The main objective of the EDEN project was to promote sustainability education through an interdisciplinary teaching approach. The aim was to develop a teaching methodology focused on sustainability and respect for the environment in partner schools, integrating these themes in a structural way into school curricula. The project aimed to stimulate teachers to reflect on their relationship with the environment and to improve their skills through the adoption of new teaching methodologies. For the students, the objective was to develop a critical spirit and sustainable citizenship skills, making them protagonists in the planning and implementation of solutions to concrete territorial problems. Finally, EDEN aimed to experiment with a set of criteria to evaluate the sustainable citizenship skills acquired by pupils, contributing to the formation of a generation that is aware and responsible towards the environment
The application for the EDEN project was motivated by the need to integrate environmental education into school curricula in an interdisciplinary and systematic way. The project was based on the idea that environmental education should not be a discipline in itself, but a transversal approach to all subjects, as suggested by the Guidelines for Environmental Education of the MIUR and the Ministry of the Environment. There was a growing awareness that, although the importance of sustainability education was recognized internationally, there was resistance to the stable adoption of a curriculum that integrated sustainability across disciplines. This resistance stemmed from traditional teaching approaches and the lack of specific and methodological skills to deal with the topic in a transversal manner. The goal was therefore to overcome this resistance by promoting a change in the way of learning and learning systems, and educate students and teachers for a sustainable future. EDEN aimed to respond to these needs through educational innovation and the development of skills related to active and responsible sustainable citizenship.