Teaching can contribute substantially to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by addressing traditional curriculum-relevant topics in new contexts related to sustainability. A suitable context is green facades, which support several SDGs at once. The aim of sustainability education should be to foster all components of the KAP triad, i.e., not only promoting environmental knowledge (K) and attitude (A) but also enabling appropriate practices (P). This study analyzes the effect of a short-term didactic intervention on green facades (4 h) on the KAP triad. Pre-, post-, and follow-up tests were conducted with n = 71 students aged M = 14.19 (SD = 1.54). Knowledge and attitude development were analyzed using ANOVA. Regression analyses were calculated to assess the relations of knowledge and attitude with practices. The results show that even a short-term intervention can lead to longer-term effects regarding knowledge growth but will only bring about short-term changes in attitude. Attitude items with the strongest change were not related to students’ direct or immediate activities. In addition, environmental knowledge and attitude appear to support different kinds of activities. Therefore, it seems important that didactic interventions focus on knowledge and attitude to enable students to engage in pro-environmental behaviors.

There is a need for action in health promotion for children and adolescents. Schools are assumed to be an appropriate place to enable students to behave healthily. Numerous interventions have been piloted in schools, but sustained implementation appears challenging. An alternative approach might be to ask teachers how they conduct health education and what they see as effective. Accordingly, we conducted an explorative study using semi-structured interviews with eleven teachers from secondary schools in Germany in 2019. The interviews focused on different aspects of health education: goals, methods and strategies, effectiveness, possible barriers, and ways to reduce them. We inductively identified six dimensions of effectiveness that teachers believe are relevant for effective health teaching in schools. Regarding methods and strategies, many were mentioned, but only a part was explicitly named as effective. Most of these strategies focus on improving students’ knowledge and skills, followed by strengthening health-promoting attitudes, but rarely promote long-term behavior change. Moreover, it became apparent that some aspects, such as goalsetting and developing action plans, received little attention in lessons, even though they are considered important for successful behavior change.

Teaching can contribute substantially to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by addressing traditional curriculum-relevant topics in new contexts related to sustainability. A suitable context is green facades, which support several SDGs at once. The aim of sustainability education should be to foster all components of the KAP triad, i.e., promoting environmental knowledge (K) and attitude (A), but also enabling appropriate practices (P). This study analyzes the effect of a short-term extracurricular intervention (4 hours) on green facades on the KAP triad. Pre-, post- and follow-up tests were conducted with n = 71 students aged M = 14.20 (SD = 1.33). Knowledge and attitude development were analyzed using ANOVA. Regression analyses were calculated to assess the relations of knowledge and attitude with practices. The results show that even a short-term intervention can lead to longer-term effects regarding knowledge growth but will only bring about short-term changes in attitude. Attitude items with the strongest change were not related to students’ direct or immediate activities. In addition, environmental knowledge and attitude appear to support different kinds of activities. Therefore, it seems important that didactic interventions focus on knowledge and attitude to enable students to engage in pro-environmental behaviors.