STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS REGARDING EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

Education plays a vital role in supporting national development and meeting the needs and objectives of the society. Education is a tool which strengthens the sustainable future. There are a number of issues which hinder the role of education in its full stance. Like resources, economic status and quality of education. The quality of education is most important factor, among all. Sustainable development can be reinforced by number of factors such as learning rather than teaching, Lifelong learning than limited learning, multi sourced education than single source education and Use of multi discipline approach than a particular approach. The main objectives of this research was to study the role of ESD at university level in Pakistan and to know about the views of university students about SD and its impact on higher education. The study was quantitative in nature and survey descriptive research design used in this study. A sample of 360 university students was selected from the HEC recognized public and private sector universities of Lahore city. Self-constructed questionnaire was used to collect data. Convenient sampling technique was used for this purpose and data was collected from the students of three departments from each university. Environmental sciences, education and economics departments were purposively selected. After collection of data it was analyzed by using SPSS. Frequency distribution and percentage were calculated by the researcher for demographic information and statements while independent sample t-test and one way ANOVA was applied to find out the difference in opinion between groups. The findings of the study show that many students have deep concern about ESD and thought that it can change our environment. But the students from the environmental sciences have clarity about ESD