Eco-literacy surveillance among Mongolian youth

The term environmental education and eco-literacy are the basics of education for sustainable development. The need “to protect terrestrial ecosystem”, which is the 15th goal of education for sustainable development, has become a global critical issue in Mongolia and around the world. In this research, through the self-assessment of urban and provincial students to assess the ‘terrestrial Ecosystem Protection’, we aim to determine the current state of each of learning objectives, sustainable education competencies, and the education capacity for sustainable development within the Sustainable development goal 15. The survey inbolved 502 randomly selected urban and rural area students aged 16-24. For us, the novelty is that we have studied learning objectives, comprehensive competencies and capacities of the SDG 15 in comparison. According to result of the survey, the participants’ self-assessment of the learning objectives of sustainable development goal 15 was 71.2%, and of which 71.6% were cognitive, 72.6% were social-emotional, and 69.6% were behavioral. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to developing students’ behaviors through school and extracurricular activities. The average of ability for education for sustainable development is 73.8%, and the envisioning competency is assessed higher. The average of sustainable development education comprehensive competency is 73.4% and the collaborating competency, self-reflection, and systematic thinking is rated low. That means it is required to work focusing on developing a holistic thinking ability which is important for ecological literacy as primary environmental education.