Rachel de Sousa Vianna

1.16 Sustainable Development Goals – SDG in Art Education: An Analysis of Articles published in “The International Journal of Education Through Art” – IJETA (2021–24) (Paper)

Rachel de Sousa Vianna – Minas Gerais State University, Brazil

Abstract:

Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs make up the “2030 Agenda”, a global action plan that establishes a series of goals to eradicate poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. Aligned with this perspective, a significant number of contemporary artists has been producing artworks clearly engaged in transforming the world towards a more sustainable, fair and inclusive future. To what extent art educators embrace this cause is an open question. This study seeks to understand the field’s level of engagement in relation to the SDGs through quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles published in the “International Journal of Education Through Art” – IJETA in the last four years (2021–24). To do so, it used a set of keywords to examine the titles, abstracts and keywords of 77 texts. The definition of the search terms took as a reference “The Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development”, published by UNESCO in 2024. The investigation sought to detect the most common themes, the origin of the authors, the context in which the work was carried out, the type of pedagogical approach used and the recommendations issued. An initial result indicates that three special issues published during this period – “Art, Sustainability and Partnership” (Mar 2023), “Reconciliation” (Mar 2022) and “Walking as a Radical and Critical Art of Inquiry: Embodiment, Place and Entanglement” (Mar 2021) concentrate the largest number of articles linked to the SDGs. The expectation with this study is to present a synthesis of the presence of the SDGs in the last twelve issues of IJETA, indicating references for professionals interested in adopting an activist perspective in their pedagogical practice in the arts.