sustainability
Article
Geography Education for Promoting Sustainability
in Indonesia
Nabila Nurul Hawa
1
, Sharifah Zarina Syed Zakaria
1,
*, Muhammad Rizal Razman
2,
* and Nuriah Abd Majid
1
Citation: Hawa, N.N.; Zakaria,
S.Z.S.; Razman, M.R.; Majid, N.A.
Geography Education for Promoting
Sustainability in Indonesia.
Sustainability 2021, 13, 4340. https://
doi.org/10.3390/su13084340
Academic Editor: Eija Yli-Panula
Received: 1 March 2021
Accepted: 10 April 2021
Published: 13 April 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
1
Research Centre for Environment, Economic and Social Sustainability (KASES), Institute for Environment and
Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor 43600, Malaysia;
nabila.geo@gmail.com (N.N.H.); nuriah@ukm.edu.my (N.A.M.)
2
Research Centre for Sustainability Science and Governance (SGK), Institute for Environment and
Development (LESTARI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 43600, Malaysia
* Correspondence: szarina@ukm.edu.my (S.Z.S.Z.); mrizal@ukm.edu.my (M.R.R.)
Abstract: Education for the environment and sustainable development is the one important thing
for being studied. At formal school in Indonesia, it was integrated into the subject matter like social
science, natural science, geography, or biology. The study about geography education for promoting
sustainability had not been thoroughly done in Indonesia. Therefore, this study examined and
investigated articles about geography learning and sustainability in Indonesia from 2010 to 2020.
The materials were searched through the Garuda and ERIC application, by using keywords related
to geography education. It was selected to published articles in journals indexed by Scopus and
Sinta. The data were analyzed by a qualitative method with a content analysis approach. The foci
of analysis are topics of sustainability elements, learning methods and models, learning media and
resources, and students’ assessment in geography learning. All of these were investigated in concern
to their relationships and achievements to sustainable development goals (SDGs). As a result, the
topics of geography education in Indonesia have contained three main elements of sustainability,
namely environment which the most stated, then social, and economic. The learning model and
method that was mostly used was outdoor learning with contextual method. The learning media
that mostly mentioned were maps, while the learning resources were local wisdom. Aspects of
students’ assessment that mostly studied in geography education for promoting sustainability were
students’ knowledge, attitude, and skills. Overall, this study has shown that the topics related to
sustainability elements contained in the articles on geography education in Indonesia includes their
learning components.
Keywords: geography education; geography; sustainability; environment; sustainable develop-
ment; Indonesia
1. Introduction
Education is one form of an effort to realize Sustainable Development Goals. It also
plays an important role in enhancing sustainability and improving human capacity in
addressing environmental issues [1]. As stated in the agenda for sustainable development,
all students at every level of education have the right to acquire knowledge and skills to
promote sustainable development [2]. Indonesia is one of the countries contributing to the
success of this agenda [3,4]. Education for promoting sustainability is being an agenda at
all levels and subject matters, including geography.
Geography is a discipline that studies the environment includes social and natural
sciences [5]. The materials studied in geography consist of various geosphere phenomena
that occur on the earth’s surface, including their relationships and effects on human life
and other living things in spatial dimensions [6]. The main concepts that are often used in
geography education are space, area, and the environment, including sustainability. Thus,
Sustainability 2021, 13, 4340. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084340 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability