whole, and act accordingly. This requires not only an understanding of the whole system but also an understanding of how things are connected [34, 38, 39, 40], which requires the development of the individual’s systemic and critical thinking. In order for the younger generations to change the world of the future for the better, they must, therefore, become critical thinkers.

3. Critical thinking as an important goal of ESD

Critical thinking is an intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered or generated through observation, experience, reflection, contemplation, or communication as a guide to beliefs and actions [13, 41]. This means that in the process of developing such an opinion, information and facts should be systematically collected and then analyzed and evaluated in terms of their clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and logic. This includes the individual’s ability to process and synthesize information in such a way that they can apply it meaningfully to tasks, make informed decisions, and solve problems effectively [42]. By its very nature, this requires recognizing that all reasoning occurs within viewpoints and frames of reference that it proceeds from specific goals that it has a relevant information base, that all data, when used in reasoning, must be interpreted, that interpretation involves concepts, that concepts involve assumptions, and that all basic reasoning conclusions have implications [43]. Given that the Sustainable Development Goals are relatively clear, learning and education for sustainable development need to consider all viewpoints and frames of reference (environmental, social, economic, and other), but the information base must include everything necessary to present valid interpretations, concepts, and conclusions. Of course, this inevitably includes technological information (knowledge). In the process, the individual develops the skills of analysis, interpretation, explanation, argumentation, evaluation, and self-regulation [44], which are used in parallel in an authentic context [42]. Underpinning this development is questioning that focuses on the fundamentals of thinking and reasoning, whereby the individual should be able to articulate thinking that reflects basic mastery of the intellectual dimensions of reasoning. Considering that the information base of sustainable development encompasses numerous domains (knowledge) from scientific, technological, and social to economic, political, and humanistic domains, diminishing the importance of any knowledge will not lead to adequate development of critical thinking. In this sense, technology and engineering, that is. technical education, are often considered as a discipline that involves critical thinking and the application of knowledge and skills because research shows that knowledge is effectively developed through interdisciplinary connections of the real world with content or practices [45]. Indeed, the experience of technical education cannot occur without integration with other disciplines and the application of prior knowledge and skills to solve problems [46], which is a comparative advantage of this education in the context of sustainability and the development of critical thinking. At the same time, research shows that engineering (technical) design activities can help to foster various forms of so-called “soft” skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication [47]. Due to the development of students’ ability to deal with the problems of sustainability and sustainable development in the future, the development of critical thinking is now seen as an important goal of any education and at any level so it is reasonable to expect such development to include a holistic technological understanding of the world. The previous mastery of basic skills is, therefore, no longer sufficient because work, learning, and citizenship in the twenty-first century require that we all know how to think, argue, analyze, weigh evidence, and solve problems [48], which is particularly important in learning and education for sustainable development.

4. Demystifying technology in the context of ESD

In the background of today’s progress and the maintenance of the quality of life of every community and society is technology. It provides everything that many people take for granted today such as energy, food, and water. However, in addition to its contribution, every technology also has negative consequences for the natural environment and by-products that damage this environment. However, it is not possible today to meet people’s growing needs without technology. Due to the noticeable negative consequences for the environment, it is, therefore, clear that technology must be further developed and improved in order to be sustainable in the future. At the same time, the question arises as to who will improve it if we educate children today as if it did not exist. How will these same children develop technology tomorrow if they do not know it? Some studies point to a significant relationship between the inclusion of technological knowledge in the college curriculum and sustainable development [49]. However, these and similar studies often emphasize information technology and digital skills. Although this is also an important technology that can contribute to informing individuals, research, and the development of environmental awareness, it will not lead to truly innovative solutions in the future. At the same time, it is extremely important that the wider population is also aware of sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals [50], precisely so that they can recognize and support initiatives that offer sustainable solutions. Research shows that although the general public supports the goals of sustainable development, they are generally not sufficiently informed about the real problems and ways to solve them [51, 52, 53, 54, 55]. Some studies also show that young people are largely aware of the Sustainable Development Goals [56, 57], but that they often do not have acceptable attitudes when it comes to linking these goals to technology [10]. In other words, young people today, especially in industrialized countries, do not know what and how they are supplied daily with electricity, various foods, housing, drinking and sanitary water, and who and how to clean their waste. At the same time, they have no insight into the amount of different goods that someone has to provide daily so that they can live at an acceptable level of civilization. Finally, they are aware of the need to protect the natural environment and the environmental trends propagated by the media or school, but nothing further than that. The reason for this is the current structure of ESD, which ignores the technological dimension, which is why the ecological dimension of this learning and education is often reduced to the aforementioned ecological indoctrination. In ESD learning activities, participants are often not co-creators (they do not engage in research or design activities), but only performers of something that may be interesting to them, but they do not understand the real purpose of the activity or the cause-effect relationships behind such activities [10], i.e. the context that connects such activities to their understandable reality [10]. One of the reasons for this is that such activities have nothing to do with real issues of sustainability and sustainable development of the local community, so students do not develop a deeper understanding of these issues and problems. Another reason is the lack of competent educators and people who are considered capable of delivering education for sustainable development [58], which requires systematic training of ESD educators. For this reason, technological (and engineering) knowledge, which is in the background of cause-effect relationships of sustainability, often remains unclear in the minds of the participants.

Although each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals [15] can be linked to technology and engineering and education in this field, some goals are more closely related and to achieve them it is necessary to develop the young generation’s awareness and critical thinking skills from elementary school [13]. These are goals in the areas of energy, food, water, and waste [13]. Addressing these problems and future challenges is important for the long-term sustainability of the community, as well as for resisting influences that may jeopardize this sustainability. It is, therefore, extremely important to sensitize the young generation to these problems but also to educate them to become critical thinkers who are able to look at problems systematically and holistically and find appropriate solutions [13]. The Sustainable Energy Development Goal should ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all, new economic opportunities and jobs, empower women, children and youth, enable better education and health, more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive communities, and better protection against and resistance to climate change [15]. The goals in the area of nutrition not only include the eradication of hunger, food security, and improved nutrition but also the promotion of sustainable agriculture [15], which is linked to the empowerment of smallholder farmers, rural development, healthy lifestyles, and the fight against climate change. The goal related to water refers to the fact that all people have the right to access to drinking water in a quantity and quality that meets their basic needs [15], but also to the obligation to protect the water world and the environment, which ensures the sustainability of ecosystems and biodiversity. Waste-related objectives include the application of transparent and science-based risk assessment procedures for the use of chemicals, leading to a reduction of adverse effects on human health and the environment and the environmentally sound management of hazardous waste [15]. This goal is closely linked to sustainable production and consumption, as well as sustainable tourism. Ultimately, technology and engineering, as well as science and capacity building, are the main pillars of the means to implement these and other sustainable development goals [15], recognizing the research, development, implementation, and dissemination of environmentally friendly technologies as an important segment of sustainability, including education for sustainable development. Such technologies can only be created by people who can arrive at solutions through critical thinking. However, technological knowledge remains hidden, unknown, and unfathomable during learning and education for the majority of the population, especially for young people. Perhaps the reason for this is a kind of hidden curriculum that suits countries with developed technology or large corporations that build their profits on the ignorance of the general public, or perhaps just the incompetence of education systems or educators’ ignorance of technology, especially sustainable technology. In any case, technology and technological knowledge, which are important from a sustainability and sustainable development perspective, often remain hidden or mystified (unclear) in the minds of younger generations, which is why it is important to demystify technology, especially that which is in the background of today’s sustainability issues. This is necessary so that the young generation gets to know the causes of the problems, the consequences, and the possibilities well enough and develops the skills they need to find solutions for the future, which, in turn, are technological in nature. This is also necessary so that they can think critically about sustainable development issues. These processes include the formation of concepts, principles and understanding, which are necessary for the acquisition of new knowledge, but also the processes of problem solving, decision making, testing and constructing, which are necessary for the application of knowledge, as well as the mastery of oral discourse, which is necessary for the further acquisition and application of knowledge [59]. In this way, they develop the skills of focusing (on a problem), analyzing, gathering information, creating (solutions), remembering, organizing, integrating, and evaluating [59, 60], which is important from the point of view of sustainability and is also compatible with the mental processes that take place during the activities of individuals in technology and engineering education [13].

4.1 The concept for demystifying technology (CDT)

From all that has been said in the previous chapters, it can be concluded that today’s ESD concept is mainly based on the (mostly negative) consequences of human actions and on “miracle technologies” (which do not exist), which many believe will solve sustainability problems, as well as on social initiatives and/or policies that will influence communities, societies, or states through various pressures (individual, social and economic) to become sustainable. At the same time, technology today is mostly considered in the areas that are attractive or currently in the spotlight for society, academia, and professionals in general such as digital technologies, AI, information and computing technology, etc. Although these technologies are important today and form an integral part of everyone’s life, they will neither ensure the survival of nature nor provide people with what they need to live such as food, energy for heating and transportation, housing, necessary products, drinking water and sanitation water, healthy air, and clean environment, etc. Therefore, the concept for demystifying technology (CDT) (Figure 1) is presented here to complement today’s incomplete pathways of learning and education for sustainable development. CDT is considered here primarily from the starting point of the necessary needs and goals of sustainability, without which neither humans nor nature can live, and it continues with a “deep” insight into the resources and technologies that ensure this and ends with an insight into the consequences and perspectives for the future. The concept is based on the operationalization of the development of critical thinking in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals [13], which considers the mentioned Sustainable Development Goals as the most important for the general population and as necessary and suitable for lifelong learning.

Figure 1.

The Concept for demystifying technology (CDT) in ESD.

In this concept, technology forms an insurmountable step (segment) on the path from the needs of humans, nature, society, and the economy to the consequences and prospects for the future. Of course, everything starts with needs that the general public, especially young people, are often unaware of. That is why learning and ESD should always begin with an understanding of how much water, air, food, living space, and energy, how much and what kind of waste needs to be cleaned up on a daily, monthly, or annual basis. This insight is also important at a local, national, and even global level as the younger generations, especially in industrialized countries, often do not yet have a strong awareness of this. At the same time, they take for granted everything they need daily, which someone or something has to provide or make possible, and all this also has its economic, ecological, and scientific background. Therefore, this knowledge should be considered from the perspective of the economic, social, and scientific dimensions of knowledge. In order to satisfy these needs, resources and sources are needed, which are developed and exploited and which are not inexhaustible, which is the second section (step) of this concept. This step is directly related to technology and technological knowledge as the exploitation and exploration of resources are enabled by a specific technology. Nevertheless, most of the basic needs mentioned are covered by a specific technology, which is the central or basic segment of this concept. In order for an individual to understand what needs they are meeting or should be meeting for themselves, society and the economy, a “deep” insight into technology is required. This includes not only knowledge of how something is made or produced today but also insight into the technical, scientific, and economic reasons why a particular technology is used. In the context of the selected core objectives of sustainability, this refers to technologies for the production and distribution of energy and energy sources, technologies for the production, cultivation, and processing of food (agriculture, livestock, and industry), and production in general, technologies for the management of water resources (drinking and industrial water), construction technologies and housing, and technologies for waste management. In the absence of this insight and experience, individuals can only have their own opinion, which cannot serve as a basis for arguing positions or for a reasoned defense of their own solutions, so such an opinion will certainly not be critical [13]. Every technology is determined by needs, but also by the development opportunities and prospects, and at the same time has certain consequences for people, society, the environment, and the economy. Insight into the consequences is closely related to technological knowledge as this knowledge is necessary for the individual to truly understand the emergence of positive and negative consequences. Understanding the consequences of technology in this concept includes not only all contributions but also the negative impacts and learning about existing technologies that attempt to mitigate them. In the context of the above objectives, these are technologies and standards to reduce fossil fuel pollution and impacts on nature in energy production, technologies and means to reduce natural pollution in food production, technologies to ensure the purity of drinking water and the water cycle in nature, and to preserve biodiversity, technologies to reduce the impact of pollution of seas, oceans and coastal areas and technology to reduce the impact of excessive and inappropriate waste disposal (prolonging the life of products, recycling, recovery, reuse, rational use, recovery, etc.).). It is clear from the above that the consequences are linked simultaneously to all the other dimensions of knowledge presented. Although every technology brings significant benefits, it also has some negative consequences for people, society, nature, and the economy. In other words, individuals need to understand what a particular technology brings to them and the community, what it means for society and the economy, what a particular technology disrupts and to what extent, and what the scientific reasons for these consequences are. Such multidimensional knowledge is necessary to understand possibilities and perspectives, as the next segment of this concept. Although possibilities and perspectives include humanistic, social, and economic dimensions, they are primarily determined by scientific and especially technical and technological knowledge. In other words, individuals should gain insight into which technologies can already ensure better sustainability and how they could be improved. With this in mind, individuals should familiarize themselves with new, still insufficiently developed but promising technologies. This concerns energy production (alternative, non-conventional and renewable energy sources and technologies for their use), food production (technologies for sustainable agriculture and breeding, environmentally friendly processing methods, preservation of original seeds and species, etc.), sustainable construction and housing, new technologies for the management of water resources (extraction and treatment of drinking water, technologies for wastewater management, methods and technologies for the protection of coastal areas, seas and oceans, etc.), and modern and new technologies for waste management and disposal. At the same time, the individual should also gain an insight into the scientific assumptions about the development of new ways and technologies that could ensure sustainability, what forecasts are associated with the prospects of such technologies, and think about possible solutions for the future, first in the local and then in the wider context of their application. Although modern digital technologies can be used for research and learning in the previous segments of this concept, the opportunities and perspectives segment is particularly suitable for learning about modern technologies and their application in management, decision-making, research, and development. At the same time, advanced systems such as the application of advanced information and computer systems, AI or IoT can also be learned, but this depends primarily on the structural and organizational form of learning, the level and type of training, the dispositions of the individual, the learning conditions, etc. This segment of learning should give individuals the creative freedom to create solutions that are not sustainable at first glance, but this can influence the growth of radical innovations [61] that can bring us contributions in the future that we do not see today. In the area of opportunities and perspectives, certainly, not every individual will make an equal contribution during learning and education for sustainability, but this area is a real “training ground” for those who are creative and capable, for whom it represents a real challenge and/or stimulus for future transformative action in the local and wider social community.

4.2 Limitations and assumptions for the implementation of the CDT

The presented CDT concept tries to convey in a vivid way that knowledge from technology and engineering is essential for learning and education for sustainable development and that it is very important for the development of critical thinking skills and also for the transformative behaviour of an individual. The concept also shows that technological knowledge cannot be assumed in isolation within a discipline or field, but that the humanistic, social, and economic dimensions of knowledge must also be taken into account alongside the already traditional scientific dimension. This knowledge forms an important context for technology because technology and technological knowledge are not and cannot be an end in themselves. It is essentially the needs, sources, consequences, opportunities, and challenges of the concept presented as a context without which technological knowledge cannot exist, nor can the context be truly recognized without technological knowledge. Therefore, learning and education for sustainability and sustainable development must be kept in the original context as a teaching and learning process that helps the individual to construct and appropriate new and revised meanings of the acquired experiences [37]. In other words, the individual should be confronted with technology and the background and consequences of this technology in the learning process as directly as possible or through contextualized material to develop an incentive for him or her to critically question possibilities and perspectives. It is important to point out that the aforementioned social dimension of knowledge should also include insights into the politics, social tensions, and structures that guide and manage processes, regulation, and the economy, which are relevant from the point of view of sustainability and sustainable development. Indeed, societal change will not occur simply on the basis of advances in knowledge if the institutional, social, and conflict-related dimensions of learning are not taken into account [2]. Moreover, social learning, where communities work together to find solutions to local problems, is a key factor in the transition to sustainability [33]. The scientific dimension of knowledge in this concept encompasses not only the scientific knowledge which relates to understanding the workings of the living world and the human activities that disrupt that world, but also the knowledge that enables and limits the application of a particular technology. In this concept, the humanistic dimension of knowledge refers first of all to the individual (egoistic) dimension from which every human being starts, even when learning. Given the fact that people’s needs often determine their interests, learning should begin with human needs, continue with the individual’s role in these processes and insight into the consequences for his or her quality of life, and end with the opportunities and perspectives for personal engagement in the direction of transformative behavior. This dimension should also include assumptions and predictions of different scenarios that may occur at the individual level as an undesirable consequence if sustainability is not ensured. All that has been said so far in this chapter are preconditions for the possible successful implementation of the proposed concept in some form of learning or education for sustainability and sustainable development. However, there are also limitations that point to the complexity of implementing such a concept in the learning and education system.

Regardless of whether and how it is implemented, such a process is in itself lengthy and requires exceptional synergy and coordination of actors from different sectors, as well as competent, motivated, and broadly trained educators. Furthermore, the concept is certainly not complete, which is an additional limitation. Many other knowledge and experiences are important to achieve transformative behavior that leads to sustainability and sustainable development. For example, knowledge about cultural and traditional sustainability is particularly important for small nations and countries, which is often not recognized clearly enough in policies, recommendations, and regulations at the global level. As a result, communities that have lived sustainably for centuries may simply disappear under the onslaught of ruthless global, corporate, and political trends. Political stability and nonviolence also have a positive impact on the sustainability of a society [62], so young generations should acquire a comprehensive knowledge of this and develop an awareness of the importance of maintaining the political stability of the country. Ultimately, the point is that the world needs to achieve transformative changes that are not yet in sight and that are envisioned by the ESD learning objectives [63]. Indeed, one of the recent situations review reports presented by the European Commission points out that implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals is lagging behind and even regressing in key areas such as poverty reduction, addressing inequality and solving the climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises [64]. Therefore, it is difficult to expect that the concept presented, even if implemented on a global scale, could bring about transformative change in a short period. However, the concept is not intended for the people of the present, but for future generations who will solve problems that do not yet exist. So, if we educate large parts of the young generation to become critical thinkers who know how people, nature, society, and technology work and become conscientious, thrifty, humble, and empathetic people, then the world has a prospect of achieving sustainability. Otherwise, we will embark on an irreversible path of self-destruction.

5. Conclusions

It is certain that despite the basic agreement on what should be done to stop or reduce the negative consequences of human activities, the efforts of the global community will not bring the desired results any time soon, and it is unlikely that this will happen in the long-term plans. In addition to the numerous interests of large corporations and economies that may pose an obstacle, there are also technological challenges that still need to be overcome in the future. These are challenges and technologies that do not yet exist and will have to be faced by future generations. Therefore, it is certain that the young generation should be sensitized in this sense, which requires the development of their critical thinking toward what exists today. If technology is the cause of many undesirable consequences for sustainability and sustainable development, and if some solutions could contribute to solving these problems and challenges today and soon, the question arises as to how the young generations should develop critical thinking on these issues if they are not familiar with these technologies? Technology and engineering and their societal necessity and justification are part of the whole system, which means that a critical, systemic, and holistic way of thinking and acting cannot be developed without the learning and education in this field.

This paper, therefore, proposes the concept of CDT, which integrates technology and engineering into learning and education for sustainable development, thus demystifying them in the minds of the younger generations. The concept is based on learning segments that represent a unique process and consists of a segment of insight into needs, a “deep” insight into the resources and technologies used to meet these needs, an insight into the consequences of technology use, and the discovery of opportunities and perspectives that will contribute to mitigation and sustainability in the future. The combination of knowledge with humanistic, social, scientific, and economic knowledge presented in this concept shows that technological knowledge is multidimensional and should be learned in the process of ESD in the context of related knowledge dimensions. However, since technological knowledge is necessary to understand the cause-effect relationships of sustainability and to develop critical thinking, it is also fundamental knowledge without which there is no ESD. Although the concept is only intended for learning about key sustainability issues and goals such as energy, food, water, construction, and waste management, it can be applied to all other goals where technology plays an important role.

From all of the above, it can be concluded that the concept for demystifying technology (CDT) must be an integral part of ESD for individuals to understand the cause-effect relationships of sustainability, and that such ESD must be an integral part of learning and education for the wider population to develop critical thinking at a level suitable for transformative action in the future.